Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-w7rtg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-06T23:59:23.701Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Open Empirical and Methodological Issues in the Individualism-Holism Debate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Abstract

I first briefly argue that some issues in the individualism-holism debate have been fairly clearly settled and others are still plagued by unclarity. The main argument of the article is that there is a set of clear empirical issues around the holism-individualism debate that are central problems in current social science research. Those include questions about when we can be holist and how individualist we can be in social explanation.

Type
Biology
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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

Binmore, Ken. 2007. Does Game Theory Work? The Bargaining Challenge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/2478.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowles, Sam. 2006. Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions, and Evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cronbach, Lawrence, and Meehl, Paul. 1955. “Construct Validity in Psychological Tests.” Psychological Bulletin 52:281302.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Demeulenaere, Pierre. 2013. Analytical Narratives and Social Mechanisms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Domhoff, William. 2013. Who Rules America? New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Elster, Jon. 1983. Explaining Technical Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fodor, Jerry. 1974. “Special Sciences; or, The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis.” Synthese 28:97115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilens, Martin. 2012. Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gode, Dhananjay, and Sunde, Shyam. 1993. “Allocative Efficiency of Markets with Zero-Intelligence Traders: Market as a Partial Substitute for Individual Rationality.” Journal of Political Economy 101 (1): 119–37.10.1086/261868CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hannan, Michael, and Freeman, Michael. 1989. Organizational Ecology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hellman, Geoffrey, and Thompson, F. W.. 1976. “Physicalism: Ontology, Determination, and Reduction.” Journal of Philosophy 72:551–64.Google Scholar
Kincaid, Harold. 1996. The Philosophical Foundations of the Social Sciences: Analyzing Controversies in Social Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kincaid, Harold 1997. “Individualism and the Unity of Science: Essays on Reduction, Explanation, and the Special Sciences.” Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Kincaid, Harold 2004. “Methodological Individualism and Economics.” In The Elgar Companion to Economics and Philosophy, ed. Marciano, Alain, Davis, John B., and Runde, Jochen, 299314. Cheltenham: Elgar.Google Scholar
Alain Marciano, John B. Davis, and Runde, Jochen 2012. “Mechanisms, Causal Modeling, and the Limitations of Traditional Multiple Regression.” In Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, ed. Kincaid, Harold, 4664. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kincaid, Harold 2014. “Deadends and Live Issues in the Individualism–Holism Debate.” In Zahle and Collin 2014.10.1007/978-3-319-05344-8_8CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirman, Alan. 1992. “Whom or What Does the Representative Individual Represent?Journal of Economic Perspectives 6:117–36.10.1257/jep.6.2.117CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Putnam, H. 1981. Reason, Truth, and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511625398CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruscio, John, Haslam, Nicholas, and Ruscio, Anne. 2006. Introduction to the Taxometric Method: A Practical Guide. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Shipley, Bill. 2009. “Confirmatory Path Analysis in a Generalized Multilevel Context.” Ecology 90 (2): 363–68.10.1890/08-1034.1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Vernon. 2008. Rationality in Economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zahle, Julie. 2007. “Holism and Supervenience.” In Handbook of Philosophy of Science: Philosophy of Anthropology and Sociology, ed. Turner, S. and Risjord, M., 311–43. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Zahle, Julie, and Collin, Finn, eds. 2014. Rethinking the Individualism–Holism Debate: Essays in the Philosophy of Social Science. Dordrecht: Springer.10.1007/978-3-319-05344-8CrossRefGoogle Scholar