The issue of methodological solipsism in the philosophy of mind and psychology has received enormous attention and discussion in the decade since the appearance Jerry Fodor's "Methodological Solipsism" [Fodor 1980]. But most of this discussion has focused on the consideration of the now infamous "Twin Earth" type examples and the problems they present for Fodor's notion of "narrow content". I think there is deeper and more general moral to be found in this issue, particularly in light of Fodor's more recent (...) defense of his view in Psychosemantics [Fodor 1987]. Underlying this discussion are questions about the nature and plausibility of the claim that scientific explanation should observe a constraint of methodological individualism . My goal in what follows is to bring out this more general problem in Fodor's "internalist" account of the mental. (shrink)

This paper suggests that libertarian and (related) contractarian ideas would be less vulnerable to certain forms of criticism if they would more carefully disentangle their legal and moral standards for the assess­ment of institutions from empirical, methodological, and epistemological assumptions about individualism and non-cognitivism. Holding apart several meanings of individualism different issues can be treated separately. It will be shown that the justification of libertarian norms raises some problems which are not too easily solved within a non-cognitivist approach. No attempt (...) to solve them is made subsequently but how far in principle the ‘argumentation possibility frontier’ might be shifted out for that purpose is outlined. In this respect the paper might be regarded as a companion to Viktor Vanberg’s brillant reconstruction of contractarian liberalism in this issue of Analyse & Kritik (pp. 113–149). (shrink)

Psychological individualism is motivated by two taxonomic principles: (i) that psychological states are individuated by their causal powers, and (ii) that causal powers supervene upon intrinsic physiological state. I distinguish two interpretations of individualism--the 'orthodox' and the 'alternative'--each of which is consistent with these motivating principles. I argue that the alternative interpretation is legitimately individualistic on the grounds that it accurately reflects the actual taxonomic practices of bona fide individualistic sciences. The classification of homeobox genes in developmental genetics provides an (...) illustration. When applied to the taxonomy of psychological kinds, alternative individualism has some surprising consequences. In particular, externalist taxonomies of thought are consistent with the alternative interpretation, and hence consistent with individualism. I conclude, on this basis, that the individualism/externalism dispute which has long preoccupied philosophy of psychology is an empty one. (shrink)

Against Individualism: A Confucian Rethinking of the Foundations of Morality, Politics, Family, and Religion presents Henry Rosemont’s reflection on possible Confucian-based avenues for considering solutions to contemporary moral, political, and spiritual problems. Rosemont contends that the ideologies of capitalist economies, which are based largely on competition, and belief in autonomous individuality, including abstract notions of human rights, are fundamentally unable to deal effectively with many of today’s most pressing issues. For example, he argues against appealing to universalist principles in an (...) attempt to dissolve ethical and political tensions between cultures and states. In accordance with this orientation, his work is then best judged on the contributions it makes to constructing new perspectives on the problems addressed rather than how accurately he represents any tradition. In fact, Rosemont readily admits that he may be “unfair” to individualism or “creative[ly] misreading” early Confucianism. In this review article, I will argue that some of the differences Rosemont finds between his Confucian critique of individualism and the communitarian critique of individualism are, in fact, not all that dissimilar. For example, while Rosemont sees Alasdair MacIntyre and Michael Sandel as “individualists,” the general orientation of their communitarian response to libertarianism shares much in common with the Confucian “role ethics” perspective on the person and morality or ethics. In this way, I will argue that while Confucian role ethics and communitarian perspectives certainly have their respective emphases, they also have a lot to offer one another. (shrink)

The principle of respect for autonomy in clinical ethics is frequently linked to bioethics’ neglect of community-level ethical considerations. I argue that the latter is not an inevitable consequence of the former; rather, that neglect results from a common interpretation of respect for autonomy in solely synchronic and individual terms. A relational understanding of autonomy reveals the way in which respect inescapably involves diachronic and social dimensions. When these are acknowledged, the association between respect for autonomy and liberal individualism (...) is weakened. Such respect has more in common with communitarian approaches, and it need not conflict with the incorporation of collective-level values into ethical deliberation. (shrink)

Past criticisms to the contrary, methodological individualism in the social sciences is neither trivial nor obviously false. In the style of Weber's sociology, it restricts the ultimate explanatory repertoire of social science to agents' reasons for action. Although this restriction is not obviously false, it ought not to be accepted, at present, as a regulative principle. It excludes, as too far-fetched to merit investigation, certain hypotheses concerning the influence of objective interests on large-scale social phenomena. And these hypotheses, in (...) fact, merit empirical consideration. The attractiveness of methodological individualism as a regulative principle depends on two independent confusions, the conflation of an agent's reasons for action with the beliefs, needs, desires, or goals which are the reasons why he acted as he did, and the identification of explaining a phenomenon and describing its causes. (shrink)

Individualism embraces a wide diversity of meanings and is widely used by those who criticise and by those who praise Western societies and their culture, by historians and literary scholars in search of the emergence of 'the individual', by anthropologists claiming that there are different, culturally shaped conceptions of the individual or 'person', by philosophers debating what form social science explanations should take and by political theorists defending liberal principles. In this classic text, Steven Lukes discusses what 'individualism' has meant (...) in various national traditions and across different provinces of thought, analysing it into its component unit-ideas and doctrines. He further argues that it now plays a malign ideological role, for it has come to evoke a socially-constructed body of ideas whose illusory unity is deployed to suggest that redistributive policies are neither feasible nor desirable and to deny that there are institutional alternatives to the market. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show that the work of Alfred Schutz, mostly neglected by the current representatives of the social scientific movement of methodological individualism, can provide a foundation for an alternative methodological individualist programme, which instead of building on the presumed rationality of action, starts from the subjective consciousness of the actor, thus can overcome the objectivist bias characterizing most other variants. Following the Schutzian guidelines, this individualist approach can avoid the error of introducing (...) elements incompatible with the individual level of explanation, and also can avoid the conflict between the principle of the freedom of choice, assumed by the action theoretical point of departure, and the implicit determinism of the theories grounded on the idea of rational action. Adopting the results on the fields of the definition of the situation and intersubjective understanding, provided by the phenomenologically grounded interpretive theory of Schutz, methodological individualist theory can also overcome some of its serious defi ciencies. (shrink)

Anti-individualists hold that having a thought with a certain intentional content is a relational rather than an intrinsic property of the subject. Some anti-individualists also hold that thought-content serves to explain the subject’s cognitive perspective. Since there seems to be a tension between these two views, much discussed in the philosophical literature, attempts have been made to resolve it. In an attempt to reconcile these views, and in relation to perception-based demonstrative thoughts, Stalnaker (Our knowledge of the internal world, Oxford (...) University Press, Oxford, 2008) argues that an anti-individualist account of the facts that determine thought-content can be reconciled with a suitably qualified version of a principle of epistemic transparency. Acknowledging this, and in agreement with the view that thought-content should serve to explain the subject’s cognitive perspective, I argue that, his intentions notwithstanding, this view of transparency of thought-contents does not serve to explain the subject’s cognitive perspective on Stalnaker’s own terms and that the intricacies involved in his argumentation for saving his anti-individualist project are indirectly supportive of an individualist account of the subject’s cognitive perspective. In so doing, I leave intact some of his key claims that are plausible in their own right. (shrink)

This two-volume work provides a new understanding of Western subjectivity as theorized in the Augustinian Rule. A theopolitical synthesis of Antiquity, the Rule is a humble, yet extremely influential example of subjectivity production. In these volumes, Jodra argues that the Classical and Late-Ancient communitarian practices along the Mediterranean provide historical proof of a worldview in which the self and the other are not disjunctive components, but mutually inclusive forces. The Augustinian Rule is a culmination of this process and also the (...) beginning of something new: The paradigm of the monastic self as protagonist of the new, medieval worldview. Three main theoretical challenges leading to, and present in the Rule are tackled: What are the sources of our modern understanding of subjectivity? Can Ancient sources provide an alternative genealogy that resists the individualistic turn of Modernity? And can the commons be saved without suppressing individuality? Jodra seeks to prove that the synthesis-which is also an appropriation-of Greek and Judaic sources carried out by the first Christians allowed for two contrasting models of subjectivity, the self-less and the other-less, to 'take turns' to dominate our understanding of human nature. The Greek world provided the political dimension and the Jewish world established the key theological principles of a Mediterranean synthesis which took place in Rome. Coherently and progressively, Jodra emphasizes the theopolitical nature of our worldview even today, and claim that the subject of the primitive Church is its most visible incarnation. These volumes therefore restore the unity of the Hellenistic and Judaic world as found by the first Christians, proving that the self and the other are two essential pieces in the construction of our world. (shrink)

This paper treats the problem of which type of units, individuals or whole societies, should be used when explaining societal phenomena. It is argued that factors operating at the individual level in principle form societies, and that societal phenomena therefore should ideally be explained at this level. However, it is also argued that many societal phenomena cannot in practice be analyzed at the individual level in a clear and strict way, but rather must be analyzed holistically, because it is (...) not known how they are related to individual factors due to the complexity of societies. For societies to be described and analyzed in a clear and strict way, they must as a rule be much simplified, and such simplification is often made easier by abandoning the individualistic perspective. If researchers still wish to describe a connection between individual factors and a societal phenomenon, they often must do so in vague terms. There are also other problems with the individualistic perspective that make it difficult to use. However, using the holistic perspective may be risky, as shown by two hypothetical examples. (shrink)

I examine an intuitive property of folk-psychological explanations I call self-sufficiency. I argue that individualism cannot honor this property and work toward distilling an account of psychological explanation that does honor it, given some fairly standard assumptions. In doing so, my preference for an Externalist individuation of intentional state will emerge unambiguously. The assumptions I rely on are fairly standard but not uncontroversial. Yet not always do I attempt to defend them from objections. My goal is an account of folk (...) psychology consistent with our every-day practices rather than the deduction of an idealized psychology from first principles. I conclude with some applications offered as evidence that the goal was achieved. (shrink)

The structure of explanation for methodological individualism (MI) can be represented by the expression M = M [m(P)] where the global phenomenon M results from a set of stylized individual behaviors m resulting from motivations which are themselves affected by global data P. In this, MI differs from holistic methodology in that it takes into account the individual (generally ideal–typical) reasons underlying these collective phenomena, and refuses, in principle, to treat a group as an actor endowed with a conscience (...) and a will, or to describe the individual as the crossing point of collective forces. Boudon gives several examples showing that the individualist paradigm and the rationality hypothesis it includes (according to which the actors’ reasons are, in principle, comprehensible by the observer as a function of their situation) enables sociological explanation to progress and avoid the dreaded trap of sociocentrism. (shrink)

I argue that there are liberal reasons to reject what I call “Global Individualism”, which is the conjunction of two views strongly associated with liberalism: moral individualism and social individualism. According to the first view, all moral properties are reducible to individual moral properties. The second holds that the social world is composed only of individual agents. My argument has the following structure: after suggesting that Global Individualism does not misrepresent liberalism, I draw on some recent insights in social ontology (...) to show that it is inconsistent with the satisfaction of an important liberal principle related to the protection of individual rights over time. As I hold, to solve this problem we need to accept group agents acting as moral agents, which in turn commits us to the weaker notion of normative individualism (a view that is consistent with the existence of some group moral properties). I conclude with the suggestion that even this solution is costly for liberalism, for the conjunction of group moral agency and normative individualism makes the latter unstable and compels liberals to a much less individualistic stance than expected. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the role of methodological individualism in behavioral economics. Since behavioral economics developed in reaction to traditional microeconomics, the chapter sketches first the latter’s understanding of methodological individualism. It argues that traditional microeconomics is based on three principles: the self-interest principle, the rationality principle, and the social change principle. The chapter then discusses experimental findings that led behavioral economists to relax all three principles. It argues that, in particular, the relaxation of the social change (...) class='Hi'>principle pushes the boundaries of methodological individualism as understood in traditional microeconomics since it highlights ways in which social institutions, norms, and rules affect individual processes of preference formation. In doing so, behavioral economics invites intricate methodological discussions of the bidirectional relationship between social institutions and individual actions. (shrink)

It is argued that methodological individualism entails a holism of the parts, as originally proposed by Jan Smuts (1926/1927), where (1) the properties of entities involved in explanation are inherent to their participation in the whole they constitute, and (2) the whole does not act as a separate cause, distinct from its parts. This holism of parts involves a non-positivist and non-reductionist epistemology that is consistent with the analytical decomposition of wholes into basic units as advocated by methodological individualism (MI) (...) for the social sciences. According to MI, social actors are the basic units of analysis, and their rational capacity (understood in a broad sense as a general—trans-situational—capacity of understanding) is an explanatory principle inherent in their social being. The epistemological and ontological incompatibilities between methodological individualism's holism of the parts and mainstream reductionist or non-reductionist physicalist approaches, as well as emergentist approaches of critical realism, may explain the misunderstanding of methodological individualism within Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Wide content and individualist approaches to the individuation of thoughts appear to be incompatible; I think they are not. I propose a criterion for the classification of thoughts which captures both. Thoughts, I claim, should be individuated by their teleological functions. Where teleological function is construed in the standard way - according to the aetiological theory - individuating thoughts by their function cannot produce a classification which is both individualistic and consistent with the principle that sameness of wide (...) content is sufficient for sameness of psychological state. There is, however, an alternative approach to function, the relational theory, which is preferable on independent grounds. A taxonomy of thoughts based on these functions reconciles wide content with individualism. One consequence of individuating thoughts in this way is that intentional content is context sensitive. I discuss some of the implications of context sensitive content. (shrink)

Existing debate on procreative selection focuses on the well-being of the future child. However, selection decisions can also have significant effects on the well-being of others. Moreover, these effects may run in opposing directions; some traits conducive to the well-being of the selected child may be harmful to others, whereas other traits that limit the child’s well-being may preserve or increase that of others. Prominent selection principles defended to date instruct parents to select a child, of the possible children they (...) could have, likely to have a good (or nonbad) life, but they do not instruct parents to independently take the well-being of others into account. We refer to these principles as individualistic selection principles. We propose a new selection principle—Procreative Altruism—according to which parents have significant moral reason to select a child whose existence can be expected to contribute more to (or detract less from) the well-being of others than any alternative child they could have. We present the case for adopting Procreative Altruism alongside any of the major individualistic selection principles proposed to date and defend this two-principle model against a range of objections. (shrink)

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. ​. (shrink)

A section I had written for my Principles of Politics, but decided not to use. I recently dug it out for an American friend. I publish it here, in case it is of use to anyone else.

This work by an accomplished and respected comparative philosopher criticizes the Western ideology of individualism from the perspective of a Confucian morality of the family. Individualism is a name for the Enlightenment era ideology of the autonomous individual. The philosophical pillars of this ideology are Locke and especially Kant, and it runs through practically all modern moral philosophy. It is the moral psychology of classical liberalism, no less than of its libertarian and communitarian critics. They are different politically, but ontologically (...) of a piece. Individual selves—rational, calculating, selfish, autonomous—are what we are. Rosemont thinks this ideology is philosophically wrong, morally, politically, and ecologically destructive, but also optional. We sometimes feel painted into a corner where the only alternatives seem to be unrestrained freedom or totalitarian dictatorship. Moral philosophy still awaits the end of the Cold War. It would be good for people to understand that there are more options. Rosemont thinks Confucianism is one of them—a Confucianism for post-modern or even post-Western Westerners, with an ideology of the family that Rosemont thinks is more amenable than indigenous alternatives to our moral and ecological crises. “The vision of classical Confucianism can be reclaimed today with its integrity basically intact.” Rosemont advances two points. First, Confucian moral psychology conceives of the person as the bearer of roles. We are our roles as the onion is its leaves, without a an essential core self. Placing roles at the center of moral psychology eliminates the value of impersonal rules or universal principles. There are many ways to be a good father, teacher, friend, or son. Moral decency acquires an almost aesthetic quality, as our approach to roles (our own and those of others) expresses such qualities as zest, grace, or tenderness. His second point is that the moral center of Confucian philosophy is the family. The family is largely ignored in Western ethical tradition. Plato wanted to eliminate family life for his guardians. Kant, Bentham, and Mill have nothing useful to say about the family. For Rosemont the family is the first and best school for morality. It is there, if at all, that we learn to love, trust, cooperate, and obey. Rosemont’s best pages describe the important Confucian concept of family reverence (xiao). The gist is unswerving loyalty to parents, obligations extending even beyond death. It is easy for Western people to misunderstand that. Confucian tradition has a carefully worked out idea of filial reverence, and it should not be dismissed with a label (paternalistic, dogmatic, Asiatic). Obedience is expected, but not servility. In the inter-generational family, the child obeys the parents, but also sees parents obeying grandparents. Remonstrance is expected when appropriate. Deference motivated by gratitude can be genuinely appreciative without fawning, and dissent can remain respectful and polite. Rosemont believes that filial reverence is a way of life as open to anyone today as it was to Chinese two thousand years ago. Confucianism is a relentlessly secular philosophy. It entails practically no theological or metaphysical commitments, and contains little if anything to offend modern scientific sensibilities. This moral philosophy is at once remote (from individualism) and close, familiar, a fairly straightforward account of how we actually live our lives. Rosemont carefully argues that Confucian ideas of family are flexible enough to accommodate progressive ideals, and may even be our best hope against sexism, racism, homophobia, and other anti-humanistic altitudes and behaviors. He urges this version of Confucianism as a human-centered spirituality for a global civilization suspicious of discredited universalism. All cultures are made of families. How alien can they be? Respect for and accommodation with diversity begins in the family, when people learn from infancy to enjoy contributing to the well-being of others. While it would be wrong to expect Western people to abandon their Greek or Abrahamic heritage, those values might be reordered in light of Confucian thought, which deserves to be better understood in the West. A traditional Confucian might be baffled and dismayed by things that pass for normal in modern families, but our families could be better at what they have to be anyway by absorbing Confucian wisdom. There is a growing body of literature on Confucianism and virtue ethics. It is worth noting that Rosemont’s thought is probably the leading alternative to this paradigm in comparative moral philosophy. He takes an uncompromisingly critical attitude toward this particular effort to build a bridge from West to East by attributing to the Confucians a Western virtue ethics, which is, he thinks, objectionably individualistic in all its usual forms. (shrink)

The attempt to hold both anti-individualism and privileged self-knowledge may have the absurd consequence that someone could know a priori propositions that are knowable only empirically. This would be so if such an attempt entailed that one could know a priori both the contents of one’s own thoughts and the anti-individualistic entailments from those thought-contents to the world. For then one could also come to know a priori the empirical conditions entailed by one’s thoughts. But I argue that there is (...) no construal of a priori knowledge that could be used to raise an incompatibility problem of this sort. First, I suggest that the incompatibilist a priori must be a stipulative one, since in none of the main philosophical traditions does knowledge of the contents of one’s thoughts count as a priori. Then, I show that under various possible construals of a priori, the incompatibilist argument would be invalid: either a fallacy of equivocation or an argument without a plausible closure principle guaranteeing transmission of epistemic status from premises to conclusion. Finally, I maintain that the only possible construal of the property of being knowable a priori that avoids invalidity is one that fails to generate the intended reductio. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The individual-community relationship has always been one of the most fundamental topics of social sciences. In sociology, this is known as the micro-macro relationship while in economics it refers to the processes, through which, individual actions lead to macroeconomic phenomena. Based on philosophical discourse and systems theory, many sociologists even use the term "emergence" in their understanding of micro-macro relationship, which refers to collective phenomena that are created by the cooperation of individuals, but cannot be reduced to individual actions. (...) "Emergence" theories attempt to explain the nature of society as a complex system by examining how individuals and their relationships lead to the creation of integrated and macro-social phenomena such as markets, educational systems, cultural beliefs, and shared social practices. As a prelude to activity, every researcher has to answer the question from the methodological point of view, how is it possible to study the behavior of social groups and how can we gain knowledge about the laws related to social groups? Anyone who deals with humanities and social sciences or any reality and phenomenon that affects human beings, inevitably deals with the reality that is emerging. In fact, emergence occurs when one level of reality emerges radically from another level. Examples of emergent levels of reality include how the mind emerges from the body; or the way society emerges from human beings. Therefore, when there is an emerging factor, different scientific disciplines should be used, because it is inevitable to talk about social affairs, psychology and neurobiology, as well as physical and even chemical. -/- INTRODUCTION Since its beginning in the 19th century, sociology has faced the fundamental question of what a social phenomena stands for? At a glance, sociologists deal with the study of social groups, collective behavior, institutions, social structures, social networks, and social dynamics, and ultimately all such phenomena are composed of individuals. Therefore, social phenomena seem to have no independent ontological status, and in this case, sociology is ultimately about reducible individuals. Different approaches about the micro-macro relationship, using the concept of "emergence", argue that although collective phenomena are created by individuals, they cannot be reduced to individual action. The term "emergence" is used to distinguish "emergent results" from " Procedural results". Results are called Procedural that can only be calculated by adding or subtracting the causes that act together. On the contrary, they are emergent outcomes that are qualitatively novel compared to the causes from which they originate. An example of such emergent results is mental characteristics that emerge from neural processes, but are not considered among the characteristics of neural processes of components - which are their origin. Philosophical debates about emergentism and reductionism focus on the mind-brain relationship, but as many philosophers have noted, they can be generalized to apply to any hierarchical set of features. The cognitive revolution reactivated a 19th century controversy between theorists of Identity and dualism. The theorists of Identity believe in reductionist materialism and elimination of metaphysics, according to which the mind is nothing more than the biological, while the dualists believe that the mind and the brain are distinct from each other. Emergence has been considered as a third way between the theories of Identity and dualism. -/- METHODOLOGY Interdisciplinarity Is fundamentally indicated by the dominance of open systems as well as social and emerging systems at different levels. Therefore, as long as we are facing a new emergentism, there will necessarily be different fields and an interdisciplinary method. The commonality of social sciences and cognitive sciences on the issue of emergence provides the possibility of interaction and exchange of concepts between these two for deeper research. Therefore, in this research, apart from the concepts of Subvenience and downward causation, we have used multiple realization and wildly disjunctive, which are used to explain the emerging concept in cognitive sciences, including neurobiology, psychology, and philosophy. For analytical and interdisciplinary approaches, after examining the concepts of subvenience, and wildly disjunctive, Individualistic and collectivist emergentism have been reviewed. And then their adequacy is criticized and evaluated in meeting strong emergence conditions. -/- FINDINGS Philosophers of the mind have been able to define the conditions of irreducibility and downward causation, which are essential for strong emergence, by using the principle of subvenience with the help of multiple realization and wildly disjunctive principles. Therefore, by definition, emergentist individualism suffers from the problem of how to explain downward causality and irreducibility, and emergentist collectivism faces the challenge of reification. The analysis of the challenges facing the two methodological approaches of individualism and collectivism leads us to three unresolved issues about the emerging phenomenon, which are realism, downward causality, and mechanism. Despite the differences in the stances of these two approaches regarding the aforementioned triple problems, individualists and collectivists both agree that some social characteristics are reducible; and some others are irreducible due to their complexity, the determination of which, depends on the case study of the mechanism of emergence of each social characteristic. -/- CONCLUSION An emergence that is consistent with reductionism is called a weak emergence. And strong emergence includes the principle of irreducibility and downward causality. According to strong emergence, the characteristics of social phenomena have downward causal power, which cannot be reduced to the causal forces. The principle of subvenience, together with multiple realization and wildly disjunctive, can provide the conditions of irreducibility and downward causality, which are essential conditions of strong emergence. Based on the philosophical analysis of two methodological approaches, individualist and collectivist, it can be concluded that emergentist individualism suffers from the problem of how to explain downward causality and irreducibility, and reification collectivism faces the challenge of reification. The analysis of the problems faced by these two approaches leads us to three unresolved issues, which are realism, downward causality, and mechanism. individualist emergentists acknowledge the existence of emergent social characteristics, but despite this, they believe that these characteristics are not real but merely analytical constructs that require explanation based on individuals and their mutual actions. But collectivists argue that emergentism yields a categorical ontology and supports social realism. They accept the dependence of social characteristics on individuals, but claim that social entities and structures are ontologically independent. Individualists and collectivists both agree that some social characteristics are reducible; and others are irreducible due to their complexity; and the only way to recognize this is to engage in empirical studies of the mechanisms and temporal processes of "emergence" that create social characteristics. -/- NOVELTY The newness of this compact article is as follows: a) Presenting an interdisciplinary approach using the analysis of philosophy of cognitive sciences, including the philosophy of mind, neurobiology and psychology to formulate the issue of social emergence; b) Criticizing individualist and collectivist methodological approaches to the issue of social emergence and explaining the sufficiency and shortcomings of both in providing weak and strong emerging conditions; c) Explaining and categorizing the challenges facing methodological approaches in explaining the phenomenon of social emergence, in three categories: realism, downward causality, and mechanism. BIBLIOGRAPHY Beckermann, A., Flohr, H., & Kim, J. (eds.) (1992). Emergence or reduction? Essays on the prospects of nonreductive physicalism. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Bhaskar, R. (1979). The possibility of Naturalism. New York: Routledge. Bhaskar, R., Danermark, B. & Price, L. (2018). Interdisciplinarity and wellbeing: A critical realist general theory of interdisciplinarity. London and New York: Routledge. Blau, P.M. (1981). Introduction: diverse views of social structure and their common denominator. In Blau, P.M. & Merton, R.K. (eds.), Continuity in Structural Inquiry (pp. 1–23). Beverly Hills: Sage. Blau, P.M. (1987). Microprocess and macrostructure. In K.S. Cook (ed.), Social Exchange Theory (pp. 83–100). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Brooks, R.A., & Maes, P. (eds). (1994). Artificial life IV; proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Clark, A. (1997). Being there: Putting brain, body, and world together again. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Coleman, J. S. (1987). Microfoundations and macrosocial behavior. In: J. C. Alexander, B. Giesen, R. Munch, & Neil J. Smelser (Eds.). The Micro-Macro Link (pp. 153–73). Berkeley: University of California. Coleman, J. S. (1990). Foundations of social theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Elster, J. (1985). Making sense of Marx. New York: Cambridge University Press. Fodor, J.A. (1974). Special sciences (Or: The disunity of science as a working hypothesis). Synthese, 28(2), 97–115. Fodor, J.A. (1989). Making mind matter more. Philosophical Topics, 17, 59-79. Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hempel, C.G. (1965). Aspects of scientific explanation and other essays in the philosophy of science. New York: The Free Press. Horgan, T. (1993). From supervenience to superdupervenience: meeting the demands of a material world. Mind, 102, 555-586. Humphreys, P. (1997). How properties emerge”. Philosophy of Science, 64, 1-17. Kim, J. (1999). Making sense of emergence. Philosophical Studies, 95, 3–36. Kincaid, H. (1997). Individualism and the unity of science. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Lewis, D.K. (1986). The plurality of worlds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nigel, G., & Conte, R. (eds.) (1995). Artificial societies; The computer simulation of social life. London: UCL Press. O’Connor, T. (1994). Emergent properties. American Philosophical Quarterly, 31, 91-104. Popper, K.R. (1968). Conjectures and refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. New York: Harper & Row. Sawyer, R. K. (2001). Emergence in sociology: contemporary philosophy of mind and some implications for sociological theory. American Journal of Sociology, 107, 551-585. Sawyer, R. K. (2004). The mechanisms of emergence. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 34, 260–282. Sawyer, R. K. (2005). Social emergence: societies as complex systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sawyer, R.K. (2003). Nonreductive individualism: Part 2, Social causation. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 33, 203–224. Winch, P. (1993). The idea of a social science and its relation to philosophy‭ (SAMT, Trans.). Tehran, Iran: SAMT. (shrink)

" The supreme principle, both in politics and in private life, should be to promote all that is creative, and so to diminish the impulses and desires that center round possession." This book, originally entitled Why Men Fight, is generally seen as the fullest expression of Bertrand Russell's political philosophy. Russell argues that after the experience of the Great War the individualistic approach of traditional liberalism had reached its limits. Political theory must be based on the motivated forces of (...) creativity and impulse rather than on competition. The ideas expressed in Principles of Social Reconstruction have greatly contributed to Russell's fame as a social critic and anti-war activist. The introduction by Richard Rempel locates them in the context of Russell's other writings and show that neither his ideas nor his language have lost their force and topicality over the years. (shrink)

Though almost forgotten today, Herbert Spencer ranks as one of the foremost individualist philosophers. His influence in the latter half of the nineteenth century was immense. Spencer's name is usually linked with Darwin's, for it was he who penned the phrase: survival of the fittest. Today in America he is most often admired for his trenchant essays in 'The Man Versus the State'. But Spencer himself considered THE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS to be his finest work. In the second volume, (...) under 'Justice', is his final statement on the role of the state. His formula for justice is summed up in these words: "Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.". (shrink)

Introduction. The roots of liberal-democratic theory -- Problems of interpretation -- Hobbe : the political obligation of the market. Philosophy and political theory -- Human nature and the state of nature -- Models of society -- Political obligation -- Penetration and limits of Hobbe's political theory -- The Levellers : franchise and freedom. The problem of franchise -- Types of franchise -- The record -- Theoretical implications -- Harrington : the opportunity state. Unexamined ambiguities -- The balance and the gentry (...) -- The bourgeois society -- The equal commonwealth and the equal agrarian -- The self-cancelling balance principle -- Harrington's stature --Locke : the political theory of appropriation. Interpretations -- The theory of property right -- Class differentials in natural rights and rationality -- The ambiguous state of nature -- The ambiguous civil society -- Unsettled problems reconsidered -- Possessive individualism and liberal democracy. The seventeenth-century foundations -- The twentieth-century dilemma -- Appendix : Social classes and franchise classes in England, circa 1648. (shrink)

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP ON HEGEL’S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY has stressed its place in the modern tradition of reflection on autonomy and rights, thus rejecting negative assessments of Hegel as an authoritarian, post-Napoleonic “Prussian” opponent of liberalism as well as revising sympathetic readings of him as a “communitarian” critic of “atomistic” individualism. A group of eminent writers argues that Hegel, deeply indebted to Rousseau and Kant as turning away from early modern “negative freedom,” rethinks their accounts of “positive freedom” of self-determination based on (...) the principles of the general will or moral law, and embeds those accounts in the customary and institutional framework of the modern constitutional-monarchical state. Hegel understands citizenship in this state as realizing the highest aspirations of modernity for universal recognition of the autonomous personality as secured by the rule of law, systems of impartial justice, suffrage rights, and freedoms of religion, publication, teaching, and so on—under the sovereignty of the patriotic state. Furthermore, this scholarly approach to Hegel regards his conception of politically realized freedom as the heart of his whole philosophical endeavor, and it construes the dialectical arguments as providing chiefly the terms for explicating the rational will’s or practical reason’s inherent striving to actualize itself in ethically, politically, and publicly “mediated” forms of recognition. (shrink)

Medical practitioners have traditionally seen themselves as part of an international community with shared and unifying scientific and ethical goals in the treatment of disease, the promotion of health, and the protection of life. This shared mission is underpinned by explicit acceptance of traditional concepts of medical morality, and by an implied link between individual human rights and the ethics of medical practice long enshrined in a range of World Medical Association (WMA) and other medical codes. These have been powerful (...) instruments exhorting individual practitioners to promote health and to defend universal principles in order to protect their patients and the physician-patient relationship even in the face of authoritarian state coercion and imposed national ideologies and policies. There has been widespread support for this approach and this should be intensified. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Principles and Theory in BioethicsPat Milmoe McCarrick (bio)The following citations were selected from BIOETHICSLINE, the online database prepared at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics for the National Library of Medicine's MEDLARS system. Searching the keywords autonomy, beneficence, casuistry, justice, and virtues, as well as the text word principlism produced more than 400 citations. Only the citations concerned with theory and principle in the practice of bioethics are included (...) here—e.g., works about justice in resource allocation have been deleted.Arkes, Hadley V. When Bungling Practice Is Joined to Absurd Theory: Doctors, Philosophers, and the Right to Die. In Set No Limits: A Rebuttal to Daniel Callahan's Proposal to Limit Health Care for the Elderly, ed. Robert L. Barry and Gerard V. Bradley, pp. 31-44. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.Arnason, Vilhjalmur. Towards Authentic Conversations: Authenticity in the Patient-Professional Relationship. Theoretical Medicine 15 (3): 227-42, September 1994.Arras, John D. Getting Down to Cases: The Revival of Casuistry in Bioethics. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 16 (1): 29-51, February 1991.Arras, John D. Principles and Particularity: The Role of Cases in Bioethics. Indiana Law Journal 69 (4): 983-1014, Fall 1994.Beauchamp, Tom L. Principles and Other Emerging Paradigms in Bioethics. Indiana Law Journal 69 (4): 955-71, Fall 1994.Beauchamp, Tom L. The Principles Approach. Hastings Center Report 23 (6): S9, November-December 1993.Beauchamp, Tom L., and Childress, [End Page 279] James F. Principles of Biomedical Ethics. 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. 752 p.Beauchamp, Tom L., and Walters, LeRoy. Ethical Theory and Bioethics. In their Contemporary Issues in Bioethics. 4th ed., pp. 1-38. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1994.Beldecos, Athena, and Arnold, Robert M. Gathering Information and Casuistic Analysis. [Commentary]. Journal of Clinical Ethics 4 (3): 241-45, Fall 1993.Bole, Thomas J. The Rhetoric of Rights and Justice in Health Care. In Rights to Health Care, ed. Thomas J. Bole and William B. Bondeson, pp. 1-19. Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1991.Broome, John. Fairness Versus Doing the Most Good. [Commentary]. Hastings Center Report 24 (4): 36-39, July-August 1994.Campbell, Courtney S. Gifts and Caring Duties in Medicine. In Duties to Others, ed. Courtney S. Campbell and B. Andrew Lustig, pp. 181-97. Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1994.Carson, Ronald A.; Callahan, Sidney; Ross, Judith Wilson; and May, William F. Spirit, Emotion, and Meaning: The Many Voices of Bioethics. Hastings Center Report 24 (3): 26-27, May-June 1994.Charlesworth, Max. Bioethics in a Liberal Society. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 172 p.Cherbas, Peter. Paradigms and Our Shrinking Bioethics. Indiana Law Journal 69 (4): 1105-13, Fall 1994.Childress, James F. Ethical Theories, Principles, and Casuistry in Bioethics: An Interpretation and Defense of Principlism. In Religious Methods and Resources in Bioethics, ed. Paul F. Camenisch, pp. 181-201. Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1994.Childress, James F., and Fletcher, John C. Individualism and Community: The Contested Terrain of Respect for Autonomy. Hastings Center Report 24 (3): 34-35, May-June 1994.Clouser, K. Danner, and Gert, Bernard. A Critique of Principlism. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 15 (2): 219-36, April 1990.Devettere, Raymond J. Clinical Ethics and Happiness. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 18 (1): 71-89, February 1993.DeGrazia, David. Moving Forward in Bioethical Theory: Theories, Cases, and Specified Principlism. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 17 (5): 511-39, October 1992.Donnelly, William J. From Principles to Principals: The New Direction in Medical Ethics. [Commentary]. Theoretical Medicine 15 (2): 141-48, June 1994.Downie, Robin. Health Care Ethics and Casuistry. [Editorial]. Journal of Medical Ethics 18 (2): 61-62, 66, June 1992. [End Page 280]DuBose, Edwin R.; Hamel, Ronald P.; and O'Connell, Laurence J., eds. A Matter of Principles? Ferment in U.S. Bioethics. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1994. 381 p.Fox, Renée C. The Entry of U.S. Bioethics into the 1990s: A Sociological Analysis, pp. 21-71.Gudorf, Christine E. A Feminist Critique of Biomedical Principlism, pp.164-81.Campbell, Courtney S. Principlism and Religion: The Law and the Prophets, pp. 182-208.Charon, Rita. Narrative Contributions to Medical Ethics: Recognition, Formulation, Interpretation, and Validation... (shrink)

We attempt to defend the species-as-individuals hypothesis by examining the logical role played by the binomials (e.g., "Homo sapiens," "Pinus ponderosa") in biological discourse about species. Those who contend that the binomials can be properly understood as functioning in biological theory as singular terms opt for an objectual account of species and view species as individuals. Those who contend that the binomials can in principle be eliminated from biological theory in favor of predicate expressions opt for a predicative account (...) of species and view species as kinds. We contend that biologists' talk about species is talk about species as individuals, and we conclude that the most plausible account of species is an objectual account. (shrink)

This book, originally entitled _Why Men Fight_, is generally seen as the fullest expression of Russell's political philosophy. Russell argues that after the experience of the Great War the individualistic approach of traditional liberalism has reached its limits. Political theory must be based on the motivated forces of creativity and impulse rather than on competition. Both are best fostered in the family, in education, and in religion - each of which Russell proceeds to discuss. The ideas expressed in _Principles of (...) Social Reconstruction_ have greatly contributed to Russell's fame as a social critic and anti-war activist. The new introduction by Richard Rempel locates them in the context of Russell's other writings and show that neither his ideas nor his language have lost their force and topicality over the years. (shrink)

Through its adoption of the biomedical model of disease which promotes medical individualism and its reliance on the individual-based anthropology, mainstream bioethics has predominantly focused on respect for autonomy in the clinical setting and respect for person in the research site, emphasizing self-determination and freedom of choice. However, the emphasis on the individual has often led to moral vacuum, exaggeration of human agency, and a thin (liberal?) conception of justice. Applied to resource-poor countries and communities within developed countries, autonomy-based bioethics (...) fails to address the root causes of diseases and public health crises with which individuals or communities are confronted. A sociological explanation of disease causation is needed to broaden principles of biomedical ethics and provides a renewed understanding of disease, freedom, medical practice, patient-physician relationship, risk and benefit of research and treatment, research priorities, and health policy. (shrink)

This article analyzes six ethical principles at work in the Pastoral Letter of the Roman Catholic Bishops on the United States economy. The first three principles derive from the Thomistic tradition with its attempt to avoid the extremes of collectivism and individualism. Human beings are by nature social and called to live in political society. The principle of subsidiarity guides the role of the state. Distributive and social justice furnish the criteria for a just distribution of human goods. The (...) fourth ethical principle which is a later development in the Catholic tradition recognizes human rights including economic rights. In keeping with recent emphases in Catholic teaching the fifth principle insists that the goods of creation exist to serve all and stresses the social aspect of property. The sixth principle enunciates a preferential option for the poor and has come to the fore in the light of recent liberation theology. (shrink)

In the search for elementary particles, such principles are used as Gell?mann's that ?anything which is possible is compulsory?. This is an example of a teleological principle according to which the scientist tries to realize in science the kind of world that he desires on prior emotional grounds. Mendeleev's classical discovery of the Periodic Law and Table of Elements was thus guided by his mystical values. A mechanistic anti?teleologist such as Jacques Loeb was indeed a crypto?teleologist who wished science (...) to fulfil his radical, socialistic aims. Hoyle's ?perfect cosmological principle? projected conservative values, while such conceptions as Oppenheimer's ?catastrophic collapse?, and Mach's Principle likewise had their teleological bases. Anti?mystical and individualistic values inspired Bridgman's operationism. A ?perfect operational principle? would stipulate that every imaginable state of affairs would be operationally differentiable from others. Teleological principles are essential to the functioning of sciences; in the Theory of Theories, the principle of plenitude may hold: that for every mode of theory, there is some segment of reality for which it provides the best explanation. Naturalistic accounts of basic teleological principles seem inadequate. (shrink)

It is tempting to locate R. G. Collingwood among twentieth-century “free-spirited” philosophers and to classify him with Dewey, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein as a Rortyian “edifying” thinker. The position developed in Collingwood’s later works exhibits most of the features that distinguish “free-spirited” from “serious” philosophy. His relativism, most plainly manifested in The Idea of Nature, The Principles of Art, and the Essay on Metaphysics; his historicism, which is of a piece with his relativism—is indeed the principal form his relativism takes—articulated in (...) The Idea of History; and his anti-realism, most boldly stated in the Autobiography are, with his idealism, the most distinctive features of his work. Hence that work is characterized by three of the four sets of views which Ernest Sosa designates “free-spirited.” Indeed, aspects of the fourth set—subjectivism—are discernible, too, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, in Collingwood’s idealism which, from time to time, comes across as a thoroughgoing subjective idealism. Those very features for which he has been neglected and/or denigrated during the ascendency of analytic and positivistic philosophy might seem to confer a new credibility upon Collingwood’s work in the philosophical climate of the late twentieth century, where free-spirited philosophers are playing the gadfly to the ‘serious’ philosophical establishment. (shrink)

It is tempting to locate R. G. Collingwood among twentieth-century “free-spirited” philosophers and to classify him with Dewey, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein as a Rortyian “edifying” thinker. The position developed in Collingwood’s later works exhibits most of the features that distinguish “free-spirited” from “serious” philosophy. His relativism, most plainly manifested in The Idea of Nature, The Principles of Art, and the Essay on Metaphysics; his historicism, which is of a piece with his relativism—is indeed the principal form his relativism takes—articulated in (...) The Idea of History; and his anti-realism, most boldly stated in the Autobiography are, with his idealism, the most distinctive features of his work. Hence that work is characterized by three of the four sets of views which Ernest Sosa designates “free-spirited.” Indeed, aspects of the fourth set—subjectivism—are discernible, too, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, in Collingwood’s idealism which, from time to time, comes across as a thoroughgoing subjective idealism. Those very features for which he has been neglected and/or denigrated during the ascendency of analytic and positivistic philosophy might seem to confer a new credibility upon Collingwood’s work in the philosophical climate of the late twentieth century, where free-spirited philosophers are playing the gadfly to the ‘serious’ philosophical establishment. (shrink)

Corporate responsibility requires a conception of collective agency on which collective agents are able to form moral judgments and act on them. In spite of claims to the contrary, existing accounts of collective agency fall short of this kind of corporate autonomy, as they fail to explain how collective agents might be responsive to moral reasons. I discuss how a recently proposed conception of shared valuing can be used for developing a solution to this problem. Although the resulting conception of (...) corporate autonomy is useful for making sense of corporate responsibility, it also gives rise to what I call ‘the Corporate Autonomy Problem’. Autonomous collective agents are in principle entitled to the same rights as autonomous individual agents. However, at least some individual rights, such as the right to vote, the right to life, and the right not to be enslaved cannot plausibly be attributed to collective agents. This intuition is supported by normative individualism, the position according to which corporate agents are not entitled to non-derivative rights at all. I argue that without a proper solution to this problem—I sketch the available options—saving corporate responsibility requires giving up on normative individualism. (shrink)

This book, originally entitled _Why Men Fight_, is generally seen as the fullest expression of Russell's political philosophy. Russell argues that after the experience of the Great War the individualistic approach of traditional liberalism has reached its limits. Political theory must be based on the motivated forces of creativity and impulse rather than on competition. Both are best fostered in the family, in education, and in religion - each of which Russell proceeds to discuss. The ideas expressed in _Principles of (...) Social Reconstruction_ have greatly contributed to Russell's fame as a social critic and anti-war activist. The new introduction by Richard Rempel locates them in the context of Russell's other writings and show that neither his ideas nor his language have lost their force and topicality over the years. (shrink)

The intellectual founding fathers of the French Third Republic were innovative thinkers who achieved an original synthesis of republican and liberal principles. This becomes evident when one examines the works of four philosophers who played a crucial role in the French intellectual and political life of the period extending from the 1870s to the early 1900s: Emile Littre, Charles Renouvier, Henry Michel and Alfred Fouillee. Among their many contributions to moral and political philosophy, I highlight two themes: a) a conception (...) of political liberty that grants a pre-eminent place to civic education as a means to free citizens from domination by dogmatic religious authorities, sectarian political movements or unexamined beliefs of any kind; b) the need to implement reasonable social reforms in order to ensure that the many and complex relations of functional interdependence constitutive of modern societies are equitable and realize an ideal of national solidarity. I suggest that these ideas ought to be carefully examined by contemporary proponents of civic republicanism. (shrink)

Moral theories may differ not only in the substantive moral principles they assert, but also in their concept of a person or moral agent. Thus, for example, Utilitarianism stresses the ability of a human being to calculate rationally the profit and loss which attend particular actions; and Aristotle bases his Nichomachean Ethics on a moral psychology tied to the notion of harmonious self-development.

Political ecologists--the theorists of the Green movement--assert that if we do not fundamentally change the way in which our society makes use of nature, then we will destroy the physical basis of our social existence within the foreseeable future. In the light of this insight, this book is concerned to unearth the foundations of our cultural attitudes towards nature and to start the process of building philosophical foundations that could provide the basis of a sustainable relationship between society and the (...) environment. The objective is to provide a critique and reorientation of social theory at the level of epistemology and to question the nature of rationality; the role of ideology and assumptions about human nature which underpin conventional academic social theory. The heart of the analysis comprises a critique of the core values of the Enlightenment that have shaped modern Western thought: Science; Progress and Individualism. To political ecology these represent fundamental problem concepts and the intention of this book is to broaden and deepen our understanding of existing social processes particularly those identified as the 'post-modern' condition of aimless consumerism in relation to environmental issues. The analysis includes sketches of concepts and practices with which political ecology might transcend these values and shows how transformed attitudes can contribute towards solving environmental problems. This is a challenging and original synthesis of philosophy and theory directed towards the greatest issue of our time. It will be essential reading for everyone concerned with the future of the planet. (shrink)

I give an account how the principle of ‘respect for autonomy’ dominates the field of bioethics, and how it came to triumph over its competitors, ‘respect for persons’ and ‘respect for free power of choice’. I argue that ‘respect for autonomy’ is unsatisfactory as a basic principle of bioethics because it is grounded in too individualistic a worldview, citing concerns of African theorists and other communitarians who claim that the principle fails to acknowledge the fundamental importance of (...) understanding persons within the nexus of their communal relationships. I defend the claim that ‘respect for persons’ is a more appropriate principle, as it is able to acknowledge both individual decision making and the essential relationality of persons. I acknowledge that my preference for ‘respect for persons’ is problematic because of the important debate around the definition of ‘personhood’ in bioethics discourse. Relying on Thaddeus Metz's conception of moral status, I propose a relational definition of personhood that distinguishes between persons with agency and persons without agency, arguing that we have different moral obligations to these distinct categories of persons. I claim that this conception of personhood is better able to accommodate our moral intuitions than conventional approaches, and that it is able to do so without being speciesist or question-begging. (shrink)

Joseph Agassi, together with Yehuda Fried, presented the paradoxes of paranoia and proposed to explain and solve them by introducing innovative diagnostic criteria for psychosis as reflecting a specific kind of rationality. Their ethical-clinical framework however, discouraged discussion of placing impositions on the mentally ill, even when in danger. According to these very criteria, Agassi’s institutional individualism framework renders paranoiacs defective in autonomy. Introducing the idea of degrees of autonomy as a guiding principle for research and practice will promote (...) responsible commitment to the mentally ill and to all other persons in society. (shrink)

Joseph Agassi, together with Yehuda Fried, presented the paradoxes of paranoia and proposed to explain and solve them by introducing innovative diagnostic criteria for psychosis as reflecting a specific kind of rationality. Their ethical-clinical framework however, discouraged discussion of placing impositions on the mentally ill, even when in danger. According to these very criteria, Agassi’s institutional individualism framework renders paranoiacs defective in autonomy. Introducing the idea of degrees of autonomy as a guiding principle for research and practice will promote (...) responsible commitment to the mentally ill and to all other persons in society. (shrink)