Reply to Lagueux: on a revolution in methodology of economics

I thank Maurice Lagueux for his thoughtful reflections on my book Economic theory and cognitive science: microexplanation (henceforth: ETCS:M). Given space restrictions, in this comment I won’t say much about his criticisms of my use of the intentional stance, except to observe that they seem to rely on equivocation between thinking of beliefs and desires as internal states of people, and as descriptions of relationships between patterns in their behaviour and external circumstances. I think that one must completely reject all traces of the former view if one hopes to avoid the sorts of logical conundrums that Lagueux worries about; and I find various passages in his arguments to suggest that he has not. The literature arguing for radical externalism about propositional attitude states is now vast, and I can do no better than refer readers to it. I am surprised that Lagueux still finds objections based on bafflement about recursion—that to be an intentional agent requires that the intentional stance be already possible—partly persuasive. Intentionality comes in a continuum of degrees of sophistication, and has historically expanded its scope incrementally, just like most biological phenomena including life itself. As for Lagueux’s fear that my criterion for ascribing reality to a pattern is “a bit ad hoc”, I refer the interested reader to Ladyman and Ross (2007), where this difficult issue is considered with the care and large freight of relevant evidence that it demands.