A Constructive Praxeology for Artificial Societies

Multi-agent artificial decision systems require a praxeology, or science of efficient action, that accommodates complex interactions between decision makers. Conventional praxeologies are built on the paradigm of rational choice, which comprises the two companion premises of totally-ordered preferences and individual rationality. Specifying the total orderings, however, is difficult for complex systems, due to informational limitations. Bounded rationality modifies the total-ordering premise to accommodate these limitations but continues to rely upon individual rationality. This paper provides a distinct alternative to the hyperrationality of conventional rational choice and the approximations of bounded rationality by waiving reliance on both of the rational choice premises and offering an approach to decision making that is based on a well-defined mathematical notion of satisficing, or being good enough, that permits the modeling of complex interrelationships between agents, including cooperation, unselfishness, and altruism. This new praxeology provides a constructive approach to decision system design by building upon local conditional interrelationships between decision makers which lead to emergent group and individual orderings.