Methodological individualism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article or section includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations.
You can improve this article by introducing more precise citations.

Methodological individualism is a philosophical method aimed at explaining and understanding broad society-wide developments as the aggregation of decisions by individuals. In the most extreme version, the "whole" is nothing but the "sum of its parts" (atomism). It has also been described as "reductionism," a reduction of the explanation of all large entities by reference to smaller ones. It should, however, be noted that methodological individualism does not imply political individualism, although methodological individualists like Friedrich Hayek and Karl Popper were opponents of collectivism. A specific formulation of methodological individualism might also incorporate hypotheses about the relations of individuals to society.

Contents

[edit] Social science

Methodological individualism denies that a collectivity is an autonomous decision-maker, and demands that the social sciences ground their theories in individual action. The idea has also been used to attack, among other ideas, historicism, structural functionalism, and the roles of social class, gender roles, or ethnicity as determinants of individual behavior.[citation needed] The idea that advertising affects individual tastes has been seen as contrary to methodological individualism.[citation needed]

One early version of methodological individualism can be seen in the writings of Thomas Carlyle, in which human history is seen as a collection of the biographies of heroes. (See philosophy of history.) William James tried to free methodological individualism of Carlyle's elitism. He wrote that "communities change from generation to generation" due to not only "the Grants and the Bismarcks, [but also] the Joneses and the Smiths." Grant and Bismarck were the heads of governments of the U.S. and Prussia respectively when James wrote those words, but they are balanced in this passage by the anonymous Joneses and Smith, who also throw their stones and have their says in the communities' development.

[edit] Economics

Methodological individualism is an essential part of modern neoclassical economics, which usually analyzes collective action in terms of "rational", utility-maximizing individuals. This is the so called Homo economicus postulate. In this view, the structure and dynamics of most economic institutions can be explained using it.

However, methodological individualism does not require that the utility function of each individual may be known. In Mises' praxeology, for instance, rational individuals are held to act on their most important needs first, but individuals don't necessarily have a numerical value for each of their needs.

One example of methodological individualism in economics was the criticism of the Historical School's promotion of statistical analysis by the Austrian School of economics in the Methodenstreit.

[edit] Sociology

In sociology, Jon Elster (among others) is well-known for following this lead: "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."[1]

Methodological individualism is not an argument for political individualism. At least, this was Max Weber's position, who argued at the start of the twentieth century that if a properly-functioning communist regime were to arise, it too would have to be sociologically understood on methodological individualist principles. However, the conflation of methodological with political individualism (i.e., liberalism of the laissez-faire variety) is common, by friends and foes of the former alike.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Elster, Jon (1989), Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences, page 13, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

[edit] Further reading

  • McClamrock, Ron (1991), "Methodological Individualism Considered as a Constituive Principle of Scientific Inquiry", Philosophical Psychology.
  • Kenneth J. Arrow (1994). "Methodological Individualism and Social Knowledge," American Economic Review, 84(2), pp. 1-9.