Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T18:23:41.440Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reduction, Explanation, and Individualism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Harold Kincaid
Harold Kincaid*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper contributes to the recently renewed debate over methodological individualism (MI) by carefully sorting out various individualist claims and by making use of recent work on reduction and explanation outside the social sciences. My major focus is on individualist claims about reduction and explanation. I argue that reductionist versions of MI fail for much the same reasons that mental predicates cannot be reduced to physical predicates and that attempts to establish reducibility by weakening the requirements for reduction also fail. I consider and reject a number of explanatory theses, among them the claims that any adequate theory must refer only to individuals and that individualist theory suffices to explain fully. The latter claim, I argue, is not entailed by the supervenience of social facts on individual facts. Lastly, I argue that there is one individualist restriction on explanation which is far more plausible and significant than one would initially suspect.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , December 1986 , pp. 492 - 513
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1986

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.)

Footnotes

†

Helpful comments were made on earlier drafts of this paper by Geoffrey Hellman, George Graham, Terry Horgan, and Scott Arnold, and especially by two anonymous referees for this journal.

References

Achinstein, P. (1983), The Nature of Explanation. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Arrow, K. (1968), “Mathematic Models in the Social Sciences”, in Broadbeck (1968).Google Scholar
Bates, F., and Harvey, C. (1975), The Structure of Social Systems. New York: Gardner Press.Google Scholar
Broadbeck, M. (1968), Readings in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Churchland, P. (1978), “Eliminative Materialism and Propositional Attitudes”, The Journal of Philosophy 78: 67–91.Google Scholar
Cooley, C. (1956), Social Organization. Glencoe: Free Press.Google Scholar
Danto, A. (1973), “Methodological Individualism and Methodological Socialism”, in O'Neill (1973).Google Scholar
Dore, R. (1973), “Function and Cause”, in Ryan (1973), pp. 65–82.Google Scholar
Dray, W. (1964), Philosophy of History. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, A. (1981), Forms of Explanation. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Haugeland, J. (1981), Mind Design. Montgomery: Bradford Books.Google Scholar
Hellman, G., and Thompson, F. (1975), “Physicalism: Ontology, Determination and Reduction”, The Journal of Philosophy 72: 551–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hempel, C. (1966), The Philosophy of the Natural Sciences. New York: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Hill, C. (1984), “In Defense of Type Materialism”, Synthese 59: 295–321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Homans, G. (1974), Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Hull, D. (1973), “Reduction in Genetics—Doing the Impossible”, in Suppes (1973).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hull, D. (1974), Philosophy of Biology, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Kim, J. (1984), “Concepts of Supervenience”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 45: 155–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kincaid, H. (1986), “Rosenberg and the Reducibility of Biology”, paper presented at the Central Division meetings of the A.P.A.Google Scholar
Kitcher, Patricia (1980), “How to Reduce a Functional Psychology?” Philosophy of Science 47: 134–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, Patricia (1982), “Genetics, Reduction and Functional Psychology”, Philosophy of Science 49: 633–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, Philip (1984), “1953 and All That. The Tale of Two Sciences”, The Philosophical Review 93: 335–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lukes, S. (1973), “Methodological Individualism Reconsidered”, in Ryan (1973), pp. 119–29.Google Scholar
McDonald, G., and Pettit, P. (1981), Semantics and Social Science. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
McCarthy, M. (1975), “On Methodological Individualism”, Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University.Google Scholar
Mandelbaum, M. (1973), “Societal Facts”, in O'Neill (1973), pp. 221–34.Google Scholar
Martin, M. (1972), “On Explanation in Social Science: Some Recent Work”, The Philosophy of Social Science 2: 67–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mellor, D. (1982), “The Reduction of Society”, Philosophy 57: 51–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, R. (1978), “Methodological Individualism and Social Explanation”, Philosophy of Science 45: 387–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagel, E. (1961), The Structure of Science. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, A. (1984), “Some Issues Surrounding the Reduction of Macroeconomics to Microeconomics”, Philosophy of Science 51: 573–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nozick, R. (1974), Anarchy State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Nozick, R. (1977), “On Austrian Methodology”, Synthese 36: 354–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Neill, J. (ed.) (1973), Modes of Individualism and Collectivism. London: Heineman.Google Scholar
Popper, K. (1950) The Open Society and Its Enemies. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Popper, K. (1972), Objective Knowledge. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. (1964), “Ontological Reduction and the World of Numbers”, The Journal of Philosophy 61: 209–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richardson, R. (1979), “Functionalism and Reduction”, Philosophy of Science 46: 533–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryan, A. (ed.) (1973), The Philosophy of Social Explanation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schaffner, K. (1967), “Approaches To Reduction,” Philosophy of Science 34: 137–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searle, J. (1981), “Minds, Brains and Programs”, in Haugeland (1981).Google Scholar
Sober, E. (1980), “Holism, Individualism and the Units of Selection”, in PSA 1980, Vol. 2, pp. 93–121.Google Scholar
Suppes, P., et al. (eds.) (1973), Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science IV. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
van Fraassen, B. (1980), The Scientific Image. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watkins, J. (1973a), “Historical Explanation in the Social Sciences”, in O'Neill (1973), pp. 166–78.Google Scholar
Watkins, J. (1973b), “Methodological Individualism: A Reply”, in O'Neill (1973).Google Scholar