Exploring Methodological Individualism Essay -- Psychology

Exploring Methodological Individualism ABSTRACT: I defend the truth of the principle of methodological individualism in the social sciences. I do so by criticizing mistaken ideas about the relation between individual people and social entities held by earlier defenders of the principle. I argue, first, that social science is committed to the intentional stance; the domain of social science, therefore, coincides with the domain of intentionally described human action. Second, I argue that social entitites are theoretical terms, but quite different from the entities used in the natural sciences to explain our empirical evidence. Social entities (such as institutions) are conventional and open-ended constructions, the applications of which is a matter of judgment, not of discovery. The terms in which these social entities are constructed are the beliefs, expectations and desires, and the corresponding actions of individual people. The relation between the social and the individual 'levels' differs fundamentally from that bet ween, say, the cellular and the molecular in biology. Third, I claim that methodological individualism does not amount to a reduction of social science to psychology; rather, the science of psychology should be divided. Intentional psychology forms in tandom with the analysis of social institutions, unitary psycho-social science; cognitive psychology tries to explain how the brain works and especially how the intentional stance is applicable to human behavior. The principle of methodological individualism in the social sciences has its origin in the Austrian school of economics and was introduced into the philosophy of social science in general by Friedrich Hayek and Karl Popper. Hayek was the first to us... ... the Aristotelian Society 76, 1-27. Rosenberg, Alexander (1980), Sociobiology and the preemption of social science. Baltmore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Ruben, David-Hillel (1985), The metaphysics of the social world. London etc.: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Stich, Stephen (1983), From folk psychology to cognitive science. The case against belief. Cambridge, Mass./London: MIT Press. Thornhill, Nancy Wilmsen (1991), 'An evolutionary analysis of rules regulating human inbreeding and marriage', Brain and Behavioral Sciences 14, 247-261. Tuomela, Raimo (1984), A theory of social action. Dordrecht etc.: D. Reidel. — (1995), The importance of us. A philosophical study of basic social notions. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press. Watkins, John (1952), 'Ideal types and historical explanation', British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 3, 22-43.