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    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
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    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Popper's methodological individualism was actually a form of metaphysical or ontological individualism, not a purely methodological claim

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Methodological individualism, stripped of interpretive justification, amounts to a claim about what the social world really consists of
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    • 2.Watkins reformulated methodological individualism as the claim that the ultimate constituents of the social world are individual people
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    • 3.A claim about the ultimate constituents of the world is an ontological claim, not merely a methodological one
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Popper's own writings in 'The Open Society' ground methodological individualism in his ontology of 'plastic controls,' treating individuals as causally primary real entities.
      ?

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    • 2.A method is justified by what it tracks; Popper's justification appeals to what society *really is*, collapsing the methodological into the ontological.
      ?

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    • 3.Philosophers like Bhargava and Zahle argue that any non-trivial methodological prescription presupposes a corresponding ontological commitment about the domain's structure.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Popper's explicit rejection of 'holism' was not merely epistemic but targeted what he took to be false claims about real social wholes having causal powers over individuals.
      ?

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    • 2.Rejecting ontological holism and endorsing methodological individualism are logically equivalent moves if the method is motivated solely by denying supra-individual causal reality.
      ?

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