Peter G. Stillmann wrote: > when a country goes to war, do we still conceptualize it > as individuals acting, or is that a case when countries > act? When an individual goes to war, do we still conceptualize it as cells acting, or is it a case when individuals act? Despite an abortive mid-century attraction to behaviorism, economists remain oddly comfortable implying that individual action is somehow decoupled from the laws of the physical universe. Almost surely someone who never read Freud *and* never interacted with artificial intelligence *and* was never chased by a mosquito will now be tempted to object that for there to be action there must be (not that we could ever observe it!) a consciousness holding an intention to act. I hope his/her action will be (unobserved) resistance of this impulse, despite the identification problem this creates. We talk of action when we find it useful. We find it useful when such talk helps us anticipate/understand outcomes. Cheers, Alan Isaac