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Methodological Individualism and Social Explanation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Richard W. Miller
Richard W. Miller*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Abstract

Past criticisms to the contrary, methodological individualism in the social sciences is neither trivial nor obviously false. In the style of Weber's sociology, it restricts the ultimate explanatory repertoire of social science to agents' reasons for action. Although this restriction is not obviously false, it ought not to be accepted, at present, as a regulative principle. It excludes, as too far-fetched to merit investigation, certain hypotheses concerning the influence of objective interests on large-scale social phenomena. And these hypotheses, in fact, merit empirical consideration. The attractiveness of methodological individualism as a regulative principle depends on two independent confusions, the conflation of an agent's reasons for action with the beliefs, needs, desires, or goals which are the reasons why he acted as he did, and the identification of explaining a phenomenon and describing its causes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , September 1978 , pp. 387 - 414
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1978

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Footnotes

†

I am extremely indebted to an anonymous Philosophy of Science referee for his numerous helpful criticisms. I also benefitted from Robert Stalnaker's comments and advice and from the suggestions of Richard Boyd, Alan Garfinkel, Alan Gilbert and Carl Ginet.

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