  Results at the action-theoretic level might also prove to be random or uninteresting, from the standpoint of the explanatory variables. Suppose it turns out that the decline in crime can be explained entirely by demographic change. Then it doesn’t really matter what the criminals were thinking – what matters is simply that a certain percentage of any given demographic group has the thoughts that lead to criminal behavior, so fewer of those people translates into less crime. The motives remain inside the “black box” – and while it might to nice to know what those motives are, they may not contribute anything to this particular explanation. In the end, it may turn out that each crime is as unique as the criminal. So while there is a concrete explanation in terms of actual people’s intentional states, there is nothing that can be said at the level of a general “model” of rational action.  (In this context, it is important to remember that methodological individualism in the Weberian sense explains actions in terms of a model of the agent, not the actual motivations of the real people.)