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Rajeev Bhargava. Individualism in Social Science: Forms and Limits of a Methodology. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1992. Pp. 340.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
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1 Along with many others, Ludwig von Mises, Carl Menger, Ludwig Moritz Lachman, Murray Rothbard, and Friedrich A. Hayek represent that tradition.
2 This point was stressed by Hayek: ‘There are no better terms available to describe this difference between the approach of the natural and the social sciences than to call the former “objective” and the latter “subjective.” Yet, these terms are ambiguous and might prove misleading without any further explanation. While for the natural scientist the contrast between objective facts and subjective opinions is a confusimple one, the distinction cannot as readily be applied to the object of social sciences. The reason for this is that the object, the “facts” of the social sciences are also opinions — not the opinions of the student of the social phenomena, of course, but opinions of those whose actions produce the object of the social scientist. In one sense his facts are thus as little “subjective” as those of the natural sciences, because they are independent of the particular observer; what he studies is not determined by his fancy or imagination but is in the same manner given to the observation by different people’ (Hayek, Friedrich Tile Counter-Revolution of Science [London: The Free Press of Glencoe, Macmillan 1955] 28)Google Scholar.
3 ‘The picture which man has actually formed of the world and which guides him well enough in his daily life, his perceptions and concepts, are for Science not an object of study but an imperfect instrument to be improved. Nor is Science as such interested in the relation of man to things, in the way in which man's existing view of the world leads him to act’ (ibid., 23).
4 The main representatives, during the twentieth century, but following Dilthey, are Hans-Georg Gadamer, Peter Winch, Paul Ricoeur, and Charles Taylor.
5 Hayek said: ‘While in the social science it is the attitudes of individuals which are the familiar elements and by the combination of which we try to reproduce the complex phenomena … a procedure which often leads to the discovery of principles of structural coherence of the complex phenomena which had not (and perhaps could not) be established by direct observation- the physical sciences necessarily begin with the complex phenomena of nature and work backwards to infer the elements from which they are composed. The place where the human individual stands in the order of things brings it about that in one direction what he perceives are the comparatively complex phenomena which he analyses, while in the other direction what is given to him are elements from which those more complex phenomena are composed that he cannot observe as wholes. While the method of natural sciences is in that sense, analytic, the method of the social science is better understood as compositive or synthetic’ (The Counter-Revolution of Science [London: The Free Press of Glencoe, Macmillan 1955] 38-9). To which Popper responds: ‘I have been advocating … an interpretation of scientific method as deductive, hypothetical, selective by way of falsification, etc. And this description of the method of natural science agrees perfectly with Professor Hayek's description of the method of social science’ (The Poverty of Historicism [London, 1957], 137). For a detailed contrast between Hayek's positions and Popper's, see Scott, K.J. ‘Methodological and Epistemological Individualism,’ in O'Neill, J. ed., Modes of Individualism (London: Heinemann 1973), 215-16Google Scholar.
6 The author does not distinguish, as I do, between Verstehen and Deuten; he uses the former to designate interpretative theory and does not relate it, as I do, to subjectivism as distinct from individualism. This is of relatively little importance for his argument or mine; the important point is that he makes it very clear that he wants to discuss the explanatory aspects of two enterprises different in that respect.
7 From Jerry Fodor and Daniel Dennett to Jon Elster, Michael Bratman, and Philip Pettit, there is a variety of theories of intentionality. Here, I will concentrate on theories of intentionality as embedded in action theory.
8 My typical intentionalist account is much inspired by Bratman's, Michael Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1987)Google Scholar.
9 This way of formulating the contrast between a game theoretical and an intentional account of decision and action was suggested to me by an argument developed by David Gauthier in ‘Assure and Threaten,’ Ethics 104 (1994). I want to be very cautious however, in attributing to Gauthier the view I am expressing here. First, Gauthier explicitly said (f. 1) that he is making ‘no attempts in this essay to discuss or relate [his] argument to the most recent major study in intentions, deliberation, and rationality’ that is, Bratman's study, a study that I take here as being representative of theories of intentionality. Second, Gauthier, in this article, does not argue for game theory. I take it that there will be no surprise, however, if Gauthier's point of view, as I understand it, happens to fit a game theoretical account of action and decision.
10 Other standards exist of course, according to which game theory, as it is, contributes to MI. See, for instance, John Roemer: ‘By [methodological individualism]! mean the position that, in constructing arguments to explain social phenomena, it is necessary to explain the actions of individuals as resulting from their attempt to further their interests, as they see them — or, using economic terminology, aggregate behavior must fundamentally be explained as the consequence of individual utility maximization’ (‘Marxism and Contemporary Social Science,’ Review of Social Economy 47 [1989] 378).
11 See for instance Pettit, Philip The Common Mind: An Essay on Psychology, Society and Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1993), esp. 217-27Google Scholar.
12 This is clearly the position of intentionalists like Fodor and Dennett. What I am claiming here is that the action theorists contributing in the intentionalist program are probably also committed to such a view, whether they acknowledge it or not.
13 Couture, Jocelyne ‘L'individualisme méthodologique et la théorie du choix rationnet; le nouveau contentieux des intentionnalistes,’ Études de Philosophie 2 (1995) 107-41Google Scholar
14 This is Elster's position: ‘attempts to explain complex phenomena in terms of individual motivation and beliefs may yield sterile and arbitrary explanations …. I argue that this may be the case for the problem of finding micro-foundations for collective action. In such a case, we are better off with the black box explanation for the time being, although it is important to keep in mind that this is only faute de mieux. Methodological collectivism can never be a desideratum, only a temporary necessity’ (Making sense of Marx [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985], 8).
15 I would like to thank Marc Ereshefsky and Bob Ware for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Kai Nielsen also deserves thanks for reading with a critical eye various versions of this paper.