ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: A tale of paradigm clash: Simon, situated cognition and the interpretation of bounded rationality
Author: Petracca Enrico
The intellectual figure of Herbert A. Simon is well known for having introduced the influential notion of bounded rationality in economics. Less known, at least from the economists’ point of view, is the figure of Simon as eminent cognitive psychologist, co-founder of the so-called cognitivism, mainstream approach in cognitive psychology until the 80s of the last century. Actually, the two faces of Simon’s intellectual figure, as rationality scholar and as cognitive scientist, are not factorizable at all: according to Simon himself, cognitivism is bounded rationality and bounded rationality is cognitivism. This paper tries to answer a simple research question: has the notion of bounded rationality fully followed the development of cognitive psychology beyond cognitivism? If not, why? To answer such questions this paper focuses on a very specific historical episode. In 1993 Simon (with his colleague Alonso Vera) confronted openly, on the pages of the journal Cognitive Science, with the proponents of a new (paradigmatic) view on cognition called situated cognition, firm opponent to cognitivism, which was going to inspire cognitive psychology from then on. This paper claims that such a tough confrontation, typical of a paradigm shift, might have prevented rationality studies in economics from getting fully in touch with the new paradigm in cognitive psychology. The reconstruction of the differences between cognitivism and situated cognition as emerged in the confrontation is seen here as fundamental in order to assess and explore such a hypothesis.
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