Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T03:43:32.471Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Methodological Individualism, Psychological Individualism and the Defense of Reason

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Richard Schmitt
Richard Schmitt*
Affiliation:
Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, U.S.A.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Jon Elster believes that methodological individualism is self-evident (Elster 1986, 66). Not finding it so, and being suspicious of philosophers who claim that their views are so obvious as to demand no arguments in their favor, I went back to retrace the outlines of the methodological individualism debate. It turns out that the participants to the debate disagree widely as to what they are arguing about; it is not obvious to them what methodological individualism is. The defenders of methodological individualism agree with their critics much more than those critics acknowledge. Each side ascribes views to the other which its proponents disown explicitly.

Type
II Methodology and Microfoundations
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 15: Analyzing Marxism , 1989 , pp. 231 - 253
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Brodbeck, M., ‘Methodological Individualisms: Definition and Reduction,’ in Brodbeck, M., ed., Readings in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (London: Macmillan 1968) 269-303.Google Scholar
Chodorow, N., ‘Family Structure and Feminine Personality,’ in Rosaldo, M.Z. and Lamphere, L., eds., Women, Culture and Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1974) 43-66.Google Scholar
Chodorow, N., The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley: University of California Press 1978).Google Scholar
Chodorow, N., ‘Towards a Relational Individualism: The Mediation of Self Through Psychoanalysis,’ in Heller, T.C.et al., eds., Reconstructing individualism (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1986) 197-207.Google Scholar
Danto, A., Narration and Knowledge (New York: Columbia University Press 1985).Google Scholar
Dilman, Ilham, Love and Human Separateness (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1987).Google Scholar
Elster, J., Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985).Google Scholar
Elster, J., ‘Reply to Comments,’ Inquiry 29 (1986) 65-77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fetzer, J.H., ‘Methodological Individualism: Singular Causal Systems and their Population Characterstics,’ Synthèse 68 (1986) 99-128.Google Scholar
Gellner, E., ‘Explanations in History,’ in Brodbeck, M., ed., Readings in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (London: Macmillan 1968) 234-68.Google Scholar
Gilligan, C., ‘Woman’s Place in Man’s Life Cycle,’ Harvard Educational Review 49 (1979) 431-46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilligan, C., In a Different Voice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1982).Google Scholar
Gilligan, C., ‘Remapping the Moral Domain: New Images of the Self in Relationship,’ in Heller, T.C.et al., eds., Reconstructing individualism (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1986) 237-52.Google Scholar
Goldstein, L.J., ‘The Inadequacy of the Principle of Methodological Individualism,’ The Journal of Philosophy 53 (1956) 801-13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harding, S., “The Curious Coincidence of Feminine and African Moralities: Challenges for Feminist Theory,’ in Kittay, Eva Feder and Meyers, Diana T., eds., Women and Moral Theory (Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield 1987) 296-316.Google Scholar
Hayek, F.A., Individualism and the Social Order (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1948).Google Scholar
Hayek, F.A., The Counterrevolution of Science (Glencoe: The Free Press 1952).Google Scholar
Keller, Catherine, From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism and Self (Boston: Beacon Press 1986).Google Scholar
Kincaid, H., ‘Reduction, Explanation and Individualism,’ Philosophy of Science 53 (1986) 492-513.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levine, A., Sober, E. and Wright, E.O., ‘Marxism and Methodological Individualism’ New Left Review 162 (1987) 67-84.Google Scholar
Locke, J., The Second Treatise on Government (New York: Liberal Arts Press 1952).Google Scholar
Lukes, S., ‘Methodological Individualism Reconsidered,’ in Essays in Social Theory (New York: Columbia University Press 1977) 177-86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Machlup, F., ‘Schumpeter’s Economic Methodology,’ in Harris, S.E., ed., Schumpeter, Social Scientist (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press 1957).Google Scholar
Mandelbaum, M., ‘Societal Facts’, The British Journal of Sociology 6 (1955) 305-17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meikle, S., ‘Making Nonsense of Marx,’ Inquiry 29 (1986) 29-43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, J.B., Towards a New Psychology of Women (Boston: Beacon Press 1976).Google Scholar
Miller, R., ‘Methodological Individualism and Social Explanation,’ Philosophy of Science 45 (1978) 387-414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagel, E., The Structure of Science (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World 1961).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, A., ‘New Individualistic Foundations for Economics,’ Nous 20 (1986) 469-90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Popper, K., The Poverty of Historicism (New York: Harper and Row 1964).Google Scholar
Popper, K., The Open Society and its Enemies Vol. II (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1966).Google Scholar
Rorty, R., Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1982).Google Scholar
Schmitt, R., ‘Autonomy and Alienation,’ Praxis International 8 (1988) 222-36.Google Scholar
Taylor, C., ‘Foucault on Freedom and Truth’ in Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985) 152-84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ware, R., ‘Group Action and Social Ontology,’ Analyse & Kritik 10, 1 (June 1988) 48-70.Google Scholar
Watkins, J.N.W., ‘Historical Explanation in the Social Sciences’ in Brodbeck, M., ed., Readings in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (London: Macmillan 1968) 269-80.Google Scholar
Wood, A., ‘Historical Materialism and Functional Explanation,’ Inquini 29 (1986) 11-27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar