Bounded Agents: Cognition, Coordination, and Civilization

Harvard FAS

This graduate seminar examines how bounded individuals, organizations, institutions, and artificial systems produce collective decisions and coordinated action. Students analyze and compare functional accounts from decision theory, psychology, economics, political science, organizational theory, sociology, and multi-agent systems, asking how each defines agents, boundaries, information, communication, trust, decision, and collective action. The course then asks whether these accounts can be…