ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a general account of the portfolio model and its implications for intentional analysis, and it shows that there is nothing in that model to justify the paradigmatic status claimed for the model of rational choice. The rational choice model makes a further refinement of the portfolio model, with the assumption that the actor's set of desires has a utilitarian structure. The chapter discusses models of the actor. An actor is a locus of decision and action, where the action is in some sense a consequence of the actor's decisions. Macdonald and Pettit presents portfolio model as if it were the 'every day or orthodox conception of agents'. It is 'something which each of us picks up in developing competence at accounting for actions, both our own and those of other people'. The chapter discusses the behavioural rationality in terms of human actors; analogous issues could be raised regarding the actions of social actors.
