ABSTRACT
This chapter is intended to provide an interdisciplinary approach to some of the many intertangled problems connected with the identification, characterization, understanding and explanation of goal-directed and intentional behavior. The lines of debate cross and re-cross that of any boundary that might be drawn to distinguish scientists from philosophers. A major issue of the earlier seminars, and one that remains on the surface of even much later debate, was whether the choice between teleological and non-teleological forms of explanation for the occurrence of behavior that might in principle be specified in descriptively neutral terms, could be decided on straightforwardly empirical grounds. Inevitably, quite a large part of the seminar discussions between partners coming from such different disciplines was devoted simply to explaining ourselves to each other.
