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Unconscious goals: Specific or unspecific? The potential harm of the goal/gene analogy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2014

Bence Nanay
Bence Nanay*
Affiliation:
Centre for Philosophical Psychology, University of Antwerp, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium. [email protected] or [email protected]://webh01.ua.ac.be/bence.nanay Peterhouse, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1RD, United Kingdom
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Abstract

Huang & Bargh's (H&B's) definition of goals is ambiguous between “specific goals” – the end-state of a token action I am about to perform – and “unspecific goals” – the end-state of an action-type (without specifying how this would be achieved). The analogy with selfish genes pushes the authors towards the former interpretation, but the latter would provide a more robust theoretical framework.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , April 2014 , pp. 152 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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