Is bounded rationality a capacity, enabling learning?

Marco Novarese ()

EERI Research Paper Series from Economics and Econometrics Research Institute (EERI), Brussels

Abstract: This papers contributes to the stream of research on rule based behavior, and rationality. A bounded rational agent can deal just with a reduced number of variables, neglecting part of the overall complexity. This is usually taken as just a limitation: agents cannot deal with all relevant information and use biased decisional shortcuts. The stream of research on Ecological rationality, yet, evidences the possible advantage of using a limited amount of information. The present paper takes a similar, but not identical, point of view. I propose an idea based on some contributions on the ecology of the mind by Gregory Bateson. Learning requires to recognize a series of situations as identical and then to observe the effect of given variables in specific fixed contexts. Two situations can be considered identical only limiting considering part of the overall information and taking as unchanged a series of factors. This process determines an individual representation which have just to be coherent with the world. Only in abstract world contexts are objective situations. In the real world, they are just hypothesis to be continuously tested. This vision of bounds and learning has many implications for the debate on rationality and rule following.

Keywords: Bounded rationality; ecological rationality; cognition; Gregory Bateson; contexts; learning; rules. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 13 pages
Date: 2009-12-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.eeri.eu/documents/wp/EERI_RP_2009_12.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Is bounded rationality a capacity, enabling learning? (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eei:rpaper:eeri_rp_2009_12

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in EERI Research Paper Series from Economics and Econometrics Research Institute (EERI), Brussels Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Julia van Hove ().