Friday,
15 October 2004
On Reductionism in the
Philosophy of Social Science: The Individualism-Holism Debate
Radu Dudau, University of Iasi, Romania
12:05 pm, 817R Cathedral of Learning
Abstract: Ontological naturalism is often
thought to concur with the reductionist idea that our epistemic
goals are best furthered when explanations concern phenomena that
are reduced to their most basic ontological constituents.
In the social sciences, reductionism is promoted through the individualist
claim that the social world can be thoroughly explained in terms
of the actions of individuals. I argue that this reductionist
injunction rests on a conflation of metaphysics and epistemology
and distinguish several kinds of individualism. I further
discuss various argumentative lines against reductionism in the
social sciences.
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