Hayek's The Sensory Order and Gadamer's Phenomenological Hermeneutics

This article reinterprets Hayek's cognitive psychology from the standpoint of the categories employed by phenomenological hermeneutics, and notably by Gadamer. Both Hayek and Gadamer agree on the idea that consciousness is the outcome of a process of interpretation that depends on a 'shifting horizon' – a hermeneutical horizon that is the product of history and that is subject to a constant evolution over time. By comparing Hayek's anti-objectivistic psychology with Gadamer's view, it is possible to clarify and enrich Hayek's distributed knowledge paradigm as well as his criticism of the mechanistic and deterministic theories of action.