An impossibility result on methodological individualism

Dados Bibliográficos

ID21370592
AutoresHein Duijf (0000-0001-6936-306X, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, autor correspondente), Allard Tamminga (Universität Greifswald), Frederik Van De Putte (0000-0001-6828-0107, Ghent University)
Ano2021
Volume178
Fascículo12
Páginas4165-4185
Data de publicação2021-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoPhilosophical Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0031-8116 • E-ISSN: 1573-0883
EditoraSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s11098-021-01642-z
OpenAlexW3163736969
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas4
Referências 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