An impossibility result on methodological individualism

Datos Bibliográficos

ID21370592
AutoresHein Duijf (0000-0001-6936-306X, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, autor de correspondencia), Allard Tamminga (Universität Greifswald), Frederik Van De Putte (0000-0001-6828-0107, Ghent University)
Año2021
Volumen178
Número12
Páginas4165-4185
Fecha de publicación2021-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPhilosophical Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0031-8116 • E-ISSN: 1573-0883
EditorialSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s11098-021-01642-z
OpenAlexW3163736969
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas4
Referencias citadas35

Methodological individualists often claim that any social phenomenon can ultimately be explained in terms of the actions and interactions of individuals. Any Nagelian version of methodological individualism requires that there be bridge laws that translate social statements into individualistic ones. We show that Nagelian individualism can be put to logical scrutiny by making the relevant social and individualistic languages fully explicit and mathematically precise. In particular, we prove that the social statement that a group of (at least two) agents performs a deontically admissible group action cannot be expressed in a well-established deontic logic of agency that models every combination of actions, omissions, abilities, and obligations of finitely many individual agents

Action (physics) · Agency (philosophy) · Collectivism · Deontic logic · Epistemology · Impossibility · Individualism · Metaphysics · Methodological individualism · Philosophy of language · Political science · Rotation formalisms in three dimensions · Scrutiny · Sociology · Statement (logic) · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Game Theory and Applications · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science