EMBODIED BOUNDED RATIONALITY

This chapter argues that, as the human body represents a new bound for human cognition, it can also have an important role in the re-conceptualization of bounded rationality. The idea that results from integrating Simon’s view of cognition with his view of bounded rationality is that rationality is a “process and product of thought”, in which the internal bounds of reason adapt to the external bounds of the environment in a disembodied fashion. Embodied cognition can help to reconsider such a fundamental notion in bounded rationality as heuristics. Central notions in Simon’s approach to cognitive psychology and bounded rationality are those of mental representation and simulation. Characteristically, in Herbert Simon’s framework, mental representations and simulations would be constituted of abstract and amodal ‘symbols’. The re-conceptualization of human rationality in light of the embodied perspective is gradually emerging in literature under the name of “embodied rationality”.