Intentional Behaviorism: Philosophical Foundations of Economic Psychology

✍ Scribed by Gordon Foxall

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2020
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 311
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Intentional behaviorism is a philosophy of psychology that seeks to ascertain the place and nature of cognitive explanation of behavior by empirically determining the scope of an extensional account of behavior based on the limitations of a behavioral approach to explanation. This book draws on an empirical program of research in economic psychology to establish a route to a reliable and justifiable intentional explanation of behavior. Since the cognitive revolution in psychology, intentional explanations of behavior have become the norm, and as the methodology that provides the normal science component of psychology, cognitivism is sometimes accepted relatively uncritically. However, there is a lack of understanding of the role of psychological research in determining the place and shape of intentionality. This book explicates the philosophy of psychology that the author has devised and applied in his work on economic psychology and behavioral economics. Given the provenance of intentional behaviorism, economic and consumer psychology forms the primary application basis for the book.

This book provides a theoretical background to understanding how and why consumers make the choices they do. The book integrates behavioral economics, consumer psychology, and decision-making research to explore intentional behaviorism, which is proposed as a philosophical framework for consumer psychology, viewing economic behavior in the contexts of modern human consumers in affluent marketing-oriented societies.

• Integrates research in behavioral economics, decision-making, cognitive psychology, and consumer psychology.
• Offers readers an interdisciplinary look at intentionality and intentional explanations.
• Proposes a theory of intentional behaviorism to explain economic behavior, consumer choice, and other decision-making.
• Examines the methodologies of philosophers of mind such as Dennett and Searle.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Cover
Intentional Behaviorism
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Preface
I. Introduction
1 Orientation
1.1 Economic behavior
1.2 Levels of exposition
1.3 Outline
II. Foundations
2 A kind of consilience
2.1 Intentional behavior
2.2 Insight into insight
2.3 Radical behaviorism and intentionality
2.4 Beyond the extensional
2.5 Rationale
2.6 Endnote
3 The basis of the intentional stance
3.1 Cognitive explanation
3.2 Intentional explanation
3.2.1 Intentional phenomena are real
3.2.2 Irreducibility
3.2.3 Behaviorism has failed
3.2.4 Psychology must be intentionalistic, but …
3.3 Realism revisited
3.3.1 Extensional science and intentional ascription
3.3.2 The ascription of content
3.4 Prelude to ascription
3.5 Endnotes
3.5.1 Crossing the divide
3.5.2 “Conscious” and “unconscious” awareness
4 The basis of the contextual stance
4.1 The nature of radical behaviorism
4.2 Four-term contingencies
4.3 The contextual strategy
4.4 Stances compared
4.5 Extensional behavioral science
4.6 Behavior theory
4.7 Radical behaviorism’s claim to uniqueness
4.8 Endnote
III. Imperatives of Intentionality
5 Behavioral continuity and discontinuity
5.1 Beyond the stimulus field
5.2 Symbolic behavior
5.2.1 Stimulus equivalence revisited
5.2.2 Schedule insensitivity
5.3 The appeal to physiology
5.4 The appeal to private events
5.5 The appeal to rules
5.6 The appeal to verbal analysis
5.7 Endnote
6 The personal level
6.1 Acknowledging personhood
6.2 Skinner’s third-person account
6.3 More on first-person accounts
6.4 First- and third-personal perspectives
6.5 Endnote
7 Delimiting behavioral interpretation
7.1 Behavioral interpretation
7.2 What kind of interpretation?
7.3 Interpretive stances
7.4 Vague analogic guesses?
7.5 Teleological behaviorism
7.6 The scope of radical behaviorist interpretation
7.7 Endnote
IV. Intentional Behaviorism
8 The intentional behaviorist research strategy
8.1 Intentional Behaviorism
8.2 From theoretical minimalism to psychological explanation
8.2.1 Theoretical minimalism
8.2.2 Psychological explanation
8.3 Intentionality, extensionality, intensionality
8.3.1 Intentionality
8.3.2 Intensionality and extensionality
8.3.3 Criteria of extensionality
8.3.4 The nature of intentional objects
8.3.5 Truth value of intentional states and intensional statements
8.3.6 Derived intentionality
8.3.7 Some objections
8.4 Being human
8.4.1 The intensional criterion
8.4.2 Cognitive uniqueness
8.5 Endnotes
8.5.1 Psychological agency
8.5.2 Economic agency
9 Ascribing intentionality
9.1 Modeling consumer choice
9.1.1 The extensional model of consumer choice (BPM-E)
9.1.2 The bounds of behaviorism in consumer psychology
9.1.2.1 Behavioral continuity and discontinuity
9.1.2.2 The personal level of exposition
9.1.2.3 Delimiting behavioral interpretation
9.1.3 The imperatives of intentionality
9.1.4 The intentional model of consumer choice (BPM-I)
9.1.4.1 Behavioral Perspective Model-I
9.1.4.2 Construction of the intentional consumer situation
9.1.4.3 Informational reinforcement
9.2 Predictability: attitude–intention–behavior
9.2.1 Predictive validity
9.2.2 The attitude revolution
9.2.2.1 Spontaneous processing theory
9.2.2.2 Deliberative theory
9.2.2.3 The indispensability of an extensional model
9.3 Consumer heterophenomenology
9.3.1 The nature of heterophenomenology
9.3.2 Consumer heterophenomenology
9.3.3 Heterophenomenology in the context of Intentional Behaviorism
9.4 Endnote
10 Grounding intentionality
10.1 Evaluating the intentional interpretation
10.2 Janus-variables and valuation
10.3 Relating the levels of exposition
10.3.1 Micro-cognitive psychology as a basis for picoeconomic interaction
10.3.1.1 The impulsive system
10.3.1.2 The executive system
10.3.1.3 Impact on behavior
10.3.2 Picoeconomic analysis: the determination of V2
10.3.2.1 Dynamic valuation process of the impulsive consumer
10.3.2.2 Valuation processes: impulsive and self-controlled consumers
10.3.2.3 Attempted behavior modification through bundling
10.3.2.4 Picoeconomic valuation: synchronicity and diachronicity
10.3.3 Macro-cognitive psychology as a basis for picoeconomic interaction
10.3.3.1 Macro- and meso-cognitive psychologies
10.3.3.2 Bilateral contingency of the short- and long-range interests
10.3.3.3 Bilateral contingency analysis of bundling
V. Conclusion
11 The explanatory significance of Janus-variables
11.1 Janus-variables and the intentional consumer-situation
11.1.1 Intentional objects populate the intentional consumer-situation
11.1.2 Decision-making
11.1.3 Bundling revisited
11.2 The broader explanatory significance of Janus-variables
11.3 Endnote
Bibliography
Index
Back Cover