This work is an analysis of the relationship between economic theory and the theoretical foundations of the cognitive and behavioral sciences; a comprehensive new model of economic theory that recovers the core insights of neoclassical microeconomics while making them fully relevant in the context of contemporary neuroscience and ethology. 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.