Social Theory

Bibliographic Data

ID23725971
AuthorsPhilip Pettit (0000-0002-0355-3896, corresponding author)
Year1996
Pages228-283
Publication date1996-09-19
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueThe common mind (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University PressNew York (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/0195106458.003.0005
OpenAlexW4235331532
ISBN9780195106459
LanguageEN
References cited156

What are the implications of holistic individualism for social explanation? This chapter argues that it points us toward a distinctive picture of individual‐level interpretation, under which we seek out the contents of people's thoughts – the reasons from which they implicitly or explicitly reason their way to action. It then goes on to show that nevertheless, it makes room for explanation of a sort that prescinds from such thoughts: structural and historicist explanation, which goes to high‐level or remote determinants; and rational‐choice explanation, which invokes a sort of self‐interest that has no obvious presence in day‐to‐day reasoning. Explanatory pluralism or ecumenism is quite consistent, then, with the ontological picture developed earlier.

Action (physics) · Epistemology · Historicism · Interpretation (philosophy) · Linguistics · Methodological individualism · Pluralism (philosophy) · Rationality · Sociology · sort · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Mathematics · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Psychology · Social Psychology

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