Abstract

Some philosophers and economists have taken the position that the role played by intentional phenomena in economics represents a clear and important difference between economics and natural sciences such as chemistry or physics. Others have disagreed. This dissertation examines the use of intensional language in neoclassical economic theory, and particularly as it appears in utility theory and the theory of the consumer. It is found that the intensional language used in economics appears not to be reducible to, or eliminable in favor of, non-intensional language. This, in turn, indicates that economic theory requires an ontology that includes intentional entities. ;The latter portions of the dissertation are devoted to a comparison of certain aspects of mainstream neoclassical economic theory and a strand of neoclassicism known as "Austrian" economics. Unlike mainstream neoclassical theory, Austrian economics emphasizes the intentional character of many of the phenomena with which economists are concerned. ;The purpose of the comparison is to determine whether different attitudes about the significance of intentional phenomena exert any influence at the level of economic theory. It is found that Austrian theory differs in important ways from mainstream economic theory and that these differences are in large part attributable to the relatively greater attention paid by Austrians to intentionality