ABSTRACT
Normally, brains are treated as a "black box" which social scientists need not open. Minds are considered differently: something important, but better left stylized in mathematical models of rational choice that are used to make derivations and predictions, or simply treated in common sense terms - either the terms of the people being studied or those of the academic interpreter. Social science is divided between quantitative research and "interpretation". Quantitative social science reflects the legacy of a particular response to the problem of mind: behaviorism. Behaviorism treated the mind as a black box, rejected the language of intention, belief, and so forth, and argued that externally observable, operationalizable measures, together with causal analysis, provided the only properly scientific way forward in psychology. The more conventional approach to the problem of the conditions of social interaction has involved notions like frames and habitus, which are extensions of ordinary language.
