"Economists and cognitive scientists have been on a random walk towards one another for two decades now. But it took Don Ross's book to reveal the straight line that joins these two disciplines and make out of them a social science with all the mathematical beauty of general equilibrium theory and the empirical content of a behavioral science. I doubt that either an economist or a psychologist could have found the path to this stable equilibrium around which to organize both disciplines. It required someone well versed in both the history of economics and decision theory, a combination that only Ross provides. The result is the most important new work in the philosophy of economics in years!"
-- Alex Rosenberg, R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy, Duke University

In this study, Don Ross explores the relationship of economics to other branches of behavioral science, asking, in the course of his analysis, under what interpretation economics is a sound empirical science. The book explores the relationships between economic theory and the theoretical foundations of related disciplines that are relevant to the day-to-day work of economics-the cognitive and behavioral sciences. It asks whether the increasingly sophisticated techniques of microeconomic analysis have revealed any deep empirical regularities-whether technical improvement represents improvement in any other sense. Casting Daniel Dennett and Kenneth Binmore as its intellectual heroes, the book proposes a comprehensive model of economic theory that, Ross argues, does not supplant but recovers the core neoclassical insights and counters the caricaturish conception of neoclassicism so derided by advocates of behavioral or evolutionary economics.