I shall begin with a discussion of recent work in cognitive science, and it may be useful to note that the title of this chapter might equally well have been something like "Artificial Intelligence and the Free Market Order". Readers might also care to note that I am, as far as the achievements and goals of research in artificial intelligence are concerned, something of a sceptic. My appeal to cognitive science in what follows is designed to serve clarificatory ends, and to raise new questions of a sort that will become clear as the chapter progresses.