This doctrine was introduced as a methodological precept for thesocial sciences by Max Weber, most importantly in the first chapter ofEconomy and Society (1922). It amounts to the claim thatsocial phenomena must be explained by showing how they result fromindividual actions, which in turn must be explained through referenceto the intentional states that motivate the individual actors. Itinvolves, in other words, a commitment to the primacy of what TalcottParsons would later call “the action frame of reference”(Parsons 1937: 43–51) in social-scientific explanation. It isalso sometimes described as the claim that explanations of“macro” social phenomena must be supplied with“micro” foundations, ones that specify an action-theoreticmechanism (Alexander, 1987).

A contrast is often drawn, following J.W.N. Watkins (1952a), betweenmethodological individualism and methodological holism. This issomewhat tendentious, since there are very few social scientists whodescribe themselves as methodological holists (see the entry onmethodological holism in the social sciences). There are, however, forms of social-scientific explanation with moreactive adherents that methodological individualism precludes ordowngrades. These include, most importantly, functionalism, many typesof sociobiology, cultural-evolutionary explanation, psychoanalytic and“depth hermeneutic” methods, and any form of explanatorygeneralization grounded in purely statistical analysis.

Defenders of methodological individualism generally claim that it isan innocent doctrine, devoid of any political or ideological content.Weber himself cautioned that “it is a tremendousmisunderstanding to think that an ‘individualistic’method should involve what is in any conceivable sense anindividualistic system ofvalues” (Weber 1922: 18).Nevertheless, the doctrine of methodological individualism becameembroiled in a number of highly politicized debates during the20^th century, largely because it was often invoked as a wayof discrediting historical materialism. There were two distinct roundsof controversy on this score. The first occurred primarily during the1950s, in response to the work of Friedrich von Hayek and Karl Popper.The second round occurred during the 1980s, 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 manycalled “rational choice imperialism.”

• 1. Origins of the Doctrine
• 2. Austrian School and theMethodenstreit
• 3. The Search for “Rock Bottom” Explanations
• 4. The Rational Choice Revival
• 5. Other Uses of the Term
• 6. Criticism
  • 6.1 Statistical analysis
  • 6.2 Subintentional states
  • 6.3 Supervenient properties
  • 6.4 Fallacies
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Origins of the Doctrine

The phrasemethodische Individualismus was actually coined byJoseph Schumpeter, in his 1908 workDas Wesen und der Hauptinhaltder theoretischen Nationalökonomie. The first use of theterm “methodological individualism” in English was againby Schumpeter in his 1909Quarterly Journal of Economicspaper, “On the Concept of Social Value” (see Udehn 2001,214). However, the theoretical elaboration of the doctrine is due toWeber, and Schumpeter used the term as a way of referring to theWeberian view.

InEconomy and Society, Weber articulates the central preceptof methodological individualism in the following way: When discussingsocial phenomena, we often talk about various “socialcollectivities, such as states, associations, business corporations,foundations, as if they were individual persons”(Weber 1922,13). We talk about them having plans, performing actions, sufferinglosses, and so forth. The doctrine of methodological individualismdoes not take issue with these ordinary ways of speaking, it merelystipulates that “in sociological work these collectivities mustbe treated as solely the resultants and modes of organization of theparticular acts of individual persons, since these alone can betreated as agents in a course of subjectively understandableaction” (Weber 1922, 13).

For Weber, the commitment to methodological individualism is veryclosely related to the commitment toverstehende (orinterpretive) patterns of explanation in sociology. The reason forprivileging individual action in sociological explanation is that onlyaction is “subjectively understandable.” Weber reservesthe term “action” to refer to the subset of human behaviorthat is motivated by linguistically formulated or“meaningful” mental states. (Generally speaking: coughingis behavior, apologizing afterwards is action.) Updating theterminology somewhat, we can say that the defining characteristic ofan action is that it is motivated by a mental state with propositionalcontent, i.e., an intentional state. The importance of action forWeber is that we have interpretive access to it, by virtue of ourcapacity to understand the agent’s underlying motive. Thispermits the social scientist to “accomplish something which isnever attainable in the natural sciences, namely the subjectiveunderstanding of the action of the component individuals” (Weber1922, 15). Action-theoretic explanation is central tosocial-scientific analysis, therefore, because without knowingwhy people do what they do, we do not really understand whyany of the more large-scale phenomena with which they are embroiledoccur.

Thus methodological individualism is a slightly misleading term, sincethe original goal was not to privilege the individual over thecollective in social-scientific explanation, but rather to privilegethe action-theoretic level of explanation. This privileging of theaction-theoretic level is methodological because it is imposed by thestructure of interpretive social science, where the goal is to provideanunderstanding of social phenomena. Actions can beunderstood in a way that other social phenomena cannot, preciselybecause they are motivated by intentional states. Yet only individualspossess intentional states, and so the methodological privileging ofactions entails the methodological privileging of individuals. Thusthe “individualism” in methodological individualism ismore a byproduct of its central theoretical commitment than amotivating factor. (In this context, it should be noted thatproponents of group agency, who believe that it is appropriate toascribe intentional states to collectivities [List andPettit 2011], could subscribe to an interpretive methodologywithout it entailing a commitment to individualism. See entry onshared agency.)

It is worth emphasizing the difference betweenmethodologicalindividualism, in Weber’s sense, and the older traditions ofatomism (or ontological individualism) in the social sciences. Manywriters claim to find the origins of methodological individualismamongst economists of the Austrian School (especially Carl Menger),and doctrines articulated during theMethodenstreit of the1880s (Udehn 2001). Others trace it back to Thomas Hobbes, and the“resolutive-compositive” method elaborated in the openingsections of theLeviathan (Lukes 1968, 119). Yet thedistinctive character of this type of atomism was summed up quiteclearly by Hobbes, with his injunction to “consider men as ifbut even now sprung out of the earth, and suddainly (like Mushromes)come to full maturity without all kind of engagement to eachother” (1651, 8:1). The atomistic view is based upon thesuggestion that it is possible to develop a complete characterizationof individual psychology that is fully pre-social, then deduce whatwill happen when a group of individuals, so characterized, enter intointeraction with one another. Methodological individualism, on theother hand, does not involve a commitment to any particular claimabout thecontent of the intentional states that motivateindividuals, and thus remains open to the possibility that humanpsychology may have an irreducibly social dimension. Thus one way ofaccentuating the difference between atomism and methodologicalindividualism is to note that the former typically entails thepossibility of reducing sociology to psychology, whereas the latterdoes not.

Finally, it should be noted that Weber’s commitment tomethodological individualism is closely related to his more well-knownmethodological doctrine, viz., the theory of ideal types. Historicalexplanation may make reference to the actual content of theintentional states that motivated particular historical actors, butthe sociologist is interested in producing much more abstractexplanatory generalizations, and so cannot appeal to the specificmotives of particular individuals. Thus sociological theory must bebased upon amodel of human action. And because of theconstraints that interpretation imposes, this model must be a model ofrational human action (Weber writes: “it is convenientto treat all irrational, affectually determined elements of behavioras factors of deviation from a conceptually pure type of rationalaction” [1922, 6].)

Thus one of the most important consequences of Weber’smethodological individualism is that it puts rational action theory atthe core of social-scientific inquiry. This is why subsequentgenerations of social theorists, under Weber’s influence, soughtto bring about the methodological unification of the social sciencesby producing what came to be known as a “general theory ofaction” – one that would broaden the economic model ofaction in such a way as to incorporate the central action-theoreticinsights of (primarily) sociologists, anthropologists, andpsychologists. The work of Talcott Parsons in the first half of thecentury was the most important in this regard, with the unificationmovement reaching its apogee in the collaborative publication in 1951ofToward a General Theory of Action, co-edited by Parsonsand Edward Shils. Yet shortly thereafter, partly due to problems withthe unification program, Parsons abandoned his commitment to bothmethodological individualism and action theory, adopting a purelysystems-theoretic view. This led to a period of diminished enthusiasmfor the project of producing a general theory of action, althoughthere have been some efforts to revive it in recent years with anextended model of rational choice (Gintis 2007).

2. Austrian School and theMethodenstreit

It has never escaped anyone’s attention that the discipline thatmost clearly satisfies the strictures of methodological individualismis microeconomics (in the tradition of neoclassical marginalism), andthathomo economicus is the most clearly articulated model ofrational action. Of course, this tradition has not always been in theascendancy within the economics profession. In particular, there aremany who have felt that macroeconomics could be a completelyself-standing domain of inquiry (reflected in the fact that theundergraduate economics curriculum is still often divided into“micro” and “macro.”) There have always beenthose who would like to plot the movements of the business cycle, orof the stock market, in a way that disregards entirely the motivesthat individual actors may have for doing what they do. Similarly,many have tried to discover correlations between macroeconomicvariables, such as unemployment and inflation rates, without feelingthe need to speculate as to why a change in one rate might lead tomovement in the other. Thus there has always been a very lively debatewithin the economics profession about the value of the “rationalactor” model that is at the heart of general equilibriumtheory.

One of the earliest iterations of this debate occurred during theso-calledMethodenstreit between members of the AustrianSchool in Economics and the German Historical School. However, membersof the “first generation” of the Austrian School, such asCarl Menger, were atomists (Menger defended his individualistic methodin terms of conceptual gains achieved by “reducing complicatedphenomena to their elements” [Menger 1883, 93]). It was onlymembers of the second generation, first and foremost Friedrich vonHayek, who would explicitly identify themselves with the Weberiandoctrine of methodological individualism and defend it throughreference to the demands of interpretive social science. The key textis Hayek’s paper, “Scientism and the Study ofSociety,” serialized inEconomica (1942–44), andlater published as the first part ofThe Counter-Revolution ofScience (1955).

In Hayek’s view, the desire on the part of social scientists toemulate the physical sciences creates an exaggerated fear ofteleological or “purposive” concepts. This leads manyeconomists to eschew any reference to intentional states and to focuspurely upon statistical correlations between economic variables. Theproblem with this focus is that it leaves the economic phenomenaunintelligible. Take, for example, the movement of prices. One mightnotice a constant correlation between the date of the first frost andfluctuations in the price of wheat. But we do not reallyunderstand the phenomenon until it has been explained interms of the rational actions of economic agents: an early frostreduces yields, leading to less intense price competition amongsuppliers, more among consumers, etc. Thus Hayek insists that, ineffect, all macroeconomic analysis is incomplete in the absence of“micro” foundations.

It is important to note, however, that while Hayek has a model ofrational action as the centerpiece of his view, his is mostemphatically not a form of rationalism. On the contrary, he putsparticular emphasis upon the way that various economic phenomena canemerge as the unintended consequences of rational action. Even thoughthe outcomes that people achieve may bear no resemblance to the onesthat they intended, it is still important to know what theythought they were doing when they chose to pursue to courseof action that they chose – not least because it is important toknow why they persist in pursuing that course of action, despite thefact that it is not producing the intended consequences.

Of course, part of Hayek’s motivation for endorsingmethodological individualism and demanding that social-scientificexplanations specify a mechanism at the action-theoretic level is thathe wants to emphasize the limitations of the individual’sactor’s perspective. It’s fine to talk about macroeconomicvariables like “the inflation rate,” but it is importantto remember that individual actors (generally speaking) do not responddirectly to such indicators. All that they can see are changes in theimmediate prices that they must pay for production inputs orconsumption goods, and this is what they respond to. The large-scaleconsequences of the choices they make in response to these changes arelargely unintended, and so any regularity in these consequencesconstitutes a spontaneous order. This is a crucial element ofHayek’s information-based argument for capitalism: economicactors do not have access to the same information as economictheorists, thus it is only when we see the operations of the economythrough their eyes that we can begin to see the advantages of adecentralized 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 developmentof a footpath in the woods. One person works his way through, choosingthe route that offers the least local resistance. His passage reduces,ever so slightly, the resistance offered along that route to the nextperson who walks though, who is therefore, in making the same set ofdecisions, likely to follow the same route. This increases the chancesthat the next person will do so, and so on. Thus the net of effect ofall these people passing through is that they “make apath,” even though no one has the intention of doing so, and noone even plans out its trajectory. It is a product of spontaneousorder: “Human movements through the district come to conform toa definite pattern which, although the result of deliberate decisionsof many people, has yet not been consciously designed by anyone”(Hayek 1942, 289).

The problem with ignoring the agent’s perspective, inHayek’s view, is that it can easily lead us to overestimate ourpowers of rational planning and control, and thus to fall into“rationalism.” By contrast, the central virtue ofmethodological individualism is that it helps us to see thelimitations of our own reason (Hayek 1944, 33). Formulating theoriesthat refer directly to the “interest rate,” or“inflationary pressures,” or “the unemploymentrate” can mislead us into thinking that we can manipulate thesevariables, and thus intervene successfully in the economy. We forgetthat these concepts are abstractions, used not to guide individualaction, but rather to describe the net effect of millions ofindividual decisions. The key characteristic of methodologicalindividualism is that it “systematically starts from theconcepts which guide individuals in their actions and not from theresults of their theorizing about their actions” (1942, 286). Ittherefore encourages, in Hayek’s view, greater modesty withrespect to social planning.

Hayek does not mention methodological individualism after the 1950s.Indeed, the role that evolutionary explanations come to play in hislater work implies a tacit retraction of his commitment to thedoctrine.

3. The Search for “Rock Bottom” Explanations

For many years, the term methodological individualism was associatedprimarily with the work of Karl Popper. This is due to the extensivedebate triggered by Popper’s papers, “The Poverty ofHistoricism” (1944/45), and later his book,The Open Societyand Its Enemies (1945). Popper, however, although making use ofthe term, did little to defend his commitment to it. Instead he leftthis job to his former student, J.W.N. Watkins. It was this debatebetween Watkins and his critics that (perhaps unfairly) solidified theassociation in many people’s minds between Popper andmethodological individualism. (It was also this debate that broughtthe doctrine to the widespread attention of philosophers.)

Unfortunately, the version of methodological individualism that Popperbequeathed to his student Watkins was considerably more difficult todefend than the one he inherited from Hayek. Since the beginning, theprecepts of methodological individualism were thought to have beenimposed by the special requirements of the social sciences. For bothWeber and Hayek, it was the reflection of a key difference between theGeisteswissenschaften and theNaturwissenschaften.Popper, however, denies that there are any significant methodologicaldifferences between the two. Indeed, his initial discussion ofmethodological individualism in “The Poverty ofHistoricism,” occurs in a section called “The Unity ofMethod,” in which he claims that both are simply in the businessof “causal explanation, prediction and testing.”(1945,78). He goes on to deny that “understanding” plays anyspecial role in the social sciences.

The problem that this creates for the doctrine of methodologicalindividualism is readily apparent. A social science that aims atinterpretation, or that uses interpretation as part of the centerpieceof its explanatory strategy, has a very clear methodological reasonfor privileging explanations that refer to individual actions –since it is precisely the underlying intentional states that serve asthe object of interpretation. But if social scientists are merely inthe business of providing causal explanations, just like naturalscientists, then what is the rationale for privileging individualactions in these explanations? There no longer appears to be anymethodological reason for doing so. Thus critics like LeonGoldstein (1958), and later Steven Lukes (1968), would argue thatmethodological individualism was actually just an oblique way ofasserting a commitment to metaphysical or ontological individualism.In other words, Popper’s “methodologicalindividualism” was actually a claim about what the world“really” consisted of, little more than a fancy way ofsaying “there is no such thing as society.” Watkins wenton to reinforce this impression by reformulating the thesis as theclaim that the “ultimate constituents of the social world areindividual people” (1957, 105).

Watkins also provoked doubts about the methodological status of theprinciple by distinguishing between “unfinished or half-wayexplanations” of social phenomena, which might not specify anaction-theoretic or individualistic mechanism, and so-called“rock-bottom explanations,” which would (1957, 106). Yetin so doing, he grants that these half-way explanations (the examplehe gives is the relationship between inflation and the unemploymentrate), while they may not tell us everything we would like to know,need not be meaningless or false. This creates problems, as Lars Udehnpoints out, since the mere fact that onecan explain socialphenomena in terms of individuals “does not imply themethodological 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 betweenmethodological individualism and “psychologism,” viz., theview that “all laws of social life must be ultimately reducibleto the psychological laws of ‘human nature’”(1945,89). Nevertheless, in Popper’s formulation, methodologicalindividualism does appear equivalent to at least some form ofpsychological reductionism. At very least, his formulation – andlater Watkins’s – left many commentators confused abouthow one could affirm the former without committing to the latter(Udehn 2001, 204). More generally, it created a great deal ofconfusion about the difference between methodological individualismand atomism (Hodgson 2007, 214).

4. The Rational Choice Revival

For both Hayek and Popper, the primary motivation for respecting theprecepts of methodological individualism was to avoid “grandtheory” in the style of Auguste Comte, G.W.F. Hegel and KarlMarx. Yet the motivation for avoiding this sort of grand theory wasnot so much that it promoted bad theory, but that it promoted habitsof mind, such as “collectivism,”“rationalism,” or “historicism,” that werethought to be conducive to totalitarianism. Thus the sins of“collectivism,” and “collectivist” thoughtpatterns, for both Hayek and Popper, were primarily political. Yet astime wore on, and the dangers of creeping totalitarianism in Westernsocieties became increasingly remote, the fear of collectivism thatunderlay the debates over methodological individualism becameincreasingly attenuated.

Thus the concern over methodological individualism began to fade away,and might have disappeared completely had it not been for the suddenexplosion of interest in game theory (or “rational choicetheory”) among social scientists in the 1980s. The reason forthis can be summed up in two words (and an article): theprisoner’s dilemma. Social scientists had always been aware thatindividuals in groups are capable of getting stuck in patterns ofcollectively self-defeating behavior. Paul Samuelson’s“The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure” (1954), GarrettHardin’s “The Tragedy of the Commons,” (1968), andMancur Olson’sThe Logic of Collective Action (1965),had all provided very clear examples of cases where the mere existenceof a common interest among individuals nevertheless failed to providethem with an incentive to perform the actions necessary to realizethat interest. What the story of the prisoner’s dilemma –and more importantly, the accompanying game matrix – providedwas a simple yet powerful model that could be used to represent thestructure of all these interactions (see R. Hardin 1982).

This in turn gave renewed impetus to methodological individualism,because it allowed theorists to diagnose with greater precision theerrors that social theorists could be (and often were) led into ifthey ignored the action-theoretic level of analysis. Methodologicalindividualism became important, not as a way of avoiding the politicalthought-crime of “collectivism,” but rather as a way ofavoiding demonstrably fallacious inferences about the dynamics ofcollective action. For example, the traditional “interestgroup” theory of democratic politics generally presupposes thatgroups who share a common interest also have an incentive to promotethat interest, by lobbying politicians, funding research, and so on.Olson’s major contribution was to have driven home the pointthat the existence of such a common interest just as often generates afree-rider incentive. Individuals would benefit from acting to promotethat interest, but they would benefit evenmore by sittingback while the other members of the group acted to promote it. As aresult, no one may act to promote it. However, Olson confined thisobservation to large groups. The prisoner’s dilemma, on theother hand, demonstrated the ubiquity of this incentive structure.

Jon Elster’s contribution to the history of methodologicalindividualism must be understood against this background. He presentsthe doctrine as part of a friendly yet trenchant critique of the useof functionalist explanations in the Marxist tradition; particularlythose that seek to explain events as ones that “serve theinterests of capital.” The problem with these explanations,Elster argues, is that they “postulate a purpose without apurposive 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, inhis response to Elster, there is no reason that the Marxianfunctionalist cannot provide “elaborations” (Cohen 1982,131) of these explanations, ones that specify how the benefit producedevokes the phenomenon, without reference to any objective teleology.This could be done either by appealing to an intentional mechanism atthe action-theoretic level or else a Darwinian “selection”mechanism (Cohen 1982, 132). In such cases, Elster’s critique offunctional explanation becomes just another version of Watkins’sdemand for “rock-bottom” rather than“half-way” explanations.

What made Elster’s attack so forceful was not the accusation ofobjective teleology in Marxist theory, but rather the suggestion thatmuch of Marxian “class analysis” overlooked the potentialfor collective action problems among the various world-historicalactors. Consider, for example, the familiar claim that capitalistsretain a “reserve army of the unemployed” in order todepress wages. This means that individual capitalists must stop hiringnew workers at a point where marginal benefits still exceed themarginal costs. What is their incentive for doing so? They have anobvious free-rider incentive to keep hiring, since the benefitsstemming 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 ofcapital” to have a reserve army of the unemployed does not meanthat individual capitalists have an incentive to take the stepsnecessary to maintain such a reserve army.

An even more disturbing consequence of the “rationalchoice” perspective is the observation that the working classfaces a major collective action problem when it comes to carrying outthe socialist revolution (Elster 1982, 467). Fomenting revolution canbe dangerous business, and so absent some other incentive (such asclass solidarity), even workers who were convinced that a communisteconomic order would offer them a superior quality of life might stillfail to show up at the barricades. Yet these possibilities werelargely overlooked, Elster suggests, because the failure to respectthe precepts of methodological individualism, along with thepromiscuous use of functional explanation, had led generations ofMarxian theorists simply to ignore the actual incentives thatindividuals face in concrete social interactions. Thus the primaryeffect of rational choice theory was to provide a set of cautionarytales, showing what can go wrong in social-scientific explanation whenone ignores the action frame of reference.

Elster’s commitment to methodological individualism is closely tied tohis insistence on the specification of “mechanisms” insocial-scientific explanation (Elster 1989). Typically the mechanismthat is sought will be framed in terms of individual action. If oneconsiders, for example, Hayek’s example of travelers making afootpath, an observer who discovers the final outcome might find itpuzzling that these people should possess this capacity. How did theycoordinate on this specific route? Hayek’s suggestion that the passageof one person makes it slightly easier for the next to traverse alongthe same route answers this question, and in so doing, provides themechanism through which coordination is achieved (Hayek 1942, 289). Atthe same time, there would appear to be no reason to insist that anexplanatory mechanism must reference individual behavior or intentions(Kincaid 2014, 146). Thus the debate over mechanism, which isprimarily responsible for the rise of so-called “analyticalsociology” (Hedström 2005), is best seen as branching offfrom the debate over methodological individualism.

Beyond the critique of functional explanations, Elster does notadvance any original argument in support of methodologicalindividualism. He does, however, return to the earlier Weberianformulation of the position, with its emphasis on intentional action(Elster 1982, 463): “The elementary unit of social life is theindividual human action,” he argues. “To explain socialinstitutions and social change is to show how they arise as the resultof the actions and interaction of individuals. This view, oftenreferred to as methodological individualism, is in my view triviallytrue” (Elster, 1989, 13). Here one must assume that when he says“trivially true,” he is using the term in the vernacularsense of “platitudinous” rather than the philosophicalsense of “tautologous,” since he goes on to derive anumber of very substantive doctrines from his commitment tomethodological individualism. For example, he goes on to claim atvarious points that methodological individualism commits him topsychologistic reductionism with respect to sociology (although hedoes not offer an argument for this claim).

Elster does not draw as sharp a distinction as he might have betweenthe commitment to methodological individualism and the commitment torational choice theory. Indeed, he also assumes that the latter flowsdirectly from the former. The version of rational choice theory thatElster endorses, however, is one that is based upon a traditionalinstrumental (orhomo economicus) conception of rationality,according to which “actions are valued and chosen not forthemselves, but as more or less efficient means to the a furtherend” (Elster 1989, 22). He claims that this conception ofrationality is implied by the fact that decision theorists are able torepresent the rational actions of any agent possessing a well-behavedpreference ordering as the maximization of a utility function. Yetwhether utility-maximization implies instrumentalism depends upon theversion of expected utility theory that one subscribes to. So-called“world Bayesian” versions of decision theory, such asRichard Jeffrey’s (1983) do not impose an instrumentalconception of rationality, since they permit agents to havepreferences over their own actions. Thus there is no entailment inElster’s move from methodological individualism to aninstrumental conception of rationality.

Nevertheless, as a result of Elster’s arguments, methodologicalindividualism became synonymous in many quarters with the commitmentto rational choice theory. Such an equation generally fails todistinguish 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 atthat level (i.e., the ideal type). There are multiple permutations.For instance, there is no reason that one cannot be a methodologicalindividualist while choosing to employ Habermas’s theory ofcommunicative action rather than rational choice theory as the modelof rational action. In fact, this would make greater sense, since gametheory, strictly construed, has never purported to offer a generaltheory of rational action. The Nash solution concept, which providesthe standard definition of a game-theoretic equilibrium, specificallyexcluded all forms of communication between the players (and thesolution does not work in cases where communication does intrude[Heath 2001]). Thus much of the furor over rational choice imperialismhas been based upon a failure to appreciate the limitations of thatmodel (in many cases both by its defenders and its critics).

5. Other Uses of the Term

In the philosophy of mind, the phrase “methodologicalindividualism” is commonly associated with a claim made by JerryFodor concerning the individuation of psychological states (1980,1987, 42). It is important to emphasize that Fodor’s use of theterm has nothing in common with its traditional use in the philosophyof social science. Fodor introduces it by way of a distinction between“methodological individualism” and “methodologicalsolipsism.” His goal is to deal with variations on thetwin-earth problem, introduced by Hilary Putnam. The question iswhether an individual with a belief about water on earth, where wateris made up of H₂O, has thesame belief as anindividual with a belief about water in a parallel universe, wherewater has the same appearance and behavior, but happens to be made upof XYZ. The “externalist” is one who says that they arenot the same, whereas an “internalist” like Fodor wants tosay that they are – speaking roughly, that the content ofbeliefs is determined by what is in the agent’s head, and notwhat is in the world.

The issue comes down to one concerning the individuation of mentalstates. 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 doctrinethat psychological states are individuatedwith respect to theircausal powers” (1987, 42). This implies, among otherthings, that if one psychological state is incapable of causinganything different to happen than some other psychological state, thenthe two must be the same. “Methodological solipsism” isthe stronger claim that “psychological states are individuatedwithout 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 pointout, the semantic evaluation of a mental state will typically berelational, e.g. whether certain beliefs about water are true willdepend upon how things happen to stand with water in the world; thusmethodological solipsism has the consequence of precluding one type ofrelational property from playing a role in the individuation of mentalstates. It is therefore “individualistic” in the everydaysense of the term, since it suggests that what’s going on in theagent’s head does most or all of the work in the individuationof mental states. Methodological individualism, on the other hand,“does not prohibit the relational individuation of mentalstates; it just says that no property of mental states,relational or otherwise, counts taxonomically unless it affects causalpowers”(1987, 42). Thus it is very unclear why Fodor chooses tocall this a form of “individualism,” since these relationscould also be relations to other speakers, and not just the physicalword.

There is considerable infelicity in Fodor’s choice of terms. Heis able to offer a cogent account of why methodological individualismcounts as a methodological constraint. He argues that the desire toalign terminological distinctions with objects having different causalpowers is “one which follows simply from the scientist’sgoal of causal explanation and which, therefore, all scientifictaxonomies must obey” (1987, 42). Thus it is a methodologicalprecept. (Although one can see clearly here the stark contrast betweenFodor’s use of the term and that of Weber or Hayek, for whom theability of the social scientist to provide somethingbeyondmerely causal explanation was what imposed the methodologicalcommitment to the action-theoretic level of analysis.) It is simplyunclear why Fodor chooses to call it individualism. Withmethodological solipsism, on the other hand, one can see why he callsit solipsism, but it is unclear what makes it methodological. Indeed,Fodor goes on to state that “solipsism (construed as prohibitingthe relational taxonomy of mental states) is unlike individualism inthat it couldn’t conceivably follow from any generalconsiderations about scientific goals and practices.‘Methodological solipsism’ is, in fact, an empiricaltheory about the mind.”(1987, 43). Thus in Fodor’s use ofthe terms, “methodological individualism” is not reallyindividualistic, and “methodological solipsism” is notreally methodological.

6. Criticism

Much of the critical discussion of methodological individualism in thephilosophy of social science concerns the relationship between whatWatkins called “rock-bottom” explanations and“half-way” ones – or those that do and those that donot specify an action theoretic mechanism (Zahle and Kincaid 2019,657; Hedström and Bearman 2011). In general, there is no questionthat, given any particular half-way explanation of a socialphenomenon, it would always benice to know what agents arethinking, when they perform the actions that are involved in theproduction of that phenomenon. The question is whether the explanationis somehowdeficient, or unscientific, in the absence of thisinformation. The answer to that question will depend upon one’sbroader commitments concerning the status and role of the socialsciences. Nevertheless, it is worth noting three very common aspectsof social-scientific explanation that fall short of providing the sortof rock-bottom explanations that the Watkins version of methodologicalindividualism demands:

6.1 Statistical analysis

Consider the following example of a social-scientific debate: Duringthe 1990s, there was a precipitous decline in violent crime in theUnited States. Many social scientists naturally began to applythemselves to the question of why this had occurred, i.e., they setout to explain the phenomenon. A number of different hypotheses wereadvanced: the hiring of more police, changes in community policingpractices, more severe sentencing guidelines for offenders, decreasedtolerance for minor infractions, an increase in religiosity, a declinein the popularity of crack, changes in the demographic profile of thepopulation, etc. Since the decline in crime occurred in many differentjurisdictions, each using some different combination of strategiesunder different circumstances, it is possible to build support fordifferent hypotheses through purely statistical analysis. For example,the idea that policing strategies play an important role iscontradicted by the fact that New York City and San Francisco adoptedvery different approaches to policing, and yet experienced a similardecline in the crime rate. Thus a very sophisticated debate broke out,with different social scientists producing different data sets, andcrunching the numbers in different ways, in support of their rivalhypotheses.

This debate, like almost every debate in criminology, lacksmicrofoundations. It would certainly be nice to know what is goingthrough people’s mind when they commit crimes, and thus howlikely various measures are to change their behavior, but the fact iswe do not know. Indeed, there is considerable skepticism amongcriminologists that a “general theory” of crime ispossible. Nevertheless, we can easily imagine criminologists decidingthat one particular factor, such as a demographic shift in thepopulation (i.e., fewer young men), isthe explanation forthe late-20^th century decline in violent crime in theUnited States, and ruling out the other hypotheses. And even thoughthis may be a “half-way” explanation, there is no questionthat it would represent a genuine discovery, one that we could learnsomething important from.

Furthermore, it is not obvious that the “rock-bottom”explanation – the one that satisfies the precepts ofmethodological individualism – is going to add anything veryinteresting to the “half-way” explanation provided by thestatistical analysis. In many cases it will even be derived from it.Suppose that we discovered, through statistical analysis, that thecrime rate varied as a function of the severity of punishmentmultiplied by the probability of apprehension. We would theninferfrom this that criminals were rational utility-maximizers. On theother hand, if studies showed that crime rates were completelyunaffected by changes in the severity of punishments or theprobability of apprehension, we would infer that something else mustbe going on at the action-theoretic level.

Results at the action-theoretic level might also prove to be random oruninteresting, from the standpoint of the explanatory variables.Suppose it turns out that the decline in crime can be explainedentirely by demographic change. Then it doesn’t really matterwhat the criminals were thinking – what matters is simply that acertain percentage of any given demographic group has the thoughtsthat lead to criminal behavior, so fewer of those people translatesinto 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. Inthe end, it may turn out that each crime is as unique as the criminal.So while there is a concrete explanation in terms of actualpeople’s intentional states, there is nothing that can be saidat the level of a general “model” of rational action. (Inthis context, it is important to remember that methodologicalindividualism in the Weberian sense explains actions in terms of amodel of the agent, not the actual motivations of the realpeople.)

6.2 Subintentional states

Consider another social-scientific debate, this time the controversyover the data showing that stepparents have a far greater propensityto kill very young children in their care than biological parents.What would be involved in providing a rock-bottom explanation for thisphenomenon, one that satisfied the precepts of methodologicalindividualism? How informative would this be? It does not take mucheffort to imagine what people are thinking, when they shake a baby orhit a toddler. The motives are all-too familiar – almosteveryone experiences episodes of intense frustration or anger whendealing with children. But that clearly does not explain thephenomenon. The question is why one group systematically fails toexercise control over these violent impulses, relative to some othergroup. 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 atthe level of intentional states, or even that a complementary accountof what is going on at this level will be in the least bitinformative. The problem is that the behavior is generated by biasesthat function almost entirely at a subintentional level (Sperber,1997). This suggests that an explanation in terms of intentionalstates is not really “rock bottom,” but that there aredeeper 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. Thisreaction is very complex, but one of its central characteristics isthe inhibition of aggression. People are also quite poor atarticulating the basis of this reaction, other than by repeatedreferences to the fact that the child is “cute.” Ofcourse, the overall strength of this reaction varies from individualto individual, and the particular strength varies with differentchildren. Thus it is possible that biological parents simply findtheir own children “cuter” than stepparents do, and thatthis translates into a slightly lower average propensity to commitacts of aggression against them. Because they are unable to articulatethe basis of this judgment, any analysis at the intentional level willsimply fail to provide much in the way of an explanation for theiractions.

Furthermore, it would seem that much “deeper” explanationsof these behavioral tendencies are available. Most obviously, there isan evolutionary account available, which explains parental investmentin terms of inclusive fitness (and also explains “new mateinfanticide” in terms of sexual selection). Because of this,proponents of methodological individualism are open to the charge thatthey are promoting half-way explanations, and that the evolutionaryperspective offers rock-bottom ones. More generally, any theory thatpurports to explain the origin of our intentional states in terms ofdeeper underlying causes, or that claims to explain much of humanbehavior without reference to intentional states (such as Freudianism,which treats many of our beliefs as rationalizations, our desires assublimations), will be unmoved by the methodologicalindividualist’s demand that pride of place be assigned toexplanations formulated at the action-theoretic level.

6.3 Supervenient properties

Since Popper, proponents of methodological individualism have beenconcerned that social-scientific explanations that failed to respectthis constraint would wind up positing ontologically suspect socialentities. Increased facility with the concept of supervenience (seeentry onsupervenience) has led to considerable clarification of these issues, providingcritics of methodological individualism a relatively straightforwardway to distinguish their ontological from their explanatory claims(Zahle 2007). A level of description Y is said to supervene on someother level X if there cannot be a difference in Y without somedifference in X, but there can be differences at the X level withoutany difference in Y. The standard way of articulating this is to saythat states of Y can berealized in different ways in X. Thisbecame popular in the philosophy of mind as a way of articulating“non-reductive materialism” about the mental, wherein oneand the same belief could be realized through different brain states,but where one belief could not change into some other withouta change in the brain state that realizes it.

Many social theorists have felt that supervenience provides a naturalway of articulating the relationship between social (or institutional)facts and individual intentional states. The thought is that ifnothing has changed at the level of the individuals, then the socialfacts cannot have changed either, but things can change at the levelof individuals (e.g. some people may leave and others take theirplace) without changing the social facts. One might then rejectmethodological individualism on the grounds that interestingexplanatory relations may prevail among social states that superveneon individual-level descriptions. The language of supervenience isclarifying, in this context, because it makes clear that one can positthis sort of explanatory independence of the social without anyontological commitment to entities at this level (i.e. that one maysubscribe to “non-reductive individualism”).

The most clear-cut cases of this arise when social states admit ofmultiple realizations (Kincaid 1997, 33–34). Christian List and KaiSpiekermann (2013), for example, suggest that methodologicalindividualism will not be appropriate in cases where “socialregularities are robust to changes in their individual-levelrealization” (629). They specify three “jointly necessaryand sufficient conditions” (639) under which this will beso:

Multiple levels of description: The system admitslower and higher levels of description, associated with differentlevel-specific properties (e.g. individual-level properties versusaggregate properties).

Multiple realizability of higher-level properties:The system’s higher-level properties are determined by itslower-level properties, but can be realized by numerous differentconfigurations of them and hence cannot feasibly be redescribed interms of lower-level properties.

Microrealization-robust causal relations: The causalrelations in which some of the system’s higher-level propertiesstand are robust to changes in their lower-level realization.

An example they give is the “democratic peace hypothesis”(2013, 640), that democracies do not go to war with one another. Thisis typically explained in terms of internal structural features ofdemocracies that privilege norms of cooperation and compromise. Thereare, however, so many ways of instantiating these features that anexplanation at the lower level of description, such as that of theindividual, would be unable to articulate the relevant causalrelation.

6.4 Fallacies

The primary methodological reason, among social scientists, foradopting a commitment to methodological individualism was to cautionagainst certain fallacies that were quite common in 19^thcentury social science. Perhaps the greatest of these fallacies wasthe one based on a widespread tendency to ignore the potential forcollective action problems in groups, and thus to move far too easily“down” from an identification of a group interest to theascription of an individual interest. One way of avoiding suchfallacies was to force social scientists to look always atinteractions from the participant’s perspective, to see whatsort of preference structure governed his or her decisions.

At the same time, it is worth noting that too much emphasis on theaction-theoretic perspective can generate its own fallacies. One ofthe most powerful resources of sociological inquiry is precisely thecapacity to objectivate and aggregate social behavior usinglarge-scale data collection and analysis. The analysis of socialphenomena at this level can often generate results that arecounterintuitive from an action-theoretic perspective. Too muchemphasis on the action-theoretic perspective, because of its proximityto common sense, can generate false assumptions about what must begoing on at the aggregate level. As Arthur Stinchcombe observes in hisclassic work,Constructing Social Theories, constructing“demographic explanations” of social phenomena oftenrequires a break with our everyday interpretive perspective. Too muchfocus upon individual attitudes can lead us to make illegitimategeneralizations about the characteristics of these attitudes in groups(1968, 67). For example, the stability of a belief in a populationonly very rarely depends upon its stability in individuals. There canbe considerable volatility at the individual level, but so long as itruns with equal force both ways, its prevalence in the population willbe unchanged (68). If ten per cent of the population loses their faithin God every year, yet ten per cent have a conversion experience, thenthere will be no change in the overall level of religiosity. This mayseem obvious, but as Stinchcombe observes, it is “intuitivelydifficult for many people” (67), and inattention to it is acommon source of fallacious sociological thinking.

It is also worth noting that the action-theoretic level of analysis,with its focus on the intentional states of the agent, can generateconsiderable mischief when combined haphazardly with evolutionaryreasoning. The most common fallacy arises when theorists treat the“self-interest” of the individual, defined with respect tohis or her preferences, as a stand-in for the “fitness” ofa particular behavior (or phenotype), at either the biological or thecultural level, then assumes that there is some selection mechanism inplace, again at either the biological or cultural level, that willweed out forms of behavior that fail to advance the individual’sself-interest. The problem is that neither biological nor culturalevolution function in this way. It is an elementary consequence of“selfish gene” theory that biological evolution does notadvance the interests of the agent (the most conspicuous example beinginclusive fitness). For similar reasons, cultural evolution benefitsthe “meme” rather than the interests of the agent(Stanovich 2004). The evolutionary perspective imposes a much greaterbreak with the rationality-based perspective than many socialtheorists appreciate. Thus methodological individualism can sometimesimpede the sort of radical objectivation of social phenomena that theuse of certain sociotheoretic models or tools requires.

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