PHILOSOPHY

Downes / NEWOF
ECONOMICS
THE SOCIAL
OFSCIENCES
SCIENCE/ June 2001
Agents and Norms
in the New Economics of Science

STEPHEN M. DOWNES
University of Utah

In this article, the author focuses on Philip Kitcher’s and Alvin Goldman’s eco-
nomic models of the social character of scientific knowledge production. After
introducing some relevant methodological issues in the social sciences and char-
acterizing Kitcher’s and Goldman’s models, the author goes on to show that spe-
cial problems arise directly from the concept of an agent invoked in the models.
The author argues that the two distinct concepts of agents, borrowed from eco-
nomics and cognitive psychology, are inconsistent. Finally, the author discusses
some of the normative implications that arise from adopting economic concepts
of agents in the study of science.

The economics of science I discuss in this article is an economics of

scientific knowledge: the attempt to account for the development of
scientific knowledge using economic models. A distinction and an
analogy will help focus this subject matter. In science studies, sociolo-
gists have pressed the distinction between sociology of science and
sociology of scientific knowledge. Sociologists of scientific knowl-
edge argue that the genesis and validation of scientific knowledge
claims is a proper subject of sociological study (see, e.g., Bloor 1991).
In contrast, sociologists of science are merely interested in the institu-
tional structure of science but not the content of its claims. The eco-
nomics of science I focus on in this article does not ask questions about
scientific funding. Rather, it asks questions about the validation of sci-
entific knowledge.1 A helpful analogy is with the extension of eco-
nomics into explanations of voting behavior in the form of public

Received 19 April 1999

This article was first presented at the Need for a New Economics of Science Conference
at Notre Dame University. I am grateful for comments from the conference organizers
and participants, including Steven Durlauf, Steve Fuller, and Wade Hands. I also thank
Ted Morris, Ram Neta, Paul Roth, Loretta Torrago, and Nick White for helpful com-
ments. The final version of this article has greatly benefited from the comments of two
anonymous referees.

Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Vol. 31 No. 2, June 2001 224-238

© 2001 Sage Publications
224

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 Downes / NEW ECONOMICS OF SCIENCE 225

choice theory. Voting behavior is complex human behavior involving

informed choices and so is scientific practice. The use of economic
models to scientific practice is analogous to their use in explaining
voting behavior. I focus specifically on two similar models of science
developed by Philip Kitcher (1992, 1993) and Alvin Goldman (1992,
1994). These philosophers have both presented economic models to
account for the social character of scientific knowledge production.
Discussion of these developments in philosophy of science is usu-
ally set against the background of debates between philosophers of
science and between philosophers and other members of the science
studies community around issues of rationality. My approach is to
understand these debates as methodological debates in social science.
First, these debates concern the choice of appropriate theoretical
resources to guide the empirical study of science. Second, they arise
from methodological issues in social explanation, and one of the foun-
dational questions in this area is how agents should be conceptual-
ized. The introduction of economic approaches into philosophy of sci-
ence by Goldman and Kitcher provides an example of a borrowing of
theoretical resources and calls for an assessment of concepts and
models of agents. Hence, I address Goldman’s and Kitcher’s work
from the perspective of social science methodology. For various rea-
sons, outlined below, this methodology of social science approach can
only legitimately be taken when considering naturalized approaches
to philosophy of science. So first, I will need to briefly characterize
naturalized philosophy of science. I then go on to present different
concepts of agents that arise in social science, cognitive science, and in
science studies. This discussion provides a background for the assess-
ment of Kitcher’s and Goldman’s economic models of science. What I
go on to show is that special problems arise directly from their con-
cept of agents, which are borrowed from both economics and cogni-
tive psychology. I argue that the two distinct concepts of agents that
both Kitcher and Goldman introduce are inconsistent. Finally, I dis-
cuss some of the normative implications that arise from adopting eco-
nomic concepts of agents in the study of science.

1. NATURALIZED PHILOSOPHY
OF SCIENCE AND SCIENCE STUDIES

Many philosophers of science are avowed naturalists (Callebaut

1993). Naturalism in philosophy of science can be characterized as fol-

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226 PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES / June 2001

lows: the philosophical investigation of science should be assisted

and constrained by empirical investigation. Naturalists are usually
more easily identified by what they are against than by a common
core of methods or approaches that they share (cf. Fuller 1993). Most
naturalists agree that traditional conceptual analysis is not a natural-
istic enterprise, but they do not agree on much else. The disagree-
ments can be partly understood as disagreements over what the
appropriate scientific base is for the naturalistic approach. In other
words, naturalists disagree over which theoretical resources are most
appropriately brought to bear in studying science. Ron Giere, who
has recently defended a naturalist approach in philosophy of science,
claims that naturalists “find themselves on equal footing with psy-
chologists, sociologists, and others for whom the study of science is
itself a scientific enterprise” (1988, 12). But a close study of Giere’s and
others’ work reveals that philosophers do not consider psychology
and sociology to be on equal footing. Many naturalists share with
Giere the tacit agreement that psychology is an important resource for
the empirical study of science while sociology is not (e.g., Thagard
1988; Churchland 1989). There are a few whose work provides excep-
tions to this trend including Arthur Fine (1996), Steve Fuller (1993),
and Joe Rouse (1996)—enough to make for a debate.
Some readers may find my initial characterization of naturalism
somewhat weak. Naturalists in the social sciences, for example, tend
to be reductionists who believe that social phenomena can be explained
in terms of physical laws. Many understand naturalism in philosophy
to be synonymous with a reductionist physicalism. The use of “natu-
ralism” here is consistent with its use in discussions of epistemology
(e.g., Kornblith 1994 and Kitcher 1992). In these discussions of natu-
ralism, the antinaturalists are analytic epistemologists who believe
facts to be in principle separate from values; they see no fundamental
role for empirical investigations in epistemology (Kim 1994). These
antinaturalists have set the terms of recent debate for philosophers. If
naturalism is construed as it is in these debates, we can see how sociol-
ogists of science and philosophers such as Giere can fall into the same
camp: they are all interested in providing empirical accounts of the
validation of scientific knowledge.
Naturalistic philosophers do not simply argue among themselves.
Among their theoretical opponents are sociologists of science, such as
interest theorist David Bloor (1991) and actor network theorist Bruno
Latour (1987). Bloor (1991) describes his approach to the study of sci-
ence in similar terms to the above characterization of naturalism. In

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fact, his critical arguments are usually directed at philosophers of sci-

ence, and the shortcomings he focuses on include the fact that philos-
ophers of science do not adopt a serious empirical approach to the
study of science. The current debate between philosophers and soci-
ologists is usually characterized by the participants as a debate over
rationality, but, as I have emphasized, it can be more profitably con-
sidered as a disagreement over what constitutes the appropriate theo-
retical resources to guide the empirical study of science. Understood
this way, the debate is one between an extended group of naturalizers
in science studies who disagree over the theoretical basis for their
study of science.
My main focus in this article is a specific set of theoretical concepts
that concern agency or agents. In philosophy of science, as it was prac-
ticed until the 1960s in the Anglo-American tradition, discussions of
agents were the province of philosophy of social science.2 As the sub-
ject matter of philosophy of natural science was method per se, there
was no need for a concept of the individual agents, practicing scien-
tists, who put that method into practice. Naturalists, such as Giere
(1988), put agents back at center stage in philosophy of science in
announcing that the individual scientist is the unit of analysis in sci-
ence studies. The methods for studying individual cognizers in gen-
eral and individual scientists in particular, according to Giere and
many others (see, e.g., the contributors to Giere 1991), are to be bor-
rowed from the cognitive sciences. On this account, finding out
how individual scientists think and reason constitutes understanding
science.
Other naturalists in philosophy of science address science from a
different perspective. Largely thanks to the persistence of Kuhn early
on, and sociologists of science and philosophers such as Fuller (1988)3
more recently, philosophers of science have turned their attention to
the social aspects of science. Some of these philosophers use theoreti-
cal resources from sociology of science (e.g., Fuller 1993; Fine 1996). In
contrast, philosophers such as Kitcher (1993) and Goldman (1992,
1994) have turned to economics for resources when confronting the
social aspects of science. The choice of specifically neoclassical eco-
nomics as a theoretical resource for studying these social phenomena
has been questioned by Mirowski (1996) and Sent (1996) among oth-
ers. My interest is in the concept of agents that economics offers to
these studies.
There is a peculiarity in both Goldman’s and Kitcher’s works that
can be brought out by this focus on agents. Goldman and Kitcher

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228 PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES / June 2001

adopt at least two conceptions of agent in their work, drawn from two
different theoretical sources. They share with Giere a reliance on cog-
nitive science, and yet they also draw on neoclassical economics.
These contrasting theoretical resources for their naturalistic approaches
lead to some problematic tensions. In the next section, I turn to the dis-
cussion of agents as it occurs in the philosophy of social science,
which provides background for the assessment of Goldman’s and
Kitcher’s conception of agents that follows.

2. “THIN” AND “THICK” CONCEPTIONS OF AGENTS

Philosophers of social science and social science theorists have tra-

ditionally contrasted thick and thin concepts of agents. Thin agents
are the ideal utility maximizers of neoclassical economics (see, e.g.,
Elster 1989), and thick agents are the theoretical cornerstone of
descriptivists or interpretivists in anthropology such as Clifford Geertz
(e.g., Geertz 1971). Dan Little puts the distinction this way:

The rational choice model of explanation adopts a particularly thin and

abstract perspective on agency, emphasizing causal beliefs, material
interests, and instrumental reasoning. (1991, 69)

In contrast, interpretivists “use the conception of agency to refer to the

fact that human beings are deliberate symbolic actors who act on the
basis of their understandings and wants” (Little 1991, 69). And fur-
thermore, “To give an interpretation of an action . . . involves giving a
description of the cultural context and state of mind of the agent in a
way that makes his or her action intelligible to us” (70).
I see the thick/thin distinction as having at least two crucial com-
ponents. First, a claim about the relative richness of the psychological
makeup of the agent. So the proponent of a thick conception of agents
ascribes a far richer psychology. Second, a claim about the relevance
of context. As the above quote from Little illustrates, interpretivists
aim to describe both an individual’s state of mind and their cultural
context; the same action will have a different significance in two dif-
ferent contexts. Although an overall appraisal of the thick/thin dis-
tinction would be a distraction here, there is something useful that can
be retained and used in my discussion.4 In what follows, I will rely on
a version of the thick/thin distinction that applies only to the relative

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richness of an agents’ psychology presupposed as a basis for social

explanation or the explanation or behavior.
Work in cognitive psychology and sociology of science, respec-
tively, presents a range of concepts of agents’ underlying attempts to
account for a wide range of human behavior. These concepts of agents
can be compared by appealing to the modified thick/thin distinction
presented above. Let us first look at two examples from cognitive
psychology.
At first glance, the concept of agents in cognitive psychology seems
to be a thin conception, but there are several reasons to reject this
assessment. First, many cognitive psychologists and their philosopher
advocates are champions of folk psychology as a central resource for
explaining human behavior. This is the rich resource of terms and
generalizations about mental phenomena that all adult humans alleg-
edly have at their disposal. Many cognitive psychologists believe that
folk psychology is an internal theory that all humans share, constitut-
ing our theory of mind. Much experimental psychology, for example,
developmental cognitive psychology (see, e.g., Gopnik and Welman
1992), consists in an attempt to establish the presence of this rich cog-
nitive structure. Given that many explanations of behavior in cogni-
tive psychology rely on this rich inner structure, cognitive psycholo-
gists have a thick conception of agency.
A second indication that cognitive psychologists present a thick
conception of agency comes from the work of Tversky and Kahneman
(e.g., Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky 1982) and their followers who
have presented a range of criticisms of rational choice conceptions of
human agents. These researchers do not merely attempt to establish
that the agents of rational choice theory constitute problematic ideal-
izations; they argue that these agents are not empirically viable at all.
At least some of this experimental work is familiar to most social sci-
entists and philosophers by now. One of Tversky and Kahneman’s
contentions is that humans do not reason according to the rules of
probability and decision theory. As the conception of agency in much
economics and political science is based on this presupposition about
reasoning, these experimental results imply that economics based on
this concept of agents is not empirically viable.5 As a result of this and
other experimental work, Tversky and Kahneman introduce agents
who are more psychologically rich; their reason can be biased, and
rather than being guided by rational choice theory, it is often guided

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230 PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES / June 2001

by heuristics. Here again we see that cognitive psychologists do not

have a straightforward thin conception of agents.
Sociologists of science present yet more conceptions of agents. On
the face of it we might expect sociologists of science to have a thick
conception of agents, as much of the theory in sociology of science
derives from ethnography. But there are several different concepts of
agent identifiable in the sociology of science literature. First, David
Bloor (e.g., 1991), who has been accused by at least one philosopher
(Slezak 1989) of being a behaviorist and seemed happy to agree, has a
much thicker conception of agent than this charge would indicate. As
Chris McClellan (1996, 195) has recently pointed out, Bloor’s interest
theory relies on a notion of personal motivation. An appeal to per-
sonal motivation to explain behavior invokes intentions and a more
elaborate psychological characterization of agency than behaviorism
or rational choice theory provides.6
Callon and Latour’s actor network theory (Latour 1987) presents
what appears to be one of the thinnest conception of agents. At some
points in Latour’s work it appears that agents are metaphysically sub-
ordinate to associations or to the network in which they exist. But as
McClellan (1996) points out, actants, the agents of actor network the-
ory, can also be construed as intentional: they seek power or domin-
ion. In a more minimal construal, they seek allies. Whatever particu-
lar actor network theorist we look at, the conception of agent is thin.
Given my focus on the psychological components of agents, I would
argue the actor network theorists’ concept is thinner than that of ratio-
nal choice theory due to the deliberate lack of attention to filling out
the structure of agents’ intentional states or preferences.
Concepts of agents developed by sociologists of science have
arisen in the context of confronting the special difficulties of account-
ing for the social aspects of scientific practice.7 Rather than develop-
ing yet another conception of an agent, Kitcher and Goldman borrow
from an established social science to deal with these same special dif-
ficulties. Their concept of an agent comes from neoclassical microeco-
nomics. Their view is that the phenomena that arise from the social
features of science can be adequately accounted for by an adapted
version of microeconomics. What I want to show is that special prob-
lems arise directly from their concept of agents. In the next section, I
focus on an inconsistency in both Goldman’s and Kitcher’s concepts
of agents.

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3. MIXED AGENTS IN GOLDMAN AND KITCHER

When Kitcher turns to issues of the community structure of sci-

ence, he says that he employs “an analytic idiom inspired by Bayesian
decision theory, micro-economics, and population biology” (1993,
305). While introducing his approach to truth acquisition, Goldman
(1992, 227), with Shaked, says,

We wish to extend the economic paradigm to certain problems in epis-

temology and the philosophy of science. Scientific agents, and schol-
arly inquirers generally, act in some ways like vendors, trying to “sell”
their findings, theories, analyses, or arguments to an audience of per-
spective “buyers.”

Both authors qualify these claims at various points in their texts by

saying that the comparison between science and the market may not
be completely accurate and there may be differences between science
and economic exchange. Yet, despite these qualifications, both authors
claim that the economic approach will tell us something important
about the issues under investigation and, even more strongly, that it is
the best way to find out about these issues. It may well be the case that
an economic approach to science will prove the most fruitful, but I
sympathize with critics such as Sent (1996) and Mirowski (1996) who
do not believe that the particular economic approaches Goldman and
Kitcher use will do the trick. However, here I am worried about a dif-
ferent issue: both Goldman and Kitcher have a kind of methodologi-
cal double vision when it comes to conceptions of agents.
Goldman’s and Kitcher’s concept of an agent is taken in large part
from microeconomics. On this view, agents are intentional, and their
decisions are guided by principles of probability and decision theory.
Both philosophers base their concept of agent on Bayesian decision
theory. Goldman, for example, says that agents estimate posterior
probabilities by applying Bayes theorem (1992, 235). This is consistent
with the standard thin conception of agency taken from Elster above.
But this thin characterization is inconsistent with the results of Tversky-
Kahneman–type experiments in cognitive psychology. Interestingly,
Goldman and Kitcher are two of the most prominent philosophers to
draw our attention to the relevance of these results for philosophy of
science and epistemology. Furthermore, Kitcher (1993, 66) cites Goldman
as one of the main philosophical sources for discussion of the inappli-
cability of Bayesianism in epistemology.

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232 PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES / June 2001

This inconsistency has not gone unnoticed. For example, Mirowski

(1996, 165) says that “Kitcher’s own citation of the experimental tradi-
tion within cognitive science, such as the Tversky-Kahneman results
on biases and probability estimates, should have served notice that
his own Bayesian approach had little or no ‘naturalistic’ basis.” And
Sent says that

Goldman’s use of Bayesian updating is inconsistent with his view of

individual epistemics. In his work on individual epistemics, Goldman
argues that probabilities are not very important for epistemics and
severely criticizes the notion that people conform their beliefs to the
probability calculus. (1996, 6)

I want to argue that the source of these inconsistencies is in the lack of

a consistent concept of agent. Goldman and Kitcher multiply con-
cepts of agents to respond to what appear to be different problems.
In the chapter on scientific change at the micro level in The Advance-
ment of Science, Kitcher (1993, 58-89) has us envision scientists who
have all kinds of cognitive structures. Our theories about these richly
conceived agents come from cognitive psychology. Not only do scien-
tists, on this view, have rich cognitive structures, they also have wide-
ranging cognitive goals; their intentions are multifaceted. Goldman
(1986) dedicates the second half to Epistemology and Cognition to a sur-
vey of cognitive science’s results that are relevant to reconceiving
epistemology. Goldman’s agents here are endowed with all of the
internal cognitive complexity that cognitive science reveals. The incon-
sistency about agents should now be apparent: the thin conception
from economics seems at odds with the thick conception from cogni-
tive science. But does this pose a problem?
One response that I can envisage Kitcher making is that the incon-
sistency is not a problem because we are dealing with a special case of
idealization: the rational choice theory agent is an idealization of the
cognitive psychology agent. In the natural sciences, for example, we
may use different levels of idealization in our models for dealing with
different kinds of situations. For example, some problems in mechan-
ics may be solved by resorting to point masses and clauses about
frictionless planes whereas similar problems in mechanical engineer-
ing may add in coefficients of friction. I have two replies to this kind of
response. First, it is a good one only if we know that the different ide-
alizations are in some sense consistent or coherently incremental.
Adding in coefficients of friction unproblematically refines our ideal-

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ized model from mechanics to apply it to a real-world situation. But in

the case of studying individuals and their behavior, the implication of
the Tversky-Kahneman results is not that the rational choice model of
an agent is on a continuum with cognitive science models, it is that the
rational choice model is empirically false in all situations. We should
confront the possibility that one or other of these models should be
adopted but not both. Now as I indicated in section 2, there is some
debate over the upshot of work such as Tversky and Kahneman’s, but
if they have mounted a successful empirical challenge to the rational
choice theorists’ conception of agents, more needs to be said than
maintaining that the rational choice theorists’ conception is an ideal-
ization.8 There are numerous empirically false theories used in attempts
to explain human behavior that we will not defend on the ground that
they are idealizations of one kind or another. We do not resort to Ptole-
maic models to solve some problems of astronomy and Newtonian
models to solve others, as the Ptolemaic model is considered empiri-
cally false.
Second, there is a sense in which both the cognitive science model
of an agent and the rational choice model are invoked to solve exactly
the same problems. The models are more properly viewed as compet-
ing in the sense that two rival scientific theories compete. The relevant
problems are the rationality of science, scientific progress, the nature
of scientific change, and so on. Different approaches have been taken
to these problems depending on which overall methodological approach
is favored: a methodological individualist or cognitive individualist
(Downes 1993) approach or a social holist or relationist approach. The
concepts of agent introduced relate to the larger theoretical frame-
work. So, thin, rational choice agents go along with a methodological
individualist explanatory strategy (cf. Little 1991). The problem for
Kitcher and Goldman would be to spell out whether a psychologi-
cally thicker agent could be introduced into the methodological indi-
vidualist explanatory framework and if so, how.
Integrating the richer conception of agency with individualism is
not in itself the problem. After all, cognitive scientists see themselves
as contributing to social science as a whole, and most are methodolog-
ical individualists of one sort or another. The problem is that radically
different implications arise from attempts to produce an account of
social phenomena based upon each of the different conceptions of
agents.

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4. THE PERILS OF IDEAL RATIONALITY

One of the empirical advantages of Goldman’s and Kitcher’s cog-

nitive science derived agents is that, like all of us, they are fallible.
They have certain cognitive structures, but these by no means guaran-
tee their epistemic success. In contrast, an agent construed in the
terms of economics is constitutively rational. This situation also
seems to pose a problem for Kitcher and Goldman as one of the aims
of philosophy of science is to ascertain the reasons for the success of
science. If the individual scientists are construed as being fallible in all
sorts of normal human ways, the problems of accounting for the suc-
cess of science are different than if individual scientists are construed
as ideally rational agents.
Miriam Solomon (1992) has taken up the challenge of accounting
for social phenomena while holding the relevantly thick conception
of agency. She argues that the best explanation of scientific change will
be in terms of scientists as biased agents in Tversky and Kahneman’s
sense of cognitive bias. In other words, she sides with one of the two
views I have saddled Goldman and Kitcher with. Solomon further
develops and refines points introduced in Giere’s (1988) discussion of
scientists as cognitive agents with diverse interests. Solomon (1994)
admits to the complexity that will arise from retaining a consistent
and rich notion of agents when accounting for scientists’ social inter-
actions, but this does not lead her to introduce a new set of idealiza-
tions into her model. The important issue for the discussion here is
that Solomon recognizes that normative questions about how scien-
tists get things right and how science progresses clearly arise. Her
answers to such questions do not explicitly invoke a previously estab-
lished notion of rationality. Part of what she takes herself to be investi-
gating is the very issue of rationality.
Questions about rationality framed as empirical questions about
individual agents’ capacities only arise once one adopts a naturalist
approach to the study of science. Previous approaches in philosophy
of science provided a purely normative account of scientific rational-
ity. This approach was not constrained by any empirical data about
how humans reason in practice. Contemporary Bayesians (e.g., Howson
and Urbach 1989) also take this approach. Their response to Tversky-
Kahneman results is to proclaim no interest in how people actually
reason; rather they argue that they are proposing a theory of what
rationality is (1989, 294-95). The problem naturalists face is the one

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presented in my discussion of Solomon: can we derive an account of

rationality that is consistent with empirical information about humans’
actual cognitive capacities? The further problem is whether a claim
can be made about the rationality of science that is consistent with the
fact that successful individual scientists may not always generate
conclusions in accordance with established rules of deductive or
inductive inference.
Now the problem that arises from Goldman’s and Kitcher’s incon-
sistent models of agents should be sharply apparent. They both take
seriously people’s practical shortfalls in reasoning in their cognitive
science derived models of agents but not in their economic models.
Their choice of a model of agent limits their ability to answer ques-
tions about the rationality of science viewed as a process involving
individuals, with all their peculiar limitations, interacting in various
ways. The specific problem is that both Goldman and Kitcher rely on
the model of agents derived from economics when turning to ques-
tions in social epistemology. So when the issue is what an individual
scientist can know, individual agents are construed using resources
from cognitive science, and when the issue is how a group of individ-
uals can produce successful science, the individual agents are con-
strued using resources from economics.
Goldman’s and Kitcher’s turn to a social epistemology can be
viewed as an attempt to address difficulties faced by naturalist philos-
ophers of science confronting traditional epistemological problems
about science. Perhaps the main problem they confront is caused by
their view that social epistemology is separate in focus and methodol-
ogy from individual epistemology. I hope to have shown that these
problems can be productively brought into perspective by focusing
on the various conceptions of agents at play.

CONCLUSION

What my discussion points toward is an investigation of the use of

more complex concepts of agents (thicker agents perhaps) in models
or explanations of social phenomena, including scientific practice.
Examining science will involve modeling multi-agent interactions,
and such interactions will only be modeled empirically adequately if
we productively confront some of the problems I have outlined above
via my focus on concepts of agents. There is no reason why Goldman

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236 PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES / June 2001

and Kitcher shouldn’t agree on the goal I have outlined. But currently
on my analysis their acceptance of the two inconsistent conceptions of
agents blocks the move toward this goal.

NOTES

1. This distinction between economics of science and economics of scientific knowl-

edge was first introduced by Wade Hands (1994).
2. This statement requires some clarification. I am not denying that philosophers
were interested in agency during the heyday of logical empiricism. What is at issue here
is that such discussions of agency were not brought to bear directly in the study of sci-
ence. If one’s central concern is the elaboration of norms of reasoning for science in gen-
eral, it is not clear that one’s focus is the individual scientist as a cognitive agent. There
is much more that could be said here on the topic of logical empiricist’s units of analysis
in science, but this is not the appropriate place.
3. See also Downes (1993).
4. Ted Morris, Paul Roth, and Nick White all contributed to this discussion of thick
and thin agency. Paul Roth pressed the point that Geertz’s (1971) view emphasizes con-
text. Pursuing the thick/thin agency distinction further would take another article.
5. There is much debate among economists on this point (see, e.g., Journal of Business
1986, Special Edition on Rationality in Economics). Some argue that the Tversky-
Kahneman results can be accommodated within traditional neoclassical models, and
others argue that the results call for a wholesale reassessment of economic methodol-
ogy. The issue is further complicated by the fact that critics in the cognitive science com-
munity accuse Tversky and Kahneman of having too thin a conception of agents, too
close to the rational choice model. A more detailed assessment of the relation between
this debate in economics and the issues discussed here is beyond the scope of this
article.
6. It is worth noting in passing that behaviorism and rational choice theory are at
odds here. McClellan lumps together behaviorism and rational choice models on the
grounds that they are externalist (1996, 200), but behaviorism removes even intentions
from agents. Intentions cannot be countenanced by behaviorists on the grounds that
they are mental states. Agents are intentional according to rational choice theorists.
7. Randal Collins, in a paper presented to the Social Studies of Science meetings in
New Orleans 1994, argued otherwise. He believes that science studies have added
nothing to sociological theory, whether about agents or anything else.
8. Another version of the response I envisage Kitcher making is to develop a
detailed conception of the stages on the continuum between the rational choice theory
agent and the Tversky-Kahneman agent. As yet, this response has not been spelled out,
but there are indications in the economics literature that this strategy will not work (see,
e.g., articles in Journal of Business 1986).

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Stephen M. Downes is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Utah.

Some of his recent work has appeared in Philosophy of Science and Biology and Philos-
ophy. His current research interests include relations between biology and psychology.

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