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	Methodological individualism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Methodological individualism is a philosophical method aimed at explaining and understanding broad society-wide developments as the aggregation of decisions by individuals (and a version of individualism in general).
		Methodological individualism is opposed to, for example, the comparison of experimental and control groups of individuals, because individualism denies that a collectivity is an autonomous decision-maker, and demands that the social sciences ground their theories in individual action.
		Methodological individualism is an essential part of modern neoclassical economics, which usually analyses collective action in terms of "rational", utility-maximizing individuals.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Methodological_Individualist (799 words)

	Methodological individualism -- Facts, Info, and Encyclopedia article (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-29)
		Methodological individualism is a philosophical method aimed at explaining and understanding broad society-wide developments as the aggregation of decisions by individuals (and a version of (A belief in the importance of the individual and the virtue of self-reliance and personal independence) individualism in general).
		One early version of methodological individualism can be seen in the writings of (Scottish historian who wrote about the French Revolution (1795-1881)) Thomas Carlyle, in which human history is seen as a collection of the biographies of (additional info and facts about heroes) heroes.
		Methodological individualism is an essential part of modern (additional info and facts about neoclassical) neoclassical (The branch of social science that deals with the production and distribution and consumption of goods and services and their management) economics, which usually analyses collective action in terms of " (additional info and facts about rational) rational", utility-maximizing individuals.
	www.absoluteastronomy.com /encyclopedia/m/me/methodological_individualism.htm (824 words)

	Methodological individualism and cognitivism
		Methodological individualism is standardly contrasted with holism, according to which social phenomena can be explained only by invoking the behavior or the properties of entities which are irreducibly supra-individual, such as culture or institutions.
		Individuals (whose behavior is also, of course, relevant to explanation) are the locus at which many of these infra-individual processes take place, but they are not the agents of these processes.
		A methodological individualist should, it seems, grant that a causal explanation of the distribution of representations in human groups, if it were possible, would exhaust the causal explanation of the subject matter of a social sciences.
	www.dan.sperber.com /individ.htm (3890 words)

	20th WCP: The Not-so-trivial Truth of Methodological Individualism
		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.
		The relation between a social entity and the individuals 'involved' in it is not a part-whole relation as is the relation between a cell and its composing molecules.
		Social scientists have often fought methodological individualism because it implied, in their eyes, an unacceptable reduction of social science to psychology, or the subsumption of social phenomena under psychological theories.
	www.bu.edu /wcp/Papers/Scie/ScieFran.htm (3098 words)

	Methodological Individualism
		Thus methodological individualism is a slightly misleading term, since the goal is not to privilege the individual over the collective in social-scientific explanation, but rather to privilege the action-theoretic level of explanation.
		Methodological individualism, on the other hand, does not involve a commitment to any particular claim about the content of the intentional states that motivate individuals, and thus remains open to the possibility that human psychology may have an irreducibly social dimension.
		Methodological individualism became important, not as a way of avoiding the political thought-crime of “collectivism,” but rather as a way of avoiding demonstrably fallacious inferences about the dynamics of collective action.
	plato.stanford.edu /entries/methodological-individualism (6597 words)

	Methodological individualism - Encyclopedia, History, Geography and Biography
		In politics, methodological individualism underlies modern liberalism, especially its laissez-faire variant.
		Some methodological individualists claim that they have no political opinion – rather, that they are just rational and using "common sense".
		Methodological individualism, In social sciences, Critiques, Famous methodological individualists, External links and Other Sources.
	www.arikah.com /encyclopedia/Methodological_individualism (755 words)

	Read about Methodological individualism at WorldVillage Encyclopedia. Research Methodological individualism and learn ... (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-29)
		Methodological individualism is a philosophical orientation toward explaining broad society-wide developments as the accumulation of decisions by individuals.
		statistical analysis, the comparison of experimental and control groups of individuals, because individualism denies that a collectivity is an autonomous decision maker, and demands that the social sciences ground their theory in individual action.
		Bismarcks, 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.
	encyclopedia.worldvillage.com /s/b/Methodological_individualism (403 words)

	Encyclopedia: Methodological individualism (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-29)
		In the writings of Thomas Carlyle, for example, human history is seen as a collection of the biographies of heroes, see philosophy of history.
		More broadly, methodological individualism is opposed to, for example, statistical analysis, the comparison of experimental and control groups of individuals, because individualism denies that a collectivity is an autonomous decision maker, and demands that the social sciences ground their theory in individual action.
		historicism, social class as a determinant of individual behavior, and the postmodern idea of social construction, as a collective determinant of how individuals think.
	www.nationmaster.com /encyclopedia/Methodological-individualism (381 words)

	McClamrock: "Methodological Individualism..."
		Methodological individualism (for Fodor) is the claim that psychological states are to be individuated only with respect to their causal powers -- roughly, the idea of Fodor's "methodological point" above.
		I've taken it that individualism is a completely general methodological principle in science; one which follows simply from the scientist's goal of causal explanation....
		Individualism alone would then allow for the possibility of a psychological taxonomy which was relational, as long as those relations are "causally affecting the object" -- i.e.
	www.albany.edu /~ron/papers/methindi.html (4663 words)

	HUMAN IGNORANCE AND SOCIAL ENGINEERING (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-29)
		Mises explained, "Methodological individualism, far from contesting the significance of such collective wholes, considers it as one of its main tasks to describe and to analyze their becoming and their disappearing, their changing structures, and their operation.
		In other words, methodological individualism was a powerful analytical tool that could be used to discover the principles along which a group of people interacted with each other in specific contexts.
		Methodological individualism removed the collective wholes from an objective realm ruled by scientific principles and returned it to the subjective realm of human judgment and preference.
	www.zetetics.com /mac/soceng.htm (3070 words)

	Chapter II. The Epistemological Problems of the Sciences of Human Action
		Methodological individualism, far from contesting the significance of such collective wholes, considers it as one of its main tasks to describe and to analyze their becoming and their disappearing, their changing structures, and their operation.
		It is the meaning that marks one action as the action of an individual and another action as the action of the state or of the municipality.
		The endeavors of psychology to dissolve the Ego and to unmask it as an illusion are idle.
	www.mises.org /humanaction/chap2sec4.asp (1324 words)

	Search Encyclopedia.com (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-29)
		Such philosophers as John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau popularized the conception of the individual as having certain natural rights that could not be denied or taken away by society or by...
		liberalism -> Origins Neither individualism nor the belief that freedom is a primary political good are immutable laws of history.
		Only in the Western world in the last several centuries have they assumed such importance as social factors that they could be blended into a political creed.
	www.encyclopedia.com /searchpool.asp?target=Methodological+individualism (496 words)

	Austrian School: Individualism (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-29)
		The opposite of this is methodological holism, which holds that groups have traits, behaviors and outcomes that cannot be understood by reducing them to their individual parts.
		Furthermore, individual employees who are acting on delegated authority are attempting to act in the interest of their employer (usually a corporation, not an entrepreneur), which depends on their model of that abstract entity.
		In debates between methodological individualism and holism, the winner that usually emerges is a compromise position: we are both individuals and members of the group.
	www.huppi.com /kangaroo/L-ausmi.htm (1402 words)

	Metaeconomics : Economics, Ethics and Norms : University of Nebraska - Lincoln, USA
		Individuals build norm-based networks, with such networks representing how the economy is embedded in society (and how society is embedded in the natural ecosystem).
		Metaeconomics sees the individual being influenced by relationships and by the claims of various communities of interest (trade associations, relationship sales among buyers and sellers, community development groups, farm/ranch and environmental organizations as well family and friends).
		Metaeconomics continues the focus on the individual as the ultimate chooser, the well-spring of action, while still recognizing the empathic tendencies (with the moral dimension a subset arising in the empathic field of utility) of each individual, through the expression of commitment and will.
	www.ianr.unl.edu /agecon/lynne/metaover.htm (1465 words)

	Glossary for Human Action through Chapter 2 - David Bryant's Pages
		methodological apriorism: A necessary feature of praxeological investigations dictated by man's inability to imagine action that does not conform to the fundamental logical relations, to the principle of causality, and to the teleological principle.
		methodological dualism: A feature of praxeological investigations necessitated by the fact that human actions are inexplicable in purely physical terms.
		Universalists consider some social aggregate to be an articulated whole to which the interests of the individual must be subordinated, and therefore the ends of society can only be achieved by forcing individuals to fulfill the functions prescribed for them by the political community.
	davidbryant.home.att.net /glos01.htm (3357 words)

	Elster, Jon (1982), Marxism, Funtionalism, and Game Theory: The Case for Methodological Individualism, Theory and ...
		By methodological individualism I mean the doctrine that all social phenomena (their structure and their change) are in principle explicable only in terms of individuals - their properties, goals, and beliefs.
		If an individual acts in a way that he knows to be in his interest, we may conclude that he acted for the sake of that interest.
		In his polemic against methodological individualism Taylor asserts there are two forms of meaning that are irreducibly nonsubjective: the intersubjective meanings and the common meanings.
	www.geocities.com /hmelberg/elster/AR82MFGT.HTM (13400 words)

	Behavior and Philosophy: Methodological individualism and vertical integration in the social sciences
		Professor Jones (1996) recently described in the pages of this journal what I consider to be a false dichotomy between methodological individualism (reductionism) and methodological collectivism (holism).
		Jones wisely does not claim that social events cannot be reduced to propositions about individuals participating in them, but he does declare that nonindividualistic accounts are preferable and that "we have no good grounds for preferring individualistic theories." He also claimsquite wrongly-that methodological individualists "claim that only accounts using individualist accounts are legitimate" (1996, p.
		For example, the meaning of a poem cannot be deduced from an examination of the individual words and letters from which it is composed.
	newssearch.looksmart.com /p/articles/mi_qa3814/is_199710/ai_n8773720 (1294 words)

	Austrian Economics, by Deborah L. Walker: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics: Library of Economics and Liberty
		The major cornerstones of Austrian economics are methodological individualism, methodological subjectivism, and an emphasis on processes rather than on end states.
		Although Austrian economists are not alone in their methodological individualism, they do not stress the maximizing behavior of individuals in the same way as mainstream neoclassical economists.
		The idea that an individual's values, plans, expectations, and understanding of reality are all subjective permeates the Austrian tradition and, along with an emphasis on change or processes, is the basis for their notion of economic efficiency.
	www.econlib.org /library/Enc/AustrianEconomics.html (2196 words)

	Methodological Individualism Encyclopedia Article, Definition, History, Biography (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-29)
		Looking For methodological individualism - Find methodological individualism and more at Lycos Search.
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		Look for methodological individualism - Find methodological individualism at one of the best sites the Internet has to offer!
	www.karr.net /search/encyclopedia/Methodological_individualism (943 words)

	There’s no such thing as society... only individuals and families (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-29)
		The market is not truly a place where individuals can act freely and without constraint, because markets are social institutions, and the parameters of legal behavior on the market are set by social agreement.
		The belief that humans are autonomous individuals leads to a logical error called the "fallacy of composition." This fallacy holds that aggregate behavior is the same as its individual parts.
		In the United States, where rugged individualism and self-reliance have always been part of the culture, the Great Depression was a staggering blow to the self-esteem of individuals who could no longer feed their families.
	www.huppi.com /kangaroo/L-nosociety.htm (2696 words)

	[Critical-Realism] Methodological Individualism andDeductive-Nomological Model (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-29)
		After this, the second > paragraph says: > >> In this manner, methodological individualism stipulates >> the material conditions for adequate explanation in the >> social sciences to complement the formal ones laid down >> by the deductive-nomological model.
		An attempted explanation in terms of individual characteristics or drives would probably fall foul of thte standard criticisms of psychologism, but the point is to look at the situation and the choices that the individuals make as a result of their appraisal of the situation and their plans and purposes.
		Moving to the analysis of patterns and trends in social and economic events, things like suicide and murder rates and the level of unemployment are seen as the outcome of a myriad of individual decisions and actions.
	lists.econ.utah.edu /pipermail/critical-realism/2005-May/000224.html (528 words)

	HUMANISM, ATOMISM, ORGANICISM, HOLISM, AND INDIVIDUALISM
		The sociological issue, usually termed as methodological individualism versus methodological holism, will be considered after the general question of wholes is discussed.
		Indeed, individual actions are not fully intelligible until the wholes of which the individual is a part are taken into account.
		Quite the contrary, holists may respond, it is methodological individualism that has undesirable sociopolitical consequences, leading to the excesses of unregulated capitalism and, at the extreme, anarchy.
	www.hawaii.edu /powerkills/DPF.CHAP33.HTM (4294 words)

	ERC/METU VI. International Conference on Economics (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-29)
		In this short article, we try to show that methodological individualism, the view that social theories must be grounded in the attitudes and behavior of individuals's meaning in Neo-Classical Economic Theory.
		To this end, we will introduce the hypothetical individuals who is chosen as an essential unit of the analysis, homo-economicus, and we mention foundations and functions of this choice.
		Lastly, we criticize Methodological individualism and the individuals chosen in Neo-Classical Economic Theory with respect to The Theory's effort to understand and to explain both economic facilities and society because of its inadequacy.
	www.econ.utah.edu /ehrbar/erc2002/abstracts/A390.html (166 words)

	Bibliography by Topic -- Hayek & 'Methodological Individualism'
		(Warning: Although most of the literature on 'methodological individualism' in Anglo-American discussions descends directly from Friedrich Hayek's work of the early 1940's, the literature on Hayek and 'methodological individualism' is particularly ill-informed and misleading on the topic of Friedrich Hayek's picture of the explanatory strategy and logical character of economics and social theory.
		Reprinted as "The Historical Individual" in Philosophical Analysis and History, edited by William Dray, 265-298.
		In Modes of Individualism and Collectivism, John O'Neill, 3-26.
	www.hayekcenter.org /friedrichhayek/bib-mi.htm (353 words)

	[Critical-Realism] Methodological Individualism and Deductive-Nomological Model (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-29)
		Methodological individualism says that in >>the social sciences this starting point must be the >>individual.
		This comes >after he has argued for an "ontological gap" between individuals and >structures, so there is a logic to it.
		In short methodological individualism denies the historical location of a problem and misses the realist ontology of critical realism altogether.
	lists.econ.utah.edu /pipermail/critical-realism/2005-May/000210.html (391 words)

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