Rational analysis (Anderson 1990) explains cognition as the optimal solution to the computational problems the environment poses — Marr's computational level turned into a research program

Rational analysis is, per its definitional framing, "a theoretical framework, methodology, and research program in cognitive science that has been developed by John Anderson," one that "starts from the assumption that the mind is adapted to its environment." Its explanatory strategy is to characterise human thought as an optimal solution to the computational problems the environment actually poses — first work out what an ideally-adapted agent should do given the structure of its task and world, then check human behaviour against that optimum. On this reading the program is Marr's computational level — the level that specifies what a system computes and why, prior to any algorithm or implementation — promoted from a one-off analytical stance into a standing methodology for the whole mind.

The payoff of the framing is that apparent irrationality often dissolves once the right environmental problem is named: behaviour that looks like error against a logical yardstick can be optimal against the inferential problem the agent is really solving. Its canonical demonstration is Oaksford and Chater's reanalysis of the Wason selection task as optimal data selection (claim-oaksford-chater-recast-wason-task-as-optimal-data-selection), which sits inside their broader redefinition of rationality as calibrated inference under uncertainty (claim-oaksford-chater-redefine-rationality-as-reasoning-about-uncertainty). Whether Anderson's optimality-based program is compatible with Gigerenzer's heuristics-based ecological rationality — which reaches the same "the yardstick was wrong" verdict from an anti-optimizing premise — is unsettled (question-verify-ecological-rationality-vs-rational-analysis-compatibility).

The definition here rests on a Tier-4 encyclopedia article; the load-bearing attributions (that this is Anderson's 1990 program, and that it is the same bet as Marr's computational level) are routed to primary verification against Anderson's own text (question-verify-rational-analysis-anderson-1990-marr-computational-level). The same computational-level bet is made independently from control-theory engineering by Werbos, worked out in claim-optimization-as-theory-of-mind-two-lineages.