Contextual Psychology (2): Super-Personal Cognitive Psychology

Theories that deal only in identifying the necessary intentional idioms to explain behavior, such as the Bolles–Bindra–Toates expectancy theory (Exhibit 2.2), function at the level of intentional behaviorism. They are competence models and as such seek semantic understanding. Super-personal cognitive psychology, like Dennett’s sub-personal cognitive psychology, seeks to uncover the syntax of the brain, but in contrast to Dennett, by relating environment–behavior consistencies to physiological structures and functions. It is more extensive than Dennett’s sub-personal cognitive psychology which validates its intentional interpretation on the basis of the findings of neuroscience. Super-personal cognitive psychology is, like intentional behaviorism, involved in the ascription of content not only basis of neuropsychology but, initially at least, turns to molar patterns of behavior to make such attributions. To the extent that sub-personal psychology takes behavior into consideration, it is in far more ad hoc a manner than that required of a fully extensional behavioral science that relates patterns of behavior to sequences of environmental consequences. Super-personal cognitive psychology thus attempts to provide a more comprehensive account of behavior in which the ascription of intentionality and cognitive functioning takes place only at the personal level but on the basis of additional sources of extensional information.