Agential Thinking and its Rationale

Evolutionary biologists often use the language of intentional psychology in an extended or metaphorical sense. This is a symptom of agential thinking, the practice of invoking concepts such as interests, goals, and strategies in evolutionary analysis. Agential thinking comes in two types. In type 1, the agent with the goal is an evolved entity, typically an individual organism. In type 2, the agent is the evolutionary process itself, often personified as ‘mother nature’. Agential thinking of type 2 is misleading. That of type 1 is a valid expression of adaptationist assumptions, but it relies on a crucial presupposition. It presumes that the organism exhibits a unity-of-purpose, in that all of its evolved traits must contribute to a single overall goal. Where this unity fails to obtain, as for example if there is within-organism conflict, it becomes impossible to treat an organism as akin to a rational agent pursuing a goal.

Are Frege Cases Exceptions to Intentional Generalizations?

I IntroductionLet's assume there are psychological generalizations that the folk rely upon in explaining and predicting the behavior of their fellows. Let's further assume these generalizations are intentional, in that they do their explanatory and predictive work by attributing to the subjects in their domain intentional mental states such as beliefs, desires, and the like. Then we can define a broad intentional psychology as one that adverts only to broad, viz. purely denotational/ truth-conditional, mental contents in its generalizations; so the sentences expressing its generalizations should be read transparently. A narrow psychology is one that is not so restricted. Accordingly, sentences expressing narrow generalizations will contain opaque contexts, indicated by ‘that’ -clauses ('believes that…,’ ‘desires that … ,’ and the like). Here is an example of the sort of generalization we have in mind:(G) If S desires that P and believes that S can bring it about that P, then, ceteris paribus, S will try to bring it about that P.

Computation and Intentional Psychology

RésuméLe rapport entre une approche computationnelle et une approche intentionnelle en psychologie a toujours été une question difficile. La crainte est que si les processus mentaux sont computationnels, alors ces processus, définis sur des symboles, ne soient sensibles qu'aux propreétés non sémantiques des symboles. Stich, on le sait, a fait grand cas de cette tension et défendu une psychologie purement «syntaxique», en traçant une distinction tranchée entre l'individuation sémantique des occurrences de symboles et leur individuation fonctionnelle étroite. Si cette dernière peut être réalisée, affirme-t-il, nous n'avons pas besoin des types sémantiques. Je soutiens, pour ma part, que puisque l'individuation fonctionnelle étroite ne permet pas l'identityé de type entre des occurrences de symboles qui seraient liées à des organismes distincts, une approche sémantique des types reste la seule possible (l'individuation interpersonnelle physique des occurrences étant exclue).

The Not-so-trivial Truth of Methodological Individualism

I defend the truth of the principle of methodological individualism in the social sciences. I do so by criticizing mistaken ideas about the relation between individual people and social entities held by earlier defenders of the principle. I argue, first, that social science is committed to the intentional stance; the domain of social science, therefore, coincides with the domain of intentionally described human action. Second, I argue that social entitites are theoretical terms, but quite different from the entities used in the natural sciences to explain our empirical evidence. Social entities (such as institutions) are conventional and open-ended constructions, the applications of which is a matter of judgment, not of discovery. The terms in which these social entities are constructed are the beliefs, expectations and desires, and the corresponding actions of individual people. The relation between the social and the individual 'levels' differs fundamentally from that between, say, the cellular and the molecular in biology. Third, I claim that methodological individualism does not amount to a reduction of social science to psychology; rather, the science of psychology should be divided. Intentional psychology forms in tandom with the analysis of social institutions, unitary psycho-social science; cognitive psychology tries to explain how the brain works and especially how the intentional stance is applicable to human behavior.