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Liberty, Reason and Rules

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Abstract

Things are never known as they are, but only as the outcome of the creativity of the human mind, as it classifies each sensory perception to create memory, which is modified continuously by experience. Through the creativity of the human mind, certain regularities of the experience of living in a material world may be categorised. That experience is interpreted through the construction of mental models, but the representation of reality that is possible to achieve through this kind of creativity is severely limited by our ability to generalise.

The possibility of men living together in peace and to their mutual advantage without having to agree on common concrete aims, and bound only by abstract rules of conduct, was perhaps the greatest discovery mankind ever made.

(Hayek, 1976a, p. 136)

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© 2007 Gerald Steele

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Steele, G.R. (2007). Liberty, Reason and Rules. In: The Economics of Friedrich Hayek. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230801486_3

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