1,721,010 research outputs found
The (proper) microfoundations of routines and capabilities: a response to Winter, Pentland, Hodgson and Knudsen
No full textAbstract:Sidney Winter (2011), Brian Pentland (2011), and Geoffrey Hodgson and Thorbjørn Knudsen (2011) take issue with the arguments in Teppo Felin and Nicolai J. Foss (2011), along with more generally critiquing the ‘microfoundations project’ related to routines and capabilities. In this rejoinder we argue that the responses of our critics reinforce a number of the points stated in our writings on the routines and capabilities literature. In response to their many points we address the following key issues in the debate: (1) lack of construct clarity; (2) universal mechanisms or comparative chauvinism; (3) models of mind and man; (4) levels of analysis; (5) agency and uncaused causes; and then further discuss (6) a rationalist alternative.</jats:p
Rationality, Perception, and the All-Seeing Eye
No full textSeeing—perception and vision—is implicitly the fundamental building block of the literature on rationality and cognition. Herbert Simon and Daniel Kahneman’s arguments against the omniscience of economic agents—and the concept of bounded rationality—depend critically on a particular view of the nature of perception and vision. We propose that this framework of rationality merely replaces economic omniscience with perceptual omniscience. We show how the cognitive and social sciences feature a pervasive but problematic meta-assumption that is characterized by an "all-seeing eye." We raise concerns about this assumption and discuss different ways in which the all-seeing eye manifests itself in existing research on (bounded) rationality. We first consider the centrality of vision and perception in Simon’s pioneering work. We then point to Kahneman’s work—particularly his article "Maps of Bounded Rationality"—to illustrate the pervasiveness of an all-seeing view of perception, as manifested in the extensive use of visual examples and illusions. Similar assumptions about perception can be found across a large literature in the cognitive sciences. The central problem is the present emphasis on inverse optics—the objective nature of objects and environments, e.g., size, contrast, and color. This framework ignores the nature of the organism and perceiver. We argue instead that reality is constructed and expressed, and we discuss the species-specificity of perception, as well as perception as a user interface. We draw on vision science as well as the arts to develop an alternative understanding of rationality in the cognitive and social sciences. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our arguments for the rationality and decision-making literature in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics, along with suggesting some ways forwar
Rationality, Perception, and the All-Seeing Eye
No full textSeeing—perception and vision—is implicitly the fundamental building block of the literature on rationality and cognition. Herbert Simon and Daniel Kahneman’s arguments against the omniscience of economic agents—and the concept of bounded rationality—depend critically on a particular view of the nature of perception and vision. We propose that this framework of rationality merely replaces economic omniscience with perceptual omniscience. We show how the cognitive and social sciences feature a pervasive but problematic meta-assumption that is characterized by an "all-seeing eye." We raise concerns about this assumption and discuss different ways in which the all-seeing eye manifests itself in existing research on (bounded) rationality. We first consider the centrality of vision and perception in Simon’s pioneering work. We then point to Kahneman’s work—particularly his article "Maps of Bounded Rationality"—to illustrate the pervasiveness of an all-seeing view of perception, as manifested in the extensive use of visual examples and illusions. Similar assumptions about perception can be found across a large literature in the cognitive sciences. The central problem is the present emphasis on inverse optics—the objective nature of objects and environments, e.g., size, contrast, and color. This framework ignores the nature of the organism and perceiver. We argue instead that reality is constructed and expressed, and we discuss the species-specificity of perception, as well as perception as a user interface. We draw on vision science as well as the arts to develop an alternative understanding of rationality in the cognitive and social sciences. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our arguments for the rationality and decision-making literature in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics, along with suggesting some ways forwar
Generative Rationality
No full textIn this paper we contrast bounded and ecological rationality with a proposed alternative, generative rationality. Ecological approaches to rationality build on the idea of humans as “intuitive statisticians” while we argue for a more generative conception of humans as “probing organisms.” We first highlight how ecological rationality’s focus on cues and statistics is problematic for two reasons: (a) the problem of cue salience, and (b) the problem of cue novelty in teeming environments. We highlight these problems by revisiting the statistical and cue-based logic that underlies ecological rationality, by discussing its origins in the field of psychophysics (e.g., signal detection, just-noticeable-differences). We work through the most popular experiment in the ecological rationality literature—the city-size task—to illustrate how psychophysical assumptions have been linked to ecological rationality.
After highlighting these problems, we contrast ecological rationality with a proposed alternative, generative rationality. Generative rationality builds on biology, in contrast to ecological rationality’s focus on statistics. We argue that in uncertain environments cues are rarely given and available for statistical processing. Environments “teem” with indefinite cues, meanings and potential objects, the salience or relevance of which is scarcely obvious based on their statistical or physical properties. We focus on organism-specificity and organism-directed probing that shapes perception and judgment. Generative rationality departs from existing bounded and ecological approaches in that cue salience is given by top-down factors rather than the bottom-up, statistical or physical properties. A central premise of generative rationality is that cues in teeming environments are noticed or recognized when they serve as cues-for-something, requiring what might be called a “cue-to-clue” transformation. Awareness toward relevant cues needs to be actively cultivated or “grown.” Thus we argue that perception might more productively be seen as the presentation of cues and objects rather than their representation. The generative approach not only applies to seemingly mundane organism (including human) interactions with their environments—as well as organism-object relationships and their embodied nature—but also has significant implications for understanding the emergence of novelty in economic and other uncertain settings. We conclude with a discussion of how our arguments link with—but modify—Herbert Simon’s popular “scissor” metaphor, as it applies to bounded rationality and its implications for decision making in uncertain, teeming environments
Rationality, Perception, and the All-Seeing Eye
No full textSeeing—perception and vision—is implicitly the fundamental building block of the literature on rationality and cognition. Herbert Simon and Daniel Kahneman’s arguments against the omniscience of economic agents—and the concept of bounded rationality—depend critically on a particular view of the nature of perception and vision. We propose that this framework of rationality merely replaces economic omniscience with perceptual omniscience. We show how the cognitive and social sciences feature a pervasive but problematic meta-assumption that is characterized by an "all-seeing eye." We raise concerns about this assumption and discuss different ways in which the all-seeing eye manifests itself in existing research on (bounded) rationality. We first consider the centrality of vision and perception in Simon’s pioneering work. We then point to Kahneman’s work—particularly his article "Maps of Bounded Rationality"—to illustrate the pervasiveness of an all-seeing view of perception, as manifested in the extensive use of visual examples and illusions. Similar assumptions about perception can be found across a large literature in the cognitive sciences. The central problem is the present emphasis on inverse optics—the objective nature of objects and environments, e.g., size, contrast, and color. This framework ignores the nature of the organism and perceiver. We argue instead that reality is constructed and expressed, and we discuss the species-specificity of perception, as well as perception as a user interface. We draw on vision science as well as the arts to develop an alternative understanding of rationality in the cognitive and social sciences. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our arguments for the rationality and decision-making literature in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics, along with suggesting some ways forwar
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