Individualism and Global Supervenience

Abstract

My aim in this paper is to formulate and defend a metaphysical principle which may help us to overcome a misleading dichotomy between individualistic and holistic ways of thinking about the social sciences. The idea is that there is a non-causal, non-reductive relation of dependence between facts about social institutions and facts about the behaviour of individuals; that the social is supervenient upon the individual. Adopting this idea enables us to reconcile certain holistic aspects of the social-aspects which I shall discuss below-with an insight that has motivated much that has been written in defence of methodological individualism (MI). This insight has been expressed in various ways: that social institutions 'do not possess a quasi-divine autonomy'; that 'every complex social situation or event is a result of a particular configuration of individuals, their dispositions, situations, beliefs and physical resources and environments'; that 'it is people who determine history, however people themselves are determined'.' The supervenience thesis captures these ideas in a quite precise way. It says that, whatever complex and reciprocal relations there are between social entities and individuals, it is the totality of individual facts which determines the totality of social facts. Accordingly, I shall begin with a distinction between individual and social facts. I shall then offer a rigorous formulation of the supervenience thesis. It will be shown how the thesis