Abelson's (1983) analysis of the dangers involved in treating cognitive, social network, and perceptual-stimulus field-based inconsistency disturbances as equivalent is examined and extended into the epistemological realm. The present exposition focuses on three problems: (I) the utility of Abelson's basic perceptual-cognitive distinction for clarifying a range of problems within the realm of social cognition; (2) the implications of mapping tie preceptual-cognitive distinction on to a broader epistemological level of analysis involving a differentiation between rule-conforming and law-driven explanatory systems; and (3) the implications of the rule/law distinctions for a broader range of theoretical and research problems within social psychology.
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