Addiction as Consumer Choice by Foxall Gordon;

Author:Foxall, Gordon; [Gordon R. Foxall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781134472314
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

C and D represent precisely the kind of deviation from a pattern of behavior to which some behaviorists refer as deciding to switch to a new pattern of behavior. Such a change may be explained only in intentional language.

Behavioral continuity and discontinuity

Specifically, the aim is to explain the discontinuity in the addict’s pattern of behavior when he or she (1) shifts from, say, substance abuse to abstinence, or (2) continues to pursue addictive behavior, even though its consequences are manifestly increasingly deleterious. In (1), addiction–abstinence discontinuity, there is a switch in behavior that cannot be attributed to the pattern of reinforcement that previously maintained behavior. The contingencies of reinforcement have not changed – they have not had time to do so. So why does the individual embark upon a new pattern of behavior? In (2), addiction–aversion continuity, there is a valuation of the object of addiction that is at variance with the facts of reinforcement. The contingencies change – gradually the consequences of behavior are becoming more aversive – yet the behavior is not punished.

How are we to explain these behaviors? One possibility is that in (1) there may be changes in neural activity: the impulsive system becomes relatively hypoactive, the PFC relatively hyperactive. This is at the heart of the CNDS model but this could also be as much the result of behavior change as a cause of it: at best we have correlative evidence. This is the impetus for an intentional interpretation. In (2) the aversive consequence serves to maintain and even increase the behavior that produces it. The only way to account for this is in terms of increasing incentive salience, progressively greater wanting and less liking. This is of course an intentional account.

A person is never presented with the stark choice between another drink now and a long life to come (or other actual benefits of abstinence), as though they were presently available alternatives, either of which could be chosen at once rather than the other. One of them – the benefits of abstinence – can be nothing other than a mental representation at the moment of decision. The whole discussion of this state of affairs is necessarily intentional.

One way of thinking of value is in terms of revealed preference: the consumer values the choices that are represented by his or her behavior and the value may be computed in terms of the opportunity cost of the enacted behavior. But from his or her point of view, that opportunity cost is a mental representation, a property of another mental representation, namely the alternative behavior he or she could have enacted. Economic valuing at the point of decision is always about something that may only be described as an intentional object. The valuing exists in thought and this thought is about something that does not yet exist and of which the consumer may have no reinforcement history. Although this mental valuation may not be identical to the one revealed in my actual behavioral preferences, at the time he or she is deciding it is a component of his or her decision processes.

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