For A “ Cognitive Program ” Explicit Mental Representations For Homo

and quantitative notion of utility, which automatically mixes up them with the decision criteria. This makes impossible to deal with several critical differences between concepts that are crucial for the understanding of human social behavior, like as I have already shown the difference between a selfish and an altruistic act, the difference between a gift and a merchandise; they both have just one and the same aim: maximizing utility. On the contrary, one thing are motives and goals of the agent, those for which I act, the objectives that I want to achieve (power, food, esteem, sex, ...), a different thing is the technique thanks to whom I can chose between them. My motive is the specific and qualitative goal; my aim is to realize it, not to optimize or maximize my utility. B) Or: they miss the opportunity of situating the role of rational reasoning and decision within a broader model of cognitive processing and emotional influence, while doing the other way around: adding, incorporating, modifying the RD model as the general and overall model, stretched as in the Procuste’s bed. 4.2. Decision and Emotion: a multiple solution in a more complex cognitive architecture The real problem of accounting for emotion in (economic) decision and in behavior is not that of forcing everything and emotion too within the current RD model, subordinating or “incorporating” (to use Rabin’s term Rabin 1993) in fact emotion in rationality and utility function. The real challenge is that of modifying the basic model of mind and adopting a richer cognitive architecture. Again my view is rather obvious: Sometimes, there is in fact rational decision (although obviously within a limited and bounded rationality); sometimes, there is a true decision based on an explicit reasoning and evaluation of pros and cons, etc. although defective and biased by all the well known human biases in reasoning, estimating, risk perception, probability, framing, and also with emotions altering the cognitive processing; moreover, frequently a decision that uses different approaches and strategies (for example non-compensatory mechanisms) (cit). Other times there is no true decision at all; the action is not the result of a true deliberative process based on some prediction, evaluation, balance, etc. Either there is no real choice, or the choice is at a me rely procedural level. Either the behavior is the result of following routines, procedure, prescriptions, habits, scripts, by conformity, imitation, receipts for already solved problems. The subject does not face a ‘problem’, does not take a decision. Or the behavior is the result of a simple reactive device: some ‘impulse’ elicited by an intense emotion, or some production rule (Condition Ë Action) that has been contextually activated and executed The plurality of these behavior-governing mechanisms should not induce to an eclectic jumble. What is needed is a new integrated model of mind, i.e. an “architecture” able to explain how all those layers and mechanisms compete and coordinate with each other. This is an important research trend in Cognitive Sciences. For example, in this direction is going the new agent-based Artificial Intelligence with its studies on agent’s architecture (like the Touring machine, xxxx; like the important area of BDI Beliefs, Desires, Intentionsmodels: xxxxxxxxx), and is going Cognitive Science in strict sense (see for example Strube, ). Economics should consider those studies and exploring whether a layered architecture or an architecture combining deliberative, emotional, and reactive mechanisms would be reasonable for economic theory. Let’s for example consider a typical cognitive science architecture as used by an economist: McFadden’s schema of the decision process (McFadden, forthcoming): The Decision Process