On Methodological Individualism

Brennan Notes August 2015

1. What IS MI?
a. It purports to be a methodological not an ethical claim
something about how the social sciences are best
pursued. So it might be useful to distinguish between
normative and methodological individualism say, a
Marxian might hold that social phenomena are best
explained in terms of class theory and also think that
the relevant social outcomes should be evaluated in
terms of how individuals are treated. Equally an
economist might explain the existence of a tariff in MI
terms and evaluate its effects in terms of nonindividualist norms.
The foregoing distinction is a logical one not an
empirical one: it may be true that many (most) MI-ists
are also normative individualists.
b. MI might be helpfully understood by what it takes itself
to be against specifically, attributing properties of
individuals to groups (so to classes, to nations, to
universities etc etc). This would not deny that groups
can act in accord with member preferences but that
there is no necessary reason to assume so. This is the
force of the pd which forces a distinction between our
interests and the interests of each. Note that one can
be against this form of presumptive aggregation without
denying that in some cases the exercise might be
explanatorily useful (eg an empirically robust claim
about the relation between aggregates that lacks
micro foundations.)
c. Nozick makes the important point that MI is
reductionist only within limits specifically to the level
of the individual unit of consciousness (as Buchanan
puts it). Reduction to the smallest possible particles
(cells, or genes or phenotypes or atoms) is rejected: one
specific aspect of that rejection is to treat choice (and
freedom of choice) in folk terms rather than reducible
to brain chemistry.
d. What is the justification then for the individualist turn?
Hayek (early H) following Weber suggests that there is a
special level of ah-ha that derives from the fact that
the inhabitants of the models are like us: we can see
the phenomena we study as participants as well as
observers. We can understand the actions in terms of
inter-subjectively accessible properties (quite distinct
from the way in which we understand natural
phenomena).

Not all economists think this is a good thing. They

mistrust the risk of projection. Many emphasize the
relative unknowability of others. Many emphasize that
economics doesnt deal with real individuals but a
kind of amalgam of human properties that leaves us
with an undifferentiated agent largely bereft of her
particular psychological properties. (See for example
Beckers Nobel lecture).
This is in some ways connected to the behaviourist turn
in economics the only evidence that counts is what
agents do, not what they say! (So questionnaire data is
to be mistrusted!!)
A modest position here might be that relations between
persons are not like relations between a person and
nature even when nature responds predictably to
own choices. We cannot reason with a snake (though
there may be various kinds of interdependence of
action); we cannot search out mutually profitable deals
or hope to persuade. A further issuethat the other in a
human interaction makes some moral claims upon us,
ones that the snake does not (empirical claim if we see
two lions fighting we feel little impulse to intervene
whereas we might feel considerable impulse or at least
have evaluative reactions when there is a fight between
two humans).
Neglect of these features makes economics seem
autistic (?) a negation of the human in the human
sciences or the moral in the moral sciences. Issues
like eye-contact, imaginative sympathy and facility
with language (not vocabulary or grammar, but
comprehension and use of figurative speech) which look
to be hard-wired in non-autistic subjects are deficient
in autistic ones.
e. For certain purposes it is often useful to assume a
community of n identical agents but often salient
differences among the population are abstracted from,
so that heterogeneity (and signalling) have no place.
Sometimes this narrows predictive capacity since some
individuals will respond differently from others in ways
that are empirically or normatively relevant.
Of course the social sciences are committed to certain
broad regularities but (say) sympathy and desire for
esteem may be treated as common without committing
to a specification of the content of esteem-makers.
2. Heath distinguished MI from atomism. He associates the
latter with Hobbes. In many ways, atomism looks closer to
homo economicus than MI does. But Heath also describes
Hobbesianism here as the idea that everything social reduces
to human psychology. Does this follow?

3. An extreme conception of MI involves the denial of group

agents for explanatory purposes. There is no such thing as
society: only individuals (?) But some aggregates might have
properties like agents (eg a bench of judges in that they try
to ensure that the benchs verdicts are consistent with the
benchs beliefs. Here, MI might be useful to illustrate the
difficulties.
Consider a breach of trust case. There are two aspects to the
issue before the court: was there a contract? Was there a
breach? All judges hold that if there was a contract and a
breach then one should find for the plaintiff.
The discursive dilemma
judge
Contract?
Breach?
verdict
A
yes
yes
plaintiff
B
no
yes
defendant
C
yes
no
defendant
majority
yes
yes
???
There seems to be a conflict between verdict and reasons
which the bench will have reason to resolve someone will
have to change her position either on the reasons or the
verdict.
If the bench does this it imposes rationality (consistency on
the relation between legal reasoning and verdict) then we
might say that it is acting like a collective agent. A cabinet,
a board of directors, etc might do the same thing (even where
they dont have to provide public reasons).
In such cases, might we not be tempted to treat the collective
entity as an agent.
We already do this in economics by reference to the firm
which is standardly taken to maximize profit.
[How might we profitably decompose the firm into the
individuals who make it up?]
4. a slightly different motive for MI might be a concern to focus
on the structure of interaction between individuals (agents).
We can catalogue the various relations between agents in
terms of interesting cases battle of the sexes; prisoners
dilemma; stag hunt; prisoners delight; pure coordination
games etc etc.
It is true that you need agents to do this but perhaps not
individual agents. Of course, in some cases it may help to
reduce the interaction to individual levels but you might
want to treat the interaction as a nested game so that there
are relations between individuals and between aggregates
simultaneously. For example, international negotiations (war?
free-trade agreements?) might include nations interacting but
subject to domestic political constraints so members of an
army might be related via a pd to their fellow soldiers and by
a game of chicken with the opposing army, so that predicted

reactions of ones fellow-soldiers and of the opposing armys

soldiers is necessary to determine what it is best for each to
do.
5. It is to be emphasized that what MI does is precisely NOT to
attribute the properties of individuals to super-individual
agents (eg the market has spoken!!!). On the contrary, the
issue is to disaggregate any collective entities into component
individuals.
6. A description of functionalist explanations
X has a given consequence, Z
Z is desirable from the point of view of Ms flourishing
X is to be explained by its effects on M (it is
functional for M)
(so A is to be explained by its causal upshots at some
supra-individual level)
eg the belief that social mobility in the US is high is functional
for its relatively low-tax/low-welfare policy stance; so this fact
explains the resilience of the illusion.
(Elsters stance here this is no explanation at all. The
explanatory story will tell us what mechanism operates to
sustain the illusion).
7. Could Arrows impossibility theorem be advanced as an MI
proposition? ie the fact that individual rankings have certain
properties (transitivity, completeness, independence of
irrelevant alternatives) does not mean that a genuinely
aggregate ranking (one that is Paretian and non-dictatorial)
can have those properties.