Psycho-logical facets of a provocative concept: “bounded rationality”
Psycho-logical facets of a provocative concept: “bounded rationality”

Summary/Abstract: An old and long philosophical European tradition exposed the image of man as a rational being, mostly capable to conquer – through thought solidly fundamented, guided by strict principles, norms and articulations – the distortions aroused by impressions, instincts, emotions, wishes, and so on. Such a manner of understanding has been taken over also in the “classical” theories of choice, decision making, game, utility and probability, but a strong alarm signal came exactly from those specialists wishing to implement the computational model, trying to reconcile it with the “natural thinking”, guided more by fluctuant euristics than by stable algorithmics. In the 50s, Herbert Simon coined the term bounded rationality, which will be enlarged and contextually defined later, along with the spectacular development of the cognitive sciences. The present study proposes not only an inventory of some theories dedicated to the concept and some of the fertile applications of the new paradigm, but also tries to certify ways in which psychology and logic can prolifically meet – on the ground of interdisciplinarity – to be testimony for a complex phenomenon, that of the human thinking really exerted, both in epistemic and ordinary life circumstances.

• Details
• Contents