Optimality Evolution did not give rise to optimal agents, but to agents which are in some senses locally optimal at best, locally satisfactory in norm, and becoming extinct at worst. Thus, a theory based upon optimal behaviors is tenuous at best.
Optimization implies that the goals of the agent are known explicitly.
When synthesizing or tasking an agent one can know or determine the goals of the agent, but when analyzing the behavior of an arbitrary agent, one does not know the goals. In fact, the range of rational goals can lead to such variant behavior that assumptions about the goals cannot be made with confidence. In fact, real agents must often act with insufficient knowledge by estimating these. Estimates will range from accurate to wrong, from simple to sophisticated. Assumptions Anderson criticizes mechanism-focused cognitive modelers with making unnecessary assumptions about how an agent performs architectural functions such as memory management and computations.