Bridging Axiomatic and Ecological Rationality Through Frame-Switching

Rationality research has been split between two traditions: the axiomatic approach (expected utility theory, Bayesian decision theory) that defines optimal behavior within idealized small worlds, and the ecological approach (Gigerenzer, bounded rationality) that emphasizes adaptation to real environmental structure over conformity to formal axioms. The synthesis emerging from this tension is that intelligent agency consists precisely in the active construction of small-world idealizations — recognizing which features of an open-ended environment can be legitimately abstracted, applying formal reasoning within that bounded frame, and maintaining the meta-cognitive sensitivity to know when the frame must be revised or abandoned.

This is the core of what David Chapman terms "meta-rationality": not reasoning within a single formal system, but the higher-order capacity to select, deploy, and transition between formal systems based on contextual relevance. It requires what John Vervaeke calls "Relevance realization" — a dynamic, pre-theoretical attunement to what matters in a given situation, operating beneath and prior to any explicit framework.

The convergence with metamodernism is structurally precise, not merely analogical. Metamodernism describes a cultural stance that oscillates between commitment and irony, holding frameworks seriously without absolutizing them. Cognitive science, rationality theory, and cultural philosophy are independently arriving at the same structural insight: a finite, embedded agent navigating genuine complexity must develop meta-contextual awareness — the capacity to frame and reframe without either collapsing into naive realism about any single frame or retreating into the relativistic claim that all frames are equally arbitrary.