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Methodological Individualisms: Definition and Reduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

May Brodbeck
May Brodbeck*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
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Extract

The Reformation, it has been said, changed the course of history. Most people would agree. At the very least, agree or not, they would hold the proposition to be one worth considering. They would be unlikely to reject it out of hand as incapable of being either true or false because it had no meaning. For, of course, “everybody knows” what the Reformation was and, elaborating a little, we can make clear what we meant by changing the course of history. Yet it is just statements of this sort that cause much methodological wrangling. Their controversial nature is due, in large part, to controversy over the status of such terms as “the Reformation” and, generally, group or macroscopic concepts. Since not only history, but sociology, political science, social psychology, and economics also widely use concepts referring to groups and their properties, rather than to individuals, the controversy has wide ramifications. And because there are, as it were, so many vested interests involved, the dispute also tends to acquire an ideological tone not altogether consonant with dispassionate inquiry. Bad temper and mutual recrimination in scientific discussion are generally a sign that ideological defenses are being shored up. Just possibly, a philosopher whose substantive concern in any empirical field is minimal may hope to be considered above the battle, as one who, having no private axe to grind, can be concerned only with clarifying the logical issues involved. In this hope, I wish to explore as systematically as possible the tangled web of issues woven about the status of group concepts and their relationship to those referring to individuals. Intertwined in this controversy are two different issues. One has to do with the nature of the terms or concepts of social science; the other with the nature of its laws and theories and their relationship in turn to those in other areas. The first issue is one of meaning, the second of reduction. Success in unsnarling the various strands of this web may alone help abate the fury of the controversy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , January 1958 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1958

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Footnotes

†

This paper was written during the tenure of a Faculty Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council. I am indebted to the Council for the time thus granted me.

References

1 A good discussion of holism and related issues can be found in “Exceptionalism in Geography: A Methodological Examination” by F. K. Schaefer, Annals of Ass'n. of Amer. Geographers, XLIII, 1953.

2 “On the Philosophy of the Social Sciences”, Philosophy of Science, 21, 1954.

3 “Methodological Individualism: A Reply”, J. W. N. Watkins, Philosophy of Science, 22, 1955.

4 Watkins, op. cit., p. 60.

5 Watkins, op. cit., p. 61.

6 For a discussion of the relationship between psychology and physiology, see my “On the Philosophy of the Social Sciences”, op. cit., pp. 148 ff.

7 I take the terminology of perfect vs. imperfect knowledge and the accompanying criteria from Gustav Bergmann's Philosophy of Science, University of Wisconsin Press, 1957. I am grateful to Professor Bergmann for permitting me to use the manuscript of this work in which a more technical elaboration of the relevant distinctions will be found.

8 In the jargon of the trade, statistical variables are usually called “chance,” stochastic, or random, meaning any magnitude, like “yearly number of accidents,” which takes different values with definite probabilities. A philosopher aware of the woes associated with words like “chance” is impelled to put the technical term in quotation marks. It means only what it is said to mean, of course, and has nothing to do with “freedom” in the sense of uncaused.

9 For a more detailed discussion of composition rules, see Bergmann, op. cit., Ch. III.

10 This is in contrast with the connection between psychology and physiology. In this case, the two areas are joined by cross-sectional laws, that is empirical laws connecting a physiological variable with an undefined psychological (behavioral) variable. If these laws and the appropriate physiological composition rules are known, then independent discovery of psychological laws would also be unnecessary. But psychological concepts, unlike group terms, would not be dispensable. The logical pattern of the reduction in each case is radically different.

11 Watkins' misunderstanding (op. cit.) of my argument (op. cit.) that holism is not entailed by the possibility of an autonomous group science stems from confusing these two positions.