INTERROGATIONS #5 10/6/2004 Methodological Individualism 1. Matt Nichter The multiple realizability of macro-level types does not, in my opinion, prove that “the explanations provided by the macro-theory [in which such types occur] will not, EVEN IN PRINCIPLE, be reducible to a micro-account” (Reconstructing Marxism, p. 120, my emphasis). For multiply-realizable macro-level types may be reducible to highly-complex disjunctions of micro-level types. (Indeed in such cases the complex, disjunctive character of the reduction would be precisely what explains the multiple realizability of the macro-level type.) Though successful reductions may take the form of an identification of a single macro-type with a single micro-type (e.g. ‘water = H2O’), they need not be so simple. That said, I’m willing to bet a kidney that neither fitness, nor profitability, nor the aggregate rate of unemployment, nor the vast majority of social-scientific concepts can, in fact, be identified with disjunctions of micro-level types, however complex. In other words, I believe that methodological individualism, in the form defended by Elster, is clearly false. But, to reiterate, I don’t believe it is false merely as a result of the fact that multiply realizable macro-level types exist. Whether or not these multiply-realizable macro-level types are reducible to some complex disjunction of micro-types is itself an empirical question. [I am not sure if I can fully articulate my hesitation with your formulation. It is hard to imagine precisely what it would mean to say that a concept like “fitness” could be reduced to some highly complex set of disjunctions. What would that mean? We can make explanatory statements about fitness, in which fitness constitutes a real mechanism that explains things about evolution. I don’t really understand what it would mean to replace that simple claim with the virtually infinite number of micro-reductions of each-and-every instance of fitness. Perhaps you can explain this more clearly in class.] ‘Radical holism,’ as Wright, Levine, and Sober define it, is a straw man. The idea that “macro-social categories…are not merely irreducible to micro-level processes…[but are also] unaffected by these processes” is absurd. But one need not accept it to believe in, for example, sui generis “collective agency.” To consider just one possibility: if one takes an instrumentalist view of the practice of belief attribution (a la Daniel Dennett’s ‘intentional stance’), the ascription of beliefs and other ostensibly ‘mental’ phenomena to various kinds of group may be perfectly legitimate. [You’ll have to explain more fully what you mean, precisely, by an “instrumentalist view of the practice of belief attribution.” I am sure that there areSociology 915 Interrogations #5. Methodological Individualism 2philosophical positions about explanation in which such an attribution would not just be a shorthand for some more complex claims about the intentionality of the participants in the group, but surely in a realist philosophy this would not be the case. To attribute an “intention” to a group would mean that this would have to constitute a mechanism generating group actions. That does seems sloppy. Such views certainly run contrary to common sense (since groups do not have minds) and may well be false, but they are not merely the product of intellectual “sloppiness” or “rhetorical excess.” 2. Wayne Au I find it difficult to comment on this week’s readings, mainly because I picked up Elster’s piece first (randomly), read it, and had my stomach turn in the process. His chapter seemed to be full of what I personally would characterize as misreads of Marx’s texts and thinking/analysis that is all around generally non-dialectical. [He is self-consciously “non-dialectical” because he believes that “dialects” is an incoherent position (on the grounds that it is ultimately teleological and fails to specify mechanisms.] To criticize Elster one should do more than point out it is undialectical; it is necessary to show where he encounters explanatory failure by virtue of his rejection of “dialectics.”] That some theorists can claim both Marxism and methodological individualism in the same stroke seems highly inconsistent and politically questionably to say the least. [What he really says is something slightly different: “what is of enduring value and explanatory relevance in Marx are those elements that can be formulated in methodological individualist terms.” That may still be wrong, of course, but it is not transparently unsatisfactory.] This does all point to an issue too big to deal with here and beyond the scope of the class: Just what makes a Marxist a Marxist? Or more relevantly, what general properties constitute a Marxist type that allows for the particular token of Elster’s (or Sensat’s for that matter) methodological individualism? I always hold dialectical materialism as my bottom line, but clearly that is just my token of Marxism amongst a bevy of others. [Elster would probably say that the question “what must one believe to be a Marxist?” is a silly question. The question should be “what ideas linked to Marx remain powerful and useful”. The other question is one about doctrines not scientific theories.] Thinking about types and tokens dialectically, does a type at one level of analysis become a token at a different, “higher” level of analysis? And vice versa? [Tokens are concrete instances of types – types are always more abstract than tokes. My dog Ozzie is a token instance of the general category “Dog”. This I not the same as micro-macro. “Toke”/”Type” is one way of talking about the problem of levels of absraction – from very concrete to very abstract. I am not sure that the actual term “toke” is used for every case in which one specifies a concrete instance of some more abstract category, however. I don’t think, for example, that “breeds” of dogs are treated as token-instances of the more abstract category “dog.” A token-dog is a specific concrete dog – like Ozzie-- not simply a less abstract category than “dog.”] Meaning that, given the above discussion of different tokens of Marxism for instance, can’t we think of Marxism generally as one token of political/economic theory asSociology 915 Interrogations #5. Methodological Individualism 3representative