As most readers of this journal are sure to know, F.A. Hayek ([1937] 2014, pp. 72–73) argued that “the really central problem of economics as a social science” concerns the coordination of knowledge: “How can the combination of fragments of knowledge existing in different minds bring about results which, if they were to be brought about deliberately, would require a knowledge on the part of the directing mind which no single person can possess?” (Ibid., 76).

However, it should be obvious to the philosophically-inclined that whatever Hayek meant by “knowledge” could not have been the justified true belief conception common in the Western intellectual tradition from at least the time of Plato onward.Footnote 1 If the fragments of knowledge existing in different minds were justified true beliefs, the coordination problem Hayek raised would not appear: “The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess” (Hayek [1945] 2014, 93; italics added). If all the various bits of knowledge were true, then—though there might be a dearth of knowledge in society and, thus, some need for learning—there could be no contradictions between them and, therefore, no need for their resolution via coordination.

The aim of this brief note is to uncover and succinctly state Hayek’s unique definition of knowledge. There would seem to be some confusion on the matter.Footnote 2 I am currently engaged in two interrelated research projects that aim to clarify and extend the implications of Hayek’s epistemically-oriented writingsFootnote 3 for both political epistemology and the philosophy of science. Transparency with respect to Hayek’s conception of knowledge is naturally essential to these projects. The present note should be of value not only to the reader of Hayek’s knowledge-focused writings unfamiliar with his non-standard conception of knowledge, but also to anyone who aims to understand his work in the social sciences, and (a fortiori) to anyone, such as myself, interested in developing Hayek’s research program in novel ways and extending it into new arenas.

Epistemology was, for Hayek, neither some idle fascination nor merely a tool to better understand social phenomena. His first academic writingFootnote 4 was an investigation of how consciousness might develop as a consequence of an organism’s (and its species’) confrontations with an external environment—indeed, although Hayek didn’t quite recognize it at this early date,Footnote 5 it was nothing less than an inquiry into the central epistemological problem of the relationship between mind and body—and Hayek returned to the topic on several occasions in essays of more or less direct relevance to economics and the social sciences.Footnote 6

We’ve already noted that Hayek’s conception does not include the requirement that knowledge be true. That an item of knowledge may not be true is apparent in a number of places in Hayek’s writings (see, e.g., [1937] 2014, 62–64, 67–68, 72–76, [1945] 2014, 93, 1952, 168). Indeed, Hayek’s dismissal of the truth condition is an implication of the formulation ([1937] 2014, 72–76) already stated of the knowledge that exists in society at any given time as fragmented, divided (or dispersed among many minds), and subjective. As Bruce Caldwell (2014, 5) puts the point: “Hayek posits…a world in which knowledge is divided or dispersed (i.e., different agents have access to different bits of knowledge) and in which knowledge claims are subjectively-held (i.e., they can be wrong)” [italics added].Footnote 7

It is tempting to leap from this denial of the truth condition to the conclusion that, for Hayek, knowledge must have meant justified belief. However, whether this is the correct formulation depends on the meaning of justification in Hayek’s epistemology. All beliefs are, according to Hayek (1952, 167–168), either possessed by an individual organism as a consequence of its own interactions with the external environment (i.e., ontogenetically) or acquired from its ancestors in virtue of their interactions with the external environment (i.e., phylogenetically). That is, in principle, all beliefs can ultimately be traced back to some set of such encounters in the organism’s developmental history, broadly construed. If a belief is justified to the extent that it is a consequence of either ontogenetic or phylogenetic interactions with the environment, then, as all beliefs are obtained in one of these two ways, all beliefs are justified beliefs, and, therefore, all beliefs are, for Hayek, items of knowledge.

On the other hand, if a belief is justified (and, thus, counts as knowledge) only to the extent that the individual can explicitly state how the belief was acquired, then only the relevant subset of the individual’s beliefs the members of which satisfy this condition qualifies as knowledge. That the latter conception is untenable from Hayek’s perspective is clear from his frequent emphasis upon knowledge with regard to which we may not be “explicitly aware,” but which we “merely manifest…in the discriminations which we perform” (Hayek 1952, 19).Footnote 8 That is, it is possible for an individual to possess an item of knowledge without explicitly knowing that they posses this knowledge and, thus, without being able to state, perhaps even in principle, how they came by this knowledge (Hayek [1962] 2014, 238, 243–245, [1969] 2014, 318).

Thus, if the justification requirement of the standard definition of knowledge means that, in order to count as knowledge, a belief must be at least discursively justifiable by the individual epistemic subject, then, since Hayek rejects this requirement, all beliefs qualify as knowledge. But, if instead justification means merely that, in order to count as knowledge, a belief must be a consequence of some set of encounters with the environment in the developmental history of the individual believer, then, since all beliefs satisfy this condition by definition on Hayek’s theoretical psychology, all beliefs are justified, and, therefore, all beliefs are knowledge. Either way, for Hayek, “knowledge” is nothing more than a synonym for belief.

This means that, on Hayek’s conception, knowledge includes both scientific knowledge (“of general rules”) and particular knowledge (of “circumstances of time and place”) (Hayek [1945] 2014, 95); as well as “all that we call skills” (Hayek [1962] 2014, 233); and everything that in the system of another thinker might fall under the heading of mere beliefs, including a person’s “views,” “opinions” ([1946] 2014, 115–116), “expectations” ([1937] 2014, 64), and “information” ([1967] 2014, 292); as well as “customs,” “habits” ([1962] 2014, 246), and “rules of conduct” ([1967] 2014, 292). In the end, “‘knowledge’ of the external world which such an organism possesses consists in the action patterns which the stimuli tend to evoke” (Hayek [1969] 2014, 320).

This definition, as strange as it might seem to the traditional epistemologist, loses some of its eccentricity when considered from the perspective of Hayek’s treatment of economic (and, more generally, social) equilibrium or “order” (Hayek [1968] 2014, 308–309) in terms of the interpersonal coordination of individual knowledge with external conditions. These conditions, of course, include the knowledge held by other individuals as well as environmental circumstances more narrowly construed. Thus, “[f]or a society…we can speak of a state of equilibrium at a point of time—but it means only that compatibility exists between the different plans which the individuals composing it have made for action in time. And equilibrium will continue, once it exists, so long as the external data correspond to the common expectations of all the members of the society” (Hayek [1937] 2014, 64). The different plans of the individuals, of course, are based on what they know (believe) and what they know is identical with their (subjective) “data,” which are “(apart from his tastes) all facts given to the person in question, the things as they are known to (or believed by) him to exist” (Hayek [1937] 2014, 60; italics added).

At any given time, the knowledge (i.e., the “subjective data,” and, thus, the plans) of any particular individual in society will be, at best, only partially consistent with both the knowledge held by other individuals and the facts of the external environment, i.e., the “objective data” (Hayek [1937] 2014, 63). The problem of the social sciences is how plans based upon different sets of subjective data (i.e., knowledge / beliefs) might come to be coordinated with the objective data: “the question why the data in the subjective sense of the term should ever come to correspond to the objective data is one of the main problems we have to answer” (Hayek [1937] 2014, 63). Stated another way, the problem of the social sciences is how individual beliefs, all acquired in virtue of either the individual organism’s or its ancestors’ unique interactions with the external environment, might come to be true (and, thus, how plans based on these beliefs come to be mutually consistent and, in the absence of further changes in the data, all actionable). The Hayekian epistemological and social-scientific project is to describe the environmental, psychological, and social processes whereby mere beliefs become true beliefs (or, perhaps better, the processes whereby beliefs come to be sufficiently well-adapted to relevant circumstances to permit successful action).