Download or read book Methodological Individualism and Holism Two Views One Purpose written by Werner Kieser and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2015-04-17 with total page 51 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Master's Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Philosophy - Theoretical (Realisation, Science, Logic, Language), grade: pass, The Open University, language: English, abstract: This work deals with the philosophy of social explanation. The main topic is the supposed antagonism between methodological individualism and holism. After an overview and the outline of the thesis, the contents, strengths and weaknesses of methodical individualism and holism are explained. The necessity of considering cognitions and achievements of the philosophy of the mind in order to progress is shown. The conclusion amounts to a synthesis of methodological individualism and holism with the inclusion of the intentional stance as a suggestion for a more productive manner in which to explain and predict social phenomena.

Download or read book Rethinking the Individualism Holism Debate written by Julie Zahle and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-06-05 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of papers investigates the most recent debates about individualism and holism in the philosophy of social science. The debates revolve mainly around two issues: firstly, whether social phenomena exist sui generis and how they relate to individuals. This is the focus of discussions between ontological individualists and ontological holists. Secondly, to what extent social scientific explanations may and should, focus on individuals and social phenomena respectively. This issue is debated amongst methodological holists and methodological individualists. In social science and philosophy, both issues have been intensively discussed and new versions of the dispute have appeared just as new arguments have been advanced. At present, the individualism/holism debate is extremely lively and this book reflects the major positions and perspectives within the debate. This volume is also relevant to debates about two closely related issues in social science: the micro-macro debate and the agency-structure debate. This book presents contributions from key figures in both social science and philosophy, in the first such collection on this topic to be published since the 1970s.

Download or read book Modes of Individualism and Collectivism written by John O'Neill and published by Heinemann Educational Publishers. This book was released on 1973 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: O'Neill, J. Scientism, historicism and the problem of rationality.--Hayek, F.A. From Scientism and the study of society.--Popper, K.R. From The poverty of historicism.--Brodbeck, M. On the philosophy of the social sciences.--Gewirth, A. Subjectivism and objectivism in the social sciences.--Rudner, R.S. Philosophy and social science.--Gewirth, A. Can men change the laws of social science?--Watkins, J.W.N. Ideal types and historical explanation.--Watkins, J.W.N. Historical explanation in the social sciences.--Watkins, J.W.N. Methodological individualism: a reply.--Agassi, J. Methodological individualism.--Scott, K.J. Methodological and epistemological individualism.--Mandelbaum, M. Societal facts.--Mandelbaum, M. Societal laws.--Gellner, E.A. Explanations in history.--Goldstein, L.J. The inadequacy of the principle of methodological individualism.--Goldstein, L.J. Two theses of methodological individualism.--Brodbeck, M. Methodological individualisms: definition and reduction.--Danto, A.C. Methodological individualism and methodological socialism.--Bibliography (p. 339-346).

Download or read book Cognitive Autonomy and Methodological Individualism written by Francesco Di Iorio and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-05-28 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Di Iorio offers a new approach to Hayek’s Sensory Order, linking neuroscience to the old Verstehen tradition and to contemporary theories of self-organizing systems; this should be on the reading list of everyone who is interested in Hayek’s thought.” Barry Smith University at Buffalo, editor of The Monist “This impressive and well-researched book breaks new ground in our understanding of F.A. Hayek and of methodological individualism more generally. It shows that methodological individualism sanctions neither an atomistic view of society nor a mechanical determinism. The book carefully analyzes an important tradition in the social sciences, and compares it to many important philosophical, sociological and economic systems of thought. This is an enlightening book for all scholars interested in the methodological problems of the social sciences.” Mario J. Rizzo New York University “One of Hayek’s most important contributions is his linking of complex methodological individualism, which deals with the emergence of spontaneous orders and unintended collective structures in complex self-organizing social systems, with a cognitive psychology. What makes Francesco Di Iorio’s book of great interest is that, by building on Hayek’s seminal book The Sensory Order, it deepens the connections between cognition and rules of just conduct, taking into account relevant theories on subjectivity and consciousness such as phenomenology, hermeneutics and enactivism.” Jean Petitot École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, EHESS, Paris “In this thoughtful and enlightening book Francesco Di Iorio uses Hayek’s cognitive psychology as the starting point for investigation of the relationship between the autonomy of the agent and socio-cultural influences within methodological individualism. The book provides an illuminating and innovative analysis of a central issue in the philosophy of social science by setting Hayek’s view on mind and action in fruitful relation to approaches such as Gadamer’s hermeneutics, Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, Varela’s and Maturana’s enaction, Boudon’s interpretative sociology, Popper’s fallibilism and Mises’ praxeology. One of the most interesting aspects of this book is its argument that hermeneutics and fallibilism refer not to two different methods but to the same one.” Dario Antiseri Emeritus Professor at LUISS University, Rome “Francesco Di Iorio’s book explores, in an original way, the connections between Hayek’s methodological individualism and his fascinating idea that human mind is both an interpretative device and a self-organizing system. It is a brilliant, clearly written work, characterized by a certain intellectual courage, which makes a remarkable contribution to the sociology of knowledge.” Gérald Bronner Paris Diderot University

Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of Methodological Individualism written by Nathalie Bulle and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-12-27 with total page 751 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While methodological individualism is a fundamental approach within the social sciences, it is often misunderstood. This highlights the need for a discursive and up-to-date reference work analyzing this approach’s classic arguments and assumptions in the light of contemporary issues in sociology, economics and philosophy. This two-volume handbook presents the first comprehensive overview of methodological individualism. Chapters discuss historical and contemporary debates surrounding this central approach within the social sciences, as well as cutting edge developments related to the individualist tradition with philosophical and scientific implications. Bringing together multiple contributions from the world’s leading experts on this important tradition of theorizing, this collective endeavor provides teachers, researchers and students in sociology, economics, and philosophy with a reliable and critical understanding of the founding principles, key thinkers and intellectual development of MI since the late 19th century. ​

Download or read book Individualism Holism and the Central Dilemma of Sociological Theory written by Jiří Šubrt and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2019-05-13 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines individualism and holism, the two interpretive perspectives that have divided sociological theory into two camps, examines attempts to overcome this antinomy and sets out a new approach to resolving this dilemma via ‘critical reconfigurationism’.

Download or read book Forms of Explanation written by Alan Garfinkel and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes one explanation better than another? How can we tell when an explanation has really answered our question? In a lively and readable discussion, Garfinkel argues that the key to understanding an explanation is to discover what question is really being answered. He then suggests criteria for a good explanation and goes on to examine some classic explanations in social and natural science.

Download or read book Varieties Of Social Explanation written by Daniel Little and published by Westview Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Professor Little presents an introduction to the philosophy of social science with an emphasis on the central forms of explanation in social science: rational-intentional, causal, functional, structural, materialist, statistical and interpretive. The book is very strong on recent developments, particularly in its treatment of rational choice theory, microfoundations for social explanation, the idea of supervenience, functionalism, and current discussions of relativism.Of special interest is Professor Little's insight that, like the philosophy of natural science, the philosophy of social science can profit from examining actual scientific examples. Throughout the book, philosophical theory is integrated with recent empirical work on both agrarian and industrial society drawn from political science, sociology, geography, anthropology, and economics.Clearly written and well structured, this text provides the logical and conceptual tools necessary for dealing with the debates at the cutting edge of contemporary philosophy of social science. It will prove indispensible for philosophers, social scientists and their students.

Download or read book The Origin and Evolution of Cultures written by Robert Boyd and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Origin and Evolution of Cultures presents articles based on two notions. That culture is crucial for understanding human behaviour; and that culture is part of biology. Interest in this collection will span anthropology, psychology, economics, philosophy, and political science.

Download or read book The Institutions of Meaning written by Vincent Descombes and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-11 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Holism maintains that a phenomenon is more than the sum of its parts. Yet analysis--a mental process crucial to comprehension--involves dismantling the whole to grasp it piecemeal and relationally. Wading through such quandaries, Vincent Descombes guides readers to a deepened appreciation of the entity that enables understanding: the human mind.

Download or read book Group Agency written by Christian List and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-07 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are companies, churches, and states genuine agents? How do we explain their behaviour? Can we treat them as accountable for their actions? List and Pettit offer original arguments, grounded in cutting-edge work on social choice, economics, and philosophy, to show there really are group agents, over and above the individual agents who compose them.

Download or read book Holism and Evolution written by Jan Christiaan Smuts and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Mind and Body in Early China written by Edward Slingerland and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-23 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mind and Body in Early China critiques Orientalist accounts of early China as the radical, "holistic" other. The idea that the early Chinese held the "strong" holist view, seeing no qualitative difference between mind and body, has long been contradicted by traditional archeological and qualitative textual evidence. New digital humanities methods, along with basic knowledge about human cognition, now make this position untenable. A large body of empirical evidence suggests that "weak" mind-body dualism is a psychological universal, and that human sociality would be fundamentally impossible without it. Edward Slingerland argues that the humanities need to move beyond social constructivist views of culture, and embrace instead a view of human cognition and culture that integrates the sciences and the humanities. Our interpretation of texts and artifacts from the past and from other cultures should be constrained by what we know about the species-specific, embodied commonalities shared by all humans. This book also attempts to broaden the scope of humanistic methodologies by employing team-based qualitative coding and computer-aided "distant reading" of texts, while also drawing upon our current best understanding of human cognition to transform our basic starting point. It has implications for anyone interested in comparative religion, early China, cultural studies, digital humanities, or science-humanities integration.

Download or read book Experiments in Holism written by Ton Otto and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-08-02 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Experiments in Holism Experiments in Holism: Theory and Practice in Contemporary Anthropology presents a series of essays that critically examine the ongoing relevance of holism and its theoretical and methodological potential in today’s world. Contributions from a diverse collection of leading anthropologists reveal how recent critiques of the holistic approach have not led to its wholesale rejection, but rather to a panoply of experiments that critically reassess and reemploy holism. The essays focus on aspects of holism including its utilization in current ethnographic research, holistic considerations in cultural anthropology, the French structuralist tradition, the predominantly English tradition of social anthropology, and many others. Collectively, the essays show how holism is simultaneously central to, and problematically a part of, the theory and practice of anthropology. Experiments in Holism reveals how contemporary attempts to rescale and retool anthropology entail new ways of coming to terms with anthropology’s heritage of holism, seeking to obviate its current excesses while recapturing its critical potential to meet the challenges of our contemporary world.

Download or read book Individualism Versus Holism written by Alban Bouvier and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The conceptual relationship between "individualism" and "holism" is one of the most vexing issues in the social sciences. Individualism and holism (from the Greek holos, meaning "whole") can be used to characterize both societies and methodologies. While these issues are related, the distinction between them is quite complex. This entry focuses on the second issue and addresses the first only indirectly. Methodological individualism (MI) emerged in the social sciences in the late 19th century as a critical viewpoint. Roughly speaking, MI claims that one should always consider social phenomenaincluding groups, institutions, and social structures (e.g., social stratification)as products of human actions and interactions. As a consequence, one should never assume that collective concepts, such as "German nation," "Roman Catholic Church," "Soviet Communism," or "Western capitalism," ...

Download or read book Methodological Individualism written by Lars Udehn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-11-01 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the history of social thought, there has been a constant battle over the true nature of society, and the best way to understand and explain it. This volume covers the development of methodological individualism, including the individualist theory of society from Greek antiquity to modern social science. It is a comprehensive and systematic treatment of methodological individualism in all its manifestations.

Download or read book Individualism in Social Science written by Rajeev Bhargava and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2008 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Methodological individualism, for which all social phenomena must be explained in terms of what individuals think, choose, and do, is widely considered to be true. By challenging key individualist assumptions, Bhargava questions this view and rehabilitates a non-individualist methodology which permits an independent study of social practices and a context-specific inquiry into the beliefs and actions of individuals." "This book will be indispensable to students and scholars of political science, philosophy, sociology, history, and anthropology."--BOOK JACKET.