Methodological Individualism
First published Thu Feb 3, 2005; substantive revision Tue Nov 16, 2010
This doctrine was introduced as a methodological precept for the social sciences
by Max Weber, most importantly in the first chapter of Economy and Society (1968
[1922]). It amounts to the claim that social phenomena must be explained by
showing how they result from individual actions, which in turn must be explained
through reference to the intentional states that motivate the individual actors. It
involves, in other words, a commitment to the primacy of what Talcott Parsons
would later call “the action frame of reference” (Parsons 1937: 43–51) in social-
scientific explanation. It is also sometimes described as the claim that explanations
of “macro” social phenomena must be supplied with “micro” foundations, ones
that specify an action-theoretic mechanism (Alexander, 1987).
A contrast is often drawn, following J.W.N. Watkins (1952a), between
methodological individualism and methodological holism. This is usually
tendentious, since there are very few social scientists who describe themselves as
methodological holists. There are, however, forms of social-scientific explanation
with more active adherents that methodological individualism precludes or
downgrades. These include, most importantly, functionalism, many types of
sociobiology, “memetics” or evolutionary cultural explanation, psychoanalytic and
“depth hermeneutic” methods, and any form of explanatory generalization
grounded in purely statistical analysis.
Defenders of methodological individualism generally claim that it is an innocent
doctrine, devoid of any political or ideological content. Weber himself cautioned
that “it is a tremendous misunderstanding to think that an
‘individualistic’ method should involve what is in any conceivable sense an
individualistic system of values” (Weber 1968: 18). Nevertheless, the doctrine of
methodological individualism became embroiled in a number of highly politicized
debates during 20th century, largely because it was often invoked as a way of
discrediting historical materialism. There were two distinct rounds of controversy
on this score. The first occurred primarily during ‘50s, in response to the work of
Friedrich von Hayek and Karl Popper. The second round occurred during the
‘80s, in response to Jon Elster, this time as part of critical debates within the
movement known as “analytical Marxism.” During the latter period,
methodological individualism became widely associated with what many called
“rational choice imperialism.”
1. Weber
2. Hayek
3. Popper
4. Elster
5. Others
6. Criticism
o 6.1 Statistical analysis
o 6.2 Subintentional explanations
o 6.3 Fallacies
Bibliography
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Related Entries
1. Weber
The phrase methodische Individualismus was actually coined by Weber's student,
Joseph Schumpeter, in his 1908 work Das Wesen und der Hauptinhalt der
theoretischen Nationalökonomie. The first use of the term “methodological
individualism” in English was again by Schumpeter in his 1909 Quarterly Journal of
Economics paper, “On the Concept of Social Value” (see Udehn 2001, 214).
However, the theoretical elaboration of the doctrine is due to Weber, and
Schumpeter uses the term as a way of referring to the Weberian view.
In Economy and Society, Weber articulates the central precept of methodological
individualism in the following way: When discussing social phenomena, we often
talk about various “social collectivities, such as states, associations, business
corporations, foundations, as if they were individual persons”(Weber 1968, 13).
Thus we talk about them having plans, performing actions, suffering losses, and so
forth. The doctrine of methodological individualism does not take issue with these
ordinary ways of speaking, it merely stipulates that “in sociological work these
collectivities must be treated as solely the resultants and modes of organization of
the particular acts of individual persons, since these alone can be treated as agents
in a course of subjectively understandable action” (Weber 1968, 13).
For Weber, the commitment to methodological individualism is very closely
related to the commitment to verstehende (or interpretive) patterns of explanation
in sociology. The reason for privileging individual action in sociological
explanation is that only action is “subjectively understandable.” Weber reserves
the term “action” to refer to the subset of human behavior that is motivated by
linguistically formulated or “meaningful” mental states. (Generally speaking:
coughing is behavior, apologizing afterwards is action.) Updating the terminology
somewhat, we can say that the defining characteristic of an action is that it is
motivated by a mental state with propositional content, i.e., an intentional state.
The importance of action for Weber is that we have interpretive access to it, by
virtue of our capacity to understand the agent's underlying motive. This permits
the social scientist to “accomplish something which is never attainable in the
natural sciences, namely the subjective understanding of the action of the
component individuals” (Weber 1968, 15). Action-theoretic explanation is
central to social-scientific analysis, therefore, because without
knowing why people do what they do, we do not really understand why any of the
more large-scale phenomena with which they are embroiled occur.
Thus methodological individualism is a slightly misleading term, since the goal is
not to privilege the individual over the collective in social-scientific explanation,
but rather to privilege the action-theoretic level of explanation. This privileging of
the action-theoretic level is methodological because it is imposed by the structure
of interpretive social science, where the goal is to provide an understanding of
social phenomena. Actions can be understood in a way that other social
phenomena cannot, precisely because they are motivated by intentional states.
Yet only individuals possess intentional states, and so the methodological
privileging of actions entails the methodological privileging of individuals. Thus
the “individualism” in methodological individualism is more a byproduct of its
central theoretical commitment than a motivating factor. This is what defenders
to the doctrine have tried to communicate, with greater or lesser degrees of
success, by claiming that it is politically or ideologically neutral.
It is worth emphasizing the difference between methodological individualism, in
Weber's sense, and the older traditions of atomism (or unqualified individualism)
in the social sciences. Many writers claim to find the origins of methodological
individualism amongst economists of the Austrian School (especially Carl
Menger), and doctrines articulated during the Methodenstreit of the 1880s (Udehn
2001). Others trace it back to Thomas Hobbes, and the “resolutive-compositive”
method elaborated in the opening sections of the Leviathan (Lukes 1968, 119). Yet
the distinctive character of this type of atomism was summed up quite clearly by
Hobbes, with his injunction to “consider men as if but even now sprung out of the
earth, and suddainly (like Mushromes) come to full maturity without all kind of
engagement to each other” (1949 [1651], 8:1). The atomistic view is based upon
the suggestion that it is possible to develop a complete characterization of
individual psychology that is fully pre-social, then deduce what will happen when
a group of individuals, so characterized, enter into interaction with one another.
Methodological individualism, on the other hand, does not involve a commitment
to any particular claim about the content of the intentional states that motivate
individuals, and thus remains open to the possibility that human psychology may
have an irreducibly social dimension. Thus one way of accentuating the difference
between atomism and methodological individualism is to note that the former
entails a complete reduction of sociology to psychology, whereas the latter does
not.
Finally, it should be noted that Weber's commitment to methodological
individualism is closely related to his more well-known methodological doctrine,
viz., the theory of ideal types. Historical explanation may make reference to the
actual content of the intentional states that motivated particular historical actors,
but the sociologist is interested in producing much more abstract explanatory
generalizations, and so cannot appeal to the specific motives of particular
individuals. Thus sociological theory must be based upon a model of human action.
And because of the constraints that interpretation imposes, this model must be a
model of rational human action (Weber writes: “it is convenient to treat all
irrational, affectually determined elements of behavior as factors of deviation
from a conceptually pure type of rational action” [1968, 6].)
Thus one of the most important consequences of Weber's methodological
individualism is that it puts rational action theory at the core of social-scientific
inquiry. This is why subsequent generations of social theorists, under Weber's
influence, sought to bring about the methodological unification of the social
sciences by producing what came to be known as a “general theory of action” –
one that would broaden the economic model of action in such a way as to
incorporate the central action-theoretic insights of (primarily) sociologists,
anthropologists, and psychologists. The work of Talcott Parsons in the first half of
the century was the most important in this regard, with the unification movement
reaching its apogee in the collaborative publication in 1951 of Toward a General
Theory of Action, co-edited by Parsons and Edward Shils. Yet shortly thereafter,
partly due to problems with the unification program, Parsons abandoned his
commitment to both methodological individualism and action theory, adopting a
purely systems-theoretic view. This led to an overall lapse in the project of
producing a general theory of action, until it was revitalized in 1981 by the
publication of Jürgen Habermas's The Theory of Communicative Action.
2. Hayek
It has never escaped anyone's attention that the discipline that most clearly
satisfies the strictures of methodological individualism is microeconomics (in the
tradition of neoclassical marginalism), and that homo economicus is the most clearly
articulated model of rational action. Of course, this tradition has not always been
in the ascendancy within the economics profession. In particular, there are many
who have felt that macroeconomics could be a completely self-standing domain of
inquiry (reflected in the fact that the undergraduate economics curriculum is still
often divided into “micro” and “macro.”) There have always been those who
would like to plot the movements of the business cycle, or of the stock market, in
a way that disregards entirely the motives that individual actors may have for
doing what they do. Similarly, many have tried to discover correlations between
macroeconomic variables, such as unemployment and inflation rates, without
feeling the need to speculate as to why a change in one rate might lead to
movement in the other. Thus there has always been a very lively debate within the
economics profession about the value of the “rational actor” model that is at the
heart of general equilibrium theory.
One of the earliest iterations of this debate occurred during the so-
called Methodenstreit between members of the Austrian School in Economics and
the German Historical School. However, members of the “first generation” of the
Austrian School, such as Carl Menger, were atomists (Menger defended his
individualistic method in terms of conceptual gains achieved by “reducing
complicated phenomena to their elements” [Menger 1985 (1883), 93]). It was
only members of the second generation, first and foremost Friedrich von Hayek,
who would explicitly identify themselves with the Weberian doctrine of
methodological individualism and defend it through reference to the demands of
interpretive social science. The key text is Hayek's paper, “Scientism and the
Study of Society,” serialized in Economica (1942–44), and later published as the
first part of The Counter-Revolution of Science (1955).
In Hayek's view, the desire on the part of social scientists to emulate the physical
sciences creates an exaggerated fear of teleological or “purposive” concepts. This
leads many economists to eschew any reference to intentional states and to focus
purely upon statistical correlations between economic variables. The problem
with this focus is that it leaves the economic phenomena unintelligible. Take, for
example, the movement of prices. One might notice a constant correlation
between the date of the first frost and fluctuations in the price of wheat. But we
do not really understand the phenomenon until it has been explained in terms of
the rational actions of economic agents: an early frost reduces yields, leading to
less intense price competition among suppliers, more among consumers, etc.
Thus Hayek insists that, in effect, all macroeconomic analysis is incomplete in the
absence of “micro” foundations.
It is important to note, however, that while Hayek has a model of rational action
as the centerpiece of his view, his is most emphatically not a form of rationalism.
On the contrary, he puts particular emphasis upon the way that various economic
phenomena can emerge as the unintended consequences of rational action. Even
though the outcomes that people achieve may bear no resemblance to the ones
that they intended, it is still important to know what they thought they were doing
when they chose to pursue to course of action that they chose – not least because
it is important to know why they persist in pursuing that course of action, despite
the fact that it is not producing the intended consequences.
Of course, part of Hayek's motivation for endorsing methodological individualism
and demanding that social-scientific explanations specify a mechanism at the
action-theoretic level is that he wants to emphasize the limitations of the
individual's actor's perspective. It's fine to talk about macroeconomic variables
like “the inflation rate,” but it is important to remember that individual actors
(generally speaking) do not respond directly to such indicators. All that they can
see are changes in the immediate prices that they must pay for production inputs
or consumption goods, and this is what they respond to. The large-scale
consequences of the choices they make in response to these changes are largely
unintended, and so any regularity in these consequences constitutes a spontaneous
order. This is a crucial element of Hayek's information-based argument for
capitalism: economic actors do not have access to the same information as
economic theorists, thus it is only when we see the operations of the economy
through their eyes that we can begin to see the advantages of a decentralized
system of coordination like the market.
To illustrate the importance of the individual's perspective, Hayek gives the
example of the process that leads to the development of a path in the woods. One
person works his way through, choosing the route that offers the least local
resistance. His passage reduces, ever so slightly, the resistance offered along that
route to the next person who walks though, who is therefore, in making the same
set of decisions, likely to follow the same route. This increases the chances that
the next person will do so, and so on. Thus the net of effect of all these people
passing through is that they “make a path,” even though no one has the intention
of doing so, and no one even plans out its trajectory. It is a product of
spontaneous order: “Human movements through the district come to conform to
a definite pattern which, although the result of deliberate decisions of many
people, has yet not been consciously designed by anyone” (Hayek 1942, 289).
The problem with ignoring the agent's perspective, in Hayek's view, is that it can
easily lead us to overestimate our powers of rational planning and control, and
thus to fall into “rationalism.” By contrast, the central virtue of methodological
individualism is that it helps us to see the limitations of our own reason (Hayek
1944, 33). Formulating theories that refer directly to the “interest rate,” or
“inflationary pressures,” or “the unemployment rate” can mislead us into thinking
that we can manipulate these variables, and thus intervene successfully in the
economy. We forget that these concepts are abstractions, used not to guide
individual action, but rather to describe the net effect of millions of individual
decisions. The key characteristic of methodological individualism is that it
“systematically starts from the concepts which guide individuals in their actions
and not from the results of their theorizing about their actions” (1942, 286). It
therefore encourages, in Hayek's view, greater modesty with respect to social
planning.
Hayek does not mention methodological individualism after the 1950s. Indeed,
the role that evolutionary explanations come to play in his later work implies a
tacit retraction of his commitment to the doctrine.
3. Popper
For many years, the term methodological individualism was associated primarily
with the work of Karl Popper. This is due to the extensive debate triggered by
Popper's papers, “The Poverty of Historicism” (1944/45), and later his book, The
Open Society and Its Enemies (1945). Popper, however, although making use of the
term, did little to defend his commitment to it. Instead he left this job to his
former student, J.W.N. Watkins. It was this debate between Watkins and his
critics that (perhaps unfairly) solidified the association in many people's minds
between Popper and methodological individualism. (It was also this debate that
brought the doctrine to the widespread attention of philosophers.)
Unfortunately, the version of methodological individualism that Popper
bequeathed to his student Watkins was considerably more difficult to defend than
the one he inherited from Hayek. Since the beginning, the precepts of
methodological individualism were thought to have been imposed by the special
requirements of the social sciences. For both Weber and Hayek, it was the
reflection of a key difference between the Geisteswissenschaften and
the Naturwissenschaften. Popper, however, denies that there are any significant
methodological differences between the two. Indeed, his initial discussion of
methodological individualism in “The Poverty of Historicism,” occurs in a section
called “The Unity of Method,” in which he claims that both are simply in the
business of “causal explanation, prediction and testing.”(1945, 78). He goes on to
deny that “understanding” plays any special role in the social sciences.
The problem that this creates for the doctrine of methodological individualism is
readily apparent. A social science that aims at interpretation, or that uses
interpretation as part of the centerpiece of its explanatory strategy, has a very
clear methodological reason for privileging explanations that refer to individual
actions – since it is precisely the underlying intentional states that serve as the
object of interpretation. But if social scientists are merely in the business of
providing causal explanations, just like natural scientists, then what is the
rationale for privileging individual actions in these explanations? There no longer
appears to be any methodological reason for doing so. Thus critics like Leon
Goldstein (1958), and later Steven Lukes (1968), would argue that
methodological individualism was actually just an oblique way of asserting a
commitment to metaphysical or ontological individualism. In other words,
Popper's “methodological individualism” was actually a claim about what the
world “really” consisted of, little more than a fancy way of saying “there is no such
thing as society.” Watkins went on to reinforce this impression by reformulating
the thesis as the claim that the “ultimate constituents of the social world are
individual people” (1957, 105).
Watkins also provoked doubts about the methodological status of the principle by
distinguishing between “unfinished or half-way explanations” of social
phenomena, which might not specify an action-theoretic or individualistic
mechanism, and so-called “rock-bottom explanations,” which would (1957, 106).
Yet in so doing, he grants that these half-way explanations (the example he gives
is the relationship between inflation and the unemployment rate), while they may
not tell us everything we would like to know, need not be meaningless or false.
This creates problems, as Lars Udehn points out, since the mere fact that
one can explain social phenomena in terms of individuals “does not imply the
methodological rule that they should be explained this way” (2001, 216) –
especially not if the “half-way” knowledge obtained is sufficient for our (extra-
scientific) purposes.
Finally, it should be noted that Popper introduced a contrast between
methodological individualism and “psychologism,” viz., the view that “all laws of
social life must be ultimately reducible to the psychological laws of ‘human
nature’”(1945, 89). Nevertheless, in Popper's formulation, methodological
individualism does appear equivalent to at least some form of psychological
reductionism. At very least, his formulation – and later Watkins's – left many
commentators confused about how one could affirm the former without
committing to the latter (Udehn 2001, 204).
4. Elster
For both Hayek and Popper, the primary motivation for respecting the precepts
of methodological individualism was to avoid “grand theory” in the style of
Auguste Comte, G.W.F. Hegel and Karl Marx. Yet the motivation for avoiding
this sort of grand theory was not so much that it promoted bad theory, but that it
promoted habits of mind, such as “collectivism,” “rationalism,” or “historicism,”
that were thought to be conducive to totalitarianism. Thus the sins of
“collectivism,” and “collectivist” thought patterns, for both Hayek and Popper,
were primarily political. Yet as time wore on, and the dangers of creeping
totalitarianism in Western societies became increasingly remote, the fear of
collectivism that underlay the debates over methodological individualism became
increasingly attenuated.
Thus the concern over methodological individualism began to fade away, and
might have disappeared completely had it not been for the sudden explosion of
interest in game theory (or “rational choice theory”) among social scientists in the
1980s. The reason for this can be summed up in two words (and an article): the
prisoner's dilemma. Social scientists had always been aware that individuals in
groups are capable of getting stuck in patterns of collectively self-defeating
behavior. Paul Samuelson's “The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure” (1954),
Garrett Hardin's “The Tragedy of the Commons,” (1968), and Mancur
Olson's The Logic of Collective Action (1965), had all provided very clear examples
of cases where the mere existence of a common interest among individuals
nevertheless failed to provide them with an incentive to perform the actions
necessary to realize that interest. What the story of the prisoner's dilemma – and
more importantly, the accompanying game matrix – provided was a simple yet
powerful model that could be used to represent the structure of all these
interactions (see R. Hardin 1982).
This in turn gave renewed impetus to methodological individualism, because it
allowed theorists to diagnose with unparalleled precision the errors that social
theorists could be (and often were) led into if they ignored the action-theoretic
level of analysis. Methodological individualism became important, not as a way of
avoiding the political thought-crime of “collectivism,” but rather as a way of
avoiding demonstrably fallacious inferences about the dynamics of collective
action. For example, the traditional “interest group” theory of democratic politics
generally presupposes that groups who share a common interest also have an
incentive to promote that interest, by lobbying politicians, funding research, and
so on. Olson's major contribution was to have driven home the point that the
existence of such a common interest just as often generates a free-rider incentive.
Individuals would benefit from acting to promote that interest, but they would
benefit even more by sitting back while the other members of the group acted to
promote it. As a result, no one may act to promote it. However, Olson confined
this observation to large groups. The prisoner's dilemma, on the other hand,
demonstrated the ubiquity of this incentive structure.
Jon Elster's contribution to the history of methodological individualism must be
understood against this background. He presents the doctrine as part of a friendly
yet trenchant critique of the use of functionalist explanations in the Marxist
tradition; particularly those that seek to explain events as ones that “serve the
interests of capital.” The problem with these explanations, Elster argues, is that
they “postulate a purpose without a purposive actor” (1982, 452), and therefore (he
claims) entail a commitment to some form of objective teleology. In itself, there
is very little new in this criticism. As G.A. Cohen argued, in his response to
Elster, there is no reason that the Marxian functionalist cannot provide
“elaborations” (Cohen 1982, 131) of these explanations, ones that specify how the
benefit produced evokes the phenomenon, without reference to any objective
teleology. This could be done either by appealing to an intentional mechanism at
the action-theoretic level or else a Darwinian “selection” mechanism (Cohen
1982, 132). In such cases, Elster's critique of functional explanation becomes just
another version of Watkins's demand for “rock-bottom” rather than “half-way”
explanations.
Thus what made Elster's attack so forceful was not the accusation of objective
teleology in Marxist theory, but rather the suggestion that much of Marxian “class
analysis” overlooked the potential for collective action problems among the
various world-historical actors. Consider, for example, the familiar claim that
capitalists retain a “reserve army of the unemployed” in order to depress wages.
This means that individual capitalists must stop hiring new workers at a point
where marginal benefits still exceed the marginal costs. What is their incentive
for doing so? They have an obvious free-rider incentive to keep hiring, since the
benefits stemming from depressed wages would largely be enjoyed by rival firms,
whereas the benefits of further hiring would flow to the bottom line. In other
words, the mere fact that it is in the “interests of capital” to have a reserve army of
the unemployed does not mean that individual capitalists have an incentive to take
the steps necessary to maintain such a reserve army.
An even more disturbing consequence of the “rational choice” perspective is the
observation that the working class faces a major collective action problem when it
comes to carrying out the socialist revolution (Elster 1982, 467). Fomenting
revolution can be dangerous business, and so absent some other incentive (such as
class solidarity), even workers who were convinced that a communist economic
order would offer them a superior quality of life might still fail to show up at the
barricades. Yet these possibilities were largely overlooked, Elster suggests,
because the failure to respect the precepts of methodological individualism, along
with the promiscuous use of functional explanation, had led generations of
Marxian theorists simply to ignore the actual incentives that individuals face in
concrete social interactions.
Beyond the critique of functional explanations, Elster does not advance any
original argument in support of methodological individualism. He does, however,
return to the earlier Weberian formulation of the position, with its emphasis on
intentional action (Elster 1982, 463): “The elementary unit of social life is the
individual human action,” he argues. “To explain social institutions and social
change is to show how they arise as the result of the actions and interaction of
individuals. This view, often referred to as methodological individualism, is in my
view trivially true” (Elster, 1989, 13). Here one must assume that when he says
“trivially true,” he is using the term in the vernacular sense of “platitudinous”
rather than the philosophical sense of “tautologous,” since he goes on to derive a
number of very substantive doctrines from his commitment to methodological
individualism. For example, he goes on to claim at various points that
methodological individualism commits him to psychologistic reductionism with
respect to sociology (although he does not offer an argument for this claim).
Elster does not draw as sharp a distinction as he might have between the
commitment to methodological individualism and the commitment to rational
choice theory. Indeed, he also assumes that the latter flows directly from the
former. The version of rational choice theory that Elster endorses, however, is
one that is based upon a traditional instrumental (or homo economicus) conception
of rationality, according to which “actions are valued and chosen not for
themselves, but as more or less efficient means to the a further end” (Elster 1989,
22). He claims that this conception of rationality is implied by the fact that
decision theorists are able to represent the rational actions of any agent possessing
a well-behaved preference ordering as the maximization of a utility function. Yet
whether utility-maximization implies instrumentalism depends upon the version
of expected utility theory that one subscribes to. So-called “world Bayesian”
versions of decision theory, such as Richard Jeffrey's (1983) do not impose an
instrumental conception of rationality, since they permit agents to have
preferences over their own actions. Thus Elster's move from methodological
individualism to the instrumental conception of rationality is based upon a non
sequitur.
Nevertheless, as a result of Elster's arguments, methodological individualism
became synonymous in many quarters with the commitment to rational choice
theory. Such an equation generally fails to distinguish what were for Weber two
distinct methodological issues: the commitment to providing explanations at an
action-theoretic level, and the specific model of rational action that one proposes
to use at that level (i.e., the ideal type). There are multiple permutations. For
instance, there is no reason that one cannot be a methodological individualist
while choosing to employ Habermas's theory of communicative action rather than
rational choice theory as the model of rational action. In fact, this would make
greater sense, since game theory, strictly construed, has never purported to offer
a general theory of rational action. The Nash solution concept, which provides the
standard definition of a game-theoretic equilibrium, specifically excluded all
forms of communication between the players (and the solution does not work in
cases where communication does intrude [Heath 2001]). Thus much of the furor
over rational choice imperialism has been based upon a failure to appreciate the
limitations of that model (in many cases both by its defenders and its critics).
5. Others
In the philosophy of mind, the phrase “methodological individualism” is
commonly associated with a claim made by Jerry Fodor concerning the
individuation of psychological states (1980, 1987, 42). It is important to
emphasize that Fodor's use of the term has nothing in common with its traditional
use in the philosophy of social science. Fodor introduces it by way of a distinction
between “methodological individualism” and “methodological solipsism.” His goal
is to deal with variations on the twin-earth problem, introduced by Hilary
Putnam. The question is whether an individual with a belief about water on earth,
where water is made up of H2O, has the same belief as an individual with a belief
about water in a parallel universe, where water has the same appearance and
behavior, but happens to be made up of XYZ. The “externalist” is one who says
that they are not the same, whereas an “internalist” like Fodor wants to say that
they are – speaking roughly, that the content of beliefs is determined by what is in
the agent's head, and not what is in the world.
The issue comes down to one concerning the individuation of mental states. How
do we determine what is and is not the “same” belief? Fodor begins by introducing
the constraint that he calls “methodological individualism,” viz., “the doctrine that
psychological states are individuated with respect to their causal powers” (1987, 42).
This implies, among other things, that if one psychological state is incapable of
causing anything different to happen than some other psychological state, then the
two must be the same. “Methodological solipsism” is the stronger claim that
“psychological states are individuated without respect to the semantic evaluations”
(1987, 42). This implies, among other things, that even if one state is “true” in
some context and another is “false,” the two may still turn out to be the same. As
Fodor goes on to point out, the semantic evaluation of a mental state will typically
be relational, e.g. whether certain beliefs about water are true will depend upon
how things happen to stand with water in the world; thus methodological
solipsism has the consequence of precluding one type of relational property from
playing a role in the individuation of mental states. It is therefore “individualistic”
in the everyday sense of the term, since it suggests that what's going on in the
agent's head does most or all of the work in the individuation of mental states.
Methodological individualism, on the other hand, “does not prohibit the relational
individuation of mental states; it just says that no property of mental states,
relational or otherwise, counts taxonomically unless it affects causal
powers”(1987, 42). Thus it is very unclear why Fodor chooses to call this a form
of “individualism,” since these relations could also be relations to other speakers,
and not just the physical word.
There is considerable infelicity in Fodor's choice of terms. He is able to offer a
cogent account of why methodological individualism counts as a methodological
constraint. He argues that the desire to align terminological distinctions with
objects having different causal powers is “one which follows simply from the
scientist's goal of causal explanation and which, therefore, all scientific
taxonomies must obey” (1987, 42). Thus it is a methodological precept.
(Although one can see clearly here the stark contrast between Fodor's use of the
term and that of Weber or Hayek, for whom the ability of the social scientist to
provide something beyond merely causal explanation was what imposed the
methodological commitment to the action-theoretic level of analysis.) It is simply
unclear why Fodor chooses to call it individualism. With methodological
solipsism, on the other hand, one can see why he calls it solipsism, but it is
unclear what makes it methodological. Indeed, Fodor goes on to state that
“solipsism (construed as prohibiting the relational taxonomy of mental states) is
unlike individualism in that it couldn't conceivably follow from any general
considerations about scientific goals and practices. ‘Methodological solipsism’ is,
in fact, an empirical theory about the mind.”(1987, 43). Thus in Fodor's use of
the terms, “methodological individualism” is not really individualistic, and
“methodological solipsism” is not really methodological.
6. Criticism
Much of the critical discussion of methodological individualism in the philosophy
of social science concerns the relationship between what Watkins called “rock-
bottom” explanations and “half-way” ones – or those that do and those that do not
specify an action theoretic mechanism. In general, there is no question that, given
any particular half-way explanation of a social phenomenon, it would always
be nice to know what agents are thinking, when they perform the actions that are
involved in the production of that phenomenon. The question is whether the
explanation is somehow deficient, or unscientific, in the absence of this
information. The answer to that question will depend upon one's broader
commitments concerning the status and role of the social sciences. Nevertheless,
it is worth noting two very common types of social-scientific inquiry that fall
short of providing the sort of rock-bottom explanations that methodological
individualism demands:
6.1 Statistical analysis
Consider the following example of a social-scientific debate: During the 1990s,
there was a precipitous decline in violent crime in the United States. Many social
scientists naturally began to apply themselves to the question of why this had
occurred, i.e., they set out to explain the phenomenon. A number of different
hypotheses were advanced: the hiring of more police, changes in community
policing practices, more severe sentencing guidelines for offenders, decreased
tolerance for minor infractions, an increase in religiosity, a decline in the
popularity of crack, changes in the demographic profile of the population, etc.
Since the decline in crime occurred in many different jurisdictions, each using
some different combination of strategies under different circumstances, it is
possible to build support for different hypotheses through purely statistical
analysis. For example, the idea that policing strategies play an important role is
contradicted by the fact that New York City and San Francisco adopted very
different approaches to policing, and yet experienced a similar decline in the
crime rate. Thus a very sophisticated debate broke out, with different social
scientists producing different data sets, and crunching the numbers in different
ways, in support of their rival hypotheses.
This debate, like almost every debate in criminology, lacks microfoundations. It
would certainly be nice to know what is going through people's mind when they
commit crimes, and thus how likely various measures are to change their
behavior, but the fact is we do not know. Indeed, there is considerable skepticism
among criminologists that a “general theory” of crime is possible. Nevertheless,
we can easily imagine criminologists deciding that one particular factor, such as a
demographic shift in the population (i.e., fewer young men), is the explanation
for the late-20th century decline in violent crime in the United States, and ruling
out the other hypotheses. And even though this may be a “half-way” explanation,
there is no question that it would represent a genuine discovery, one that we
could learn something important from.
Furthermore, it is not obvious that the “rock-bottom” explanation – the one that
satisfies the precepts of methodological individualism – is going to add anything
very interesting to the “half-way” explanation provided by the statistical analysis.
In many cases it will even be derived from it. Suppose that we discovered,
through statistical analysis, that the crime rate varied as a function of the severity
of punishment multiplied by the probability of apprehension. We would then infer
from this that criminals were rational utility-maximizers. On the other hand, if
studies showed that crime rates were completely unaffected by changes in the
severity of punishments or the probability of apprehension, we would infer that
something else must be going on at the action-theoretic level.
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.)
6.2 Subintentional explanations
Consider another social-scientific debate, this time the controversy over the data
showing that stepparents have a far greater propensity to kill very young children
in their care than biological parents. What would be involved in providing a rock-
bottom explanation for this phenomenon, one that satisfied the precepts of
methodological individualism? How informative would this be? It does not take
much effort to imagine what people are thinking, when they shake a baby or hit a
toddler. The motives are all-too familiar – almost everyone experiences episodes
of intense frustration or anger when dealing with children. But that clearly does
not explain the phenomenon. The question is why one group systematically fails
to exercise control over these violent impulses, relative to some other group.
Since very few people do it as part of a well-conceived plan, it is not clear that
there is going to be an explanation available at the level of intentional states, or
even that a complementary account of what is going on at this level will be in the
least bit informative. The problem is that the behavior is generated by biases that
function almost entirely at a subintentional level (Sperber, 1997). This suggests
that an explanation in terms of intentional states is not really “rock bottom,” but
that there are deeper layers to be explored.
It is not difficult to imagine how such an explanation might run. People
experience a reaction to juvenile (or neotenous) characteristics of the young that
is largely involuntary. This reaction is very complex, but one of its central
characteristics is the inhibition of aggression. People are also quite poor at
articulating the basis of this reaction, other than by repeated references to the fact
that the child is “cute.” Of course, the overall strength of this reaction varies from
individual to individual, and the particular strength varies with different children.
Thus it is possible that biological parents simply find their own children “cuter”
than stepparents do, and that this translates into a slightly lower average
propensity to commit acts of aggression against them. Because they are unable to
articulate the basis of this judgment, any analysis at the intentional level will
simply fail to provide much in the way of an explanation for their actions.
Furthermore, it would seem that much “deeper” explanations of these behavioral
tendencies are available. Most obviously, there is an evolutionary account
available, which explains parental investment in terms of inclusive fitness (and
also explains “new mate infanticide” in terms of sexual selection). Because of this,
proponents of methodological individualism are open to the charge that they are
promoting half-way explanations, and that the evolutionary perspective offers
rock-bottom ones. More generally, any theory that purports to explain the origin
of our intentional states in terms of deeper underlying causes, or that claims to
explain much of human behavior without reference to intentional states (such as
Freudianism, which treats many of our beliefs as rationalizations, our desires as
sublimations), will be unmoved by the methodological individualist's demand that
pride of place be assigned to explanations formulated at the action-theoretic level.
6.3 Fallacies
The primary methodological goal, among social scientists, for adopting a
commitment to methodological individualism was to caution against certain
fallacies (ones that were quite common in 19th century social science). Perhaps the
greatest of these fallacies was the one based on a widespread tendency to ignore
the potential for collective action problems in groups, and thus to move far too
easily “down” from an identification of a group interest to the ascription of an
individual interest. One way of avoiding such fallacies was to force social scientists
to look always at interactions from the participant's perspective, to see what sort
of preference structure governed his or her decisions.
At the same time, it is worth noting that too much emphasis on the action-
theoretic perspective can generate its own fallacies. One of the most powerful
resources of sociological inquiry is precisely the capacity to objectivate and
aggregate social behavior using large-scale data collection and analysis.
Furthermore, the analysis of social phenomena at this level can often generate
results that are counterintuitive from an action-theoretic perspective. Too much
emphasis on the action-theoretic perspective, because of its proximity to common
sense, can generate false assumptions about what must be going on at the
aggregate level. As Arthur Stinchcombe observes in his classic work, Constructing
Social Theories, constructing “demographic explanations” of social phenomena
often requires a break with our everyday interpretive perspective. Too much
focus upon individual attitudes can lead us to make illegitimate generalizations
about the characteristics of these attitudes in groups (1968, 67). For example, the
stability of a belief in a population only very rarely depends upon its stability in
individuals. There can be considerable volatility at the individual level, but so long
as it runs with equal force both ways, its prevalence in the population will be
unchanged (68). If ten per cent of the population loses their faith in God every
year, yet ten per cent have a conversion experience, then there will be no change
in the overall level of religiosity. This may seem obvious, but as Stinchcombe
observes, it is “intuitively difficult for many people” (67), and inattention to it is a
common source of fallacious sociological thinking.
It is also worth nothing that the action-theoretic level of analysis, with its focus
upon the intentional states of the agent, can generate considerable mischief when
combined haphazardly with evolutionary reasoning. The most common fallacy
arises when theorists treat the “self-interest” of the individual, defined with
respect to his or her preferences, as a stand-in for the “fitness” of a particular
behavior (or phenotype), at either the biological or the cultural level, then
assumes that there is some selection mechanism in place, again at either the
biological or cultural level, that will weed out forms of behavior that fail to
advance the individual's self-interest. The problem is that neither biological nor
cultural evolution function in this way. It is an elementary consequence of “selfish
gene” theory that biological evolution does not advance the interests of the agent
(the most conspicuous example being inclusive fitness). For similar reasons,
cultural evolution benefits the “meme” rather than the interests of the agent
(Stanovich 2004). Thus the evolutionary perspective imposes a much greater
break with the rationality-based perspective than many social theorists appreciate.
Thus methodological individualism can sometimes impede the sort of radical
objectivation of social phenomena that the use of certain sociotheoretic models or
tools requires.
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