ABSTRACT
Dual process theories posit antithetical, interrelated tendencies: rapid behavioral responding to short-range situations and considered action leading to longer-range outcomes. There is a propensity for such theories to conflate extensional and intentional levels of exposition, employing incompatible modes of discourse in their explanations. They mix concepts from incommensurable levels of exposition, indiscriminately using behavioral, cognitive, and neurophysiological terms to describe decision processes, combining terms from separate methodologies. By contrast, the chapter raises the possibility of a dual process depiction based on the provision of extensional and intentional conceptualizations which maintain the separateness of their explanations. The vehicle is the BPM’s discrete extensional and intentional approaches to the explanation of consumer choice. To facilitate a dual process conception, it is necessary to augment these components with the neurophysiological model to account for biological substrates of the responsive behavior and considered action for which the extensional and intentional models are responsible. The chapter, therefore, examines the proposition that the extensional and intentional models, BPM-E and BPM-I, respectively, form poles of a conceptual dual process depiction, employing BPM-N to critique the antipodality thereby posited.
