Multi-scale resolution of neural, cognitive and social systems

We recently put forth a thesis, the Resolution Thesis , that suggests that cognitive science and generative social science are interdependent and should thus be mutually informative. The thesis invokes a paradigm, the reciprocal constraints paradigm, that was designed to leverage the interdependence between the social and cognitive levels of scale for the purpose of building cognitive and social simulations with better resolution. We review our thesis here, provide the current research context, address a set of issues with the thesis, and provide some parting thoughts to provoke discussion. We see this work as an initial step to motivate both social and cognitive sciences in a new direction, one that represents unity of purpose, an interdependence of theory and methods, and a call for the careful development of new approaches for understanding human social systems, broadly construed.