Julie Zahle: Explanatory and Ontological Levels in the Methodological Individualism-Holism Debate

Resymé

"The methodological individualism-holism debate is commonly formulated in level terms. Accordingly, methodological individualists defend that view that social scientists should offer individual-level explanations only, whereas methodological holists maintain that social scientists should sometimes advance individual-level explanations; other times social-level explanations.

In this paper, I argue that the level-framework has only limited applicability to discussions of methodological individualism and holism: relative to supervenience, emergence, and other accounts of the social world as leveled, widely endorsed forms of methodological individualism resist formulation in individual-level terms. This point has largely gone unnoticed yet as I also show, it has a number of important implications for the ongoing methodological individualism-holism debate."