Economics and Cognitive Science ABSTRACT Cognitive science is potentially of great relevance to economics—not just insofar as it tries to explain how human beings learn and meld beliefs with preferences to reach decisions and hence the choices that underlie economic theory, but also how and why they develop theories in the face of pure uncertainty, what makes those theories spread amongst a population or die out, and why humans believe in them and act upon them. In this essay I explore these issues in the expectation that cognitive science may give us some definitive answers that can serve as major breakthroughs in economics and the social sciences generally Economic theory is built on assumptions about human behavior—assumptions which are embodied in rational choice theory. Underlying those assumptions are implicit notions about how the mind works. Until recently economists have not self-consciously examined those implicit notions but recent work in economics and particularly game theory has forced economists to explore the sources of the beliefs that underlie economic choices and therefore to build a bridge between cognitive science and economics. In this essay I explore the path of economic reasoning that leads to cognitive science. --

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