Methodological Cognitivism

This book deals with the cognitive foundation of the theory of social action. The social sciences are still guided by models of social action, far from the empirical reality of the psychology of action. While economics seems to have made greater progress in accepting the changes to the theory of action derived from cognitive science (see, for example, the 2002 Nobel prize for economics awarded to Daniel Kahneman), sociology is still being oriented on the dualism of hermeneutics vs. structuralism, which leaves very little room for a cognitive theory of social action.

The unique features of the book are its combination of epistemology, philosophy of mind and cognitive science in order to renew and overcome the limits of the current methodologies of social science and in particular methodological individualism.

Methodological cognitivism is proposed as an alternative to the holistic character of structuralism, to the intentionalist and rationalist features of methodological individualism, and to the relativistic character of hermeneutics and ethnomethodology.

From the reviews:

“This book reminds us that human and social sciences are branches of the cognitive theory of mind. … this book has several interesting contents also for agent-based modelers: it provides a clear perspective for cognition analysis in social sciences and a behavioral neuroeconomics synthesis, useful to derive new bases for social simulation research. … this book is food for thought for anyone interested in social simulation and the modeling of socioeconomic phenomena.” (Pietro Terna, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Vol. 1, 2012)

Possibly, future historians will describe the social sciences of the early 21st century as having successfully taken a cognitive turn thanks to which they were able to analyze more realistically human behavior as well as the collective effects of individual actions, as the book of Riccardo Viale illustrates. - Raymond Boudon, Institut de France

Riccardo Viale brings important new thinking to the relations among culture, cognition, and strategic choice. His essays help to bridge the divide between psychologism and methodological individualism, drawing on new research in neuroscience, and expand the reach of economic and rational choice analysis to deal with diverse forms of cognition. -  Craig Calhoun, Director, London School of Economics and Political Science, President, Social Science Research Council, New York

These essays by Riccardo Viale draw their arguments from a wide range of sources and disciplines: philosophy, several fields of psychology, cognitive science, various parts of the history of economic thought. All of these different perspectives are coherently focused on the subject of how to understand purposive human behavior, principally in economic contexts but more broadly too. The particular orientation of many of them is towards the question of what it might mean to call purposive behavior “rational”, and the possible awkwardness of doing so in the face of what we know empirically.  I know of no other author who has addressed this issue from such a broad background, and successfully. - Richard R. Nelson, Columbia University

This is an impressive book on a wide range of philosophical topics that are highly relevant for social scientists. Even those who are not specialists in the philosophy of the social sciences,  will find the discussion highly useful for their substantive work. - Karl-Dieter Opp, Emeritus, University of Leipzig, Institute of Sociology

Riccardo Viale is Professor of Epistemology of Social Sciences at the University of Milano-Bicocca.

He is Editor-in-Chief of Mind & Society (Springer) and the author or editor of many books such as Modelling the Mind (with K.A. Moyeldin Said, H. Newton Smith and K.V. Wilkes, Clarendon Press, 1990); Economics, Bounded Rationality and the Cognitive Revolution (with H. Simon, M. Egidi and R. Marris, Elgar, 1992), Knowledge and Politics (Physica-Verlag, 2001), Biological and Cultural Bases of Human Inferences (with D. Andler and L. Hirschfeld, Erlbaum, 2006), The Capitalization of Knowledge (with H. Etzkowitz, Elgar, 2010).

His research interests are the cognitive foundation of social action, the cognitive theory of economic rationality, cognitive approaches in philosophy of science and social epistemology, tacit knowledge and science policy.