If Hamas ruler Yahya Sinwar had learned methodological individualism, things would be different. He might have been tempted by a broader individualist philosophy and might have treated “his” people in Gaza better, including by not using them as human shields and not spending public money on tunnels. But even if he had only known methodological individualism, his life might not be on the line right now. That’s what we can deduce from a Wall Street Journal story that reports on Sinwar’s thinking (“Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar Who Studied Israel’s Psyche—and Is Betting His Life on What He Learned,” December 10, 2023). Not quoting him directly alas, the report says:
Now … the Hamas leader is betting he can force the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners and establish a permanent cease-fire. He’s relying on his judgment of Israeli society after two decades studying it in jail, learning Hebrew, watching the local news and getting inside the Israeli psyche.
There is no such thing as the “Israeli psyche,” so Sinwar must have read the wrong books or have read no books at all. Or perhaps it is the WSJ reporter who read the wrong books and put his words in Sinwar’s mouth—or, should I say, in Sinwar’s collective mouth. Israel is not a living organism with a brain of its own. Organicist and anthropomorphist beliefs about society have led to errors, tyranny, and tragedies (see a few examples in my “The Impossibility of Populism,” The Independent Review, Summer 2021).
Methodological individualism, the opposite of methodological holism, is a social-epistemological claim that society can only be understood by starting from the thoughts and actions of the individuals who compose it. Individuals and their interrelations make up the whole of society. A simple proof is that if all individuals of a society died, there would be nothing left of that society–except history, including the history of ideas but these were the ideas of individual minds. On the contrary, if a society disappears—imagine that all Israelis leave Israel and join the Jewish diaspora around the world—its individuals will continue to exist. They might be or become members of some other “society” or community, including virtual ones, but their previous territorial society would no longer exist nor would any “collective mind” that could have been imagined in it. Another way to express this idea: a whole—including a social whole—is not greater than its parts if we include in it the relations between the parts.
Any social science worth its salt and any successful attempt at rational understanding of society have been grounded in methodological individualism, at least since Thomas Hobbes in the 17th century. Friedrich Hayek discusses methodological individualism in The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies in the Abuse of Reason (1952), notably the first part. In his 1946 article “Individualism: True and False,” reproduced in his book Individualism and Economic Order (1948), he argues that methodological individualism does not necessarily imply an individualist political philosophy. At any event, the whole of economics and liberal political economy in Adam Smith’s tradition is grounded in methodological individualism.
One can of course make errors while studying society under the lens of methodological individualism. Hobbes provides an example, as he believed that rational individuals would want to grant illimited power to the state. Methodological individualism is a necessary but not sufficient condition for understanding society (“society” including the economy and politics).
Methodological individualism is useful not only for understanding whole societies but also any social subgroup such as, say, a social class. The borders of societies and groups are somewhat arbitrary anyway. Karl Marx was so bad at understanding social classes and predicting the future of “the proletariat” precisely because he was a holist thinker and did not try to comprehend a social class from the bottom up, by starting from the subjective preferences and incentives of the individuals who compose this collective abstraction. Influences play a role, but they are influences from some individuals over others.
Even to understand military tactics, methodological individualism is necessary. In their article “An Economic Theory of Military Tactic: Methodological Individualism at War,” (Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Vol. 3 [1982], pp. 225-242), Geoffrey Brennan and Gordon Tullock notably wrote:
Armies must be analyzed as collections of independent individuals who are, in some sense, as much at war with one another and their own leaders as they are with enemy forces. …
The basic point here is that there may exist means of deploying forces, using terrain and so on–all standard parts or military strategy as conventionally conceived–that serve not so much to increase physical strength vis-à-vis one’s enemy as they do to circumvent the ‘free rider’ incentives within one’s own forces. …
It is an understanding that springs naturally from an individualistic approach to military science. And in our view, that individualistic approach is, here as elsewhere, the uniquely appropriate one for the study of human conduct.
It is a good article to familiarize oneself with the economic way of thinking, which is grounded in methodological individualism.
READER COMMENTS
Matthias
Dec 14 2023 at 9:05pm
Just because someone uses the metaphors that are rooted in the psychology of individuals when talking about groups of people or society, doesn’t necessarily mean that what they are saying is wrong, or that their understanding is not useful for achieving their goals.
You might like Gwern’s essay about terrorism.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 15 2023 at 11:04am
Matthias: False metaphors or analogies don’t help understand anything, except for understanding why some individuals mistakenly believe in them: think of the analogy of an economy as a network of pipes (the plumbing analogy) or the ancient metaphor of home management. (“Understanding” and “somebody reaching his goals” are not synonyms.) The use of false metaphors and analogies by agitators, activists, rulers, or rulers-to-be is, however, very understandable with methodological individualism: that’s how they try to reach their goals. Two related points related to Gwern: the search for social status is a very methodological-individualist explanation, as its use by Hobbes illustrates. As for “belonging,” it is not society that wants to belong to society.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 15 2023 at 3:13pm
Matthias: One important thing to understand is what economic rationality means. It does not mean that an individual has the same preferences and values as you or I have. It means that an individual uses means that are consistent with achieving his own subjective goals. If one’s goal is to be as rich as one can, he will not use the same means as somebody whose goal is to sleep with 72 virgins. (I glide over the distinction between economics as a pure logic of choice or as a prediction tool, which I have touched upon in my reviews of Buchanan’s books in Regulation.)
Richard W Fulmer
Dec 16 2023 at 4:14pm
… is likely to be 17 years old. At my age, 72 virgins sounds more like hell than heaven.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 17 2023 at 4:46pm
Richard: Over the whole eternity?
David Seltzer
Dec 17 2023 at 6:02pm
Richard, let me commiserate by suggesting we reduce that number by 71. Oy!
Mactoul
Dec 14 2023 at 11:06pm
Methodological individualism, like usage of non-teleological language in biology, makes for rather awkward language. It can even be maintained that politics can not be made intelligible without violating strict methodological individualism. Which is again analogous to the situation with non-teleological language in biology.
And the term methodological individualism refers to the method we adopt and has no necessarily bearing on the underlying essential truth. The analogous term methodological naturalism simply means that the scientists start by looking for natural causes. It does not imply the absence of supernatural causes of some events nor that supernatural causes may underlie all natural causes.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 15 2023 at 10:48am
Mactoul: If one defended voodoo by saying that it cannot be made intelligible without violating the laws of physics, I would take it as proof that voodoo does not help understanding the universe. (Little economic exercise: Could methodological individualism explain the practice of voodoo by some people? Hint: the answer is yes.) If one defended the miasma theory of diseases by saying that it cannot be made intelligible without negating modern biology, I would take it as proof that miasmas don’t help understanding the universe. And so forth for all unicorns.
Mactoul
Dec 15 2023 at 8:11pm
Intelligiblity pertains to the phenomena, and not to the theories.
Point is, for instance in biology you need to use teleological language in order to understand.
So, can you make politics intelligible with strict adherence to methodological individualist language. Perhaps you can but it makes for pretty awkward style.
Craig
Dec 15 2023 at 9:30pm
The Holy Land soaked in blood. Sadly the conflict is, at its core, intractable, a zero sum game. Somebody must win, somebody must lose. I do take some solace in both the Anglo-French detente and the post-WW2 Franco-German relationship. At the end of the day, one can’t raise a family/children in the middle of a hot war. Peace be with them.
Jim Glass
Dec 16 2023 at 12:49am
Or, quite likely, a negative sum game. It’s possible for everyone to lose. War is really good at that.
Mactoul
Dec 15 2023 at 10:24pm
Certainly societies are formed by individuals that live within them. But what forms the individuals?
All individuals are born in particular families in particular societies. No individual is self-created. The very language an individual uses has been perpetuated in the society he was born into.
In this sense it is perfectly intelligible to something like a national psyche.
Jon Murphy
Dec 15 2023 at 10:59pm
It’s quite the jump to go from “people learn language from other people” to “there’s a national psyche.”
Jim Glass
Dec 16 2023 at 12:39am
Who said anything about a “national psyche”?
Not Sinwar, in this article.
Jon Murphy
Dec 16 2023 at 6:03am
Mactoul did. That’s why I quoted him and responded to him.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 16 2023 at 11:11am
Jim: According to the Wall Street Journal (with the caveat I raised in my post), Sinwar spent two decades “getting inside the Israeli psyche.” The “Israeli psyche” is not “the Jewish psyche” but presumably an instance of the generic unicorn named the national psyche.
Jim Glass
Dec 15 2023 at 11:12pm
I always found Tullock both instructive and enjoyable. But dang, if he really wrote this, points off!:
Huh? Soldiers in an army “must”(!) be considered “as much”(!!) at war with each other as with enemy forces — shooting, bombing, napalming and bayonetting each other?? That’s what “as much”, means right? Geeze, that seems so … inefficient. How would that army ever survive itself just to collect its paychecks?
A truly crapacious statement. How could a serious person ever say such a thing without fear of being ridiculed …. Aw, I see how, by adding a mystical qualifier, like “in some sense”. Yeah!
Now that is not merely truth but an actual counterintuitive meaningful insight! Just like…
“Luke, when I told you your father was dead it was true, in a sense” … “I did not have sex with that woman, in a sense” … “When a woman feels uncomfortable with a man he certainly is, in some sense, committing an assault upon her — even though there is no difference between women and men, in a meaningful sense” … “Gaia is the innocent and kind-hearted mother of us all, and we are guilty of willfully raping and savaging her, in a sense”….
There’s been a lot of this going around lately. So maybe Gordon gets props for being early? Anyhow, noted for my own use in future comments. 🙂
Jim Glass
Dec 16 2023 at 12:25am
I don’t see how that follows. And I don’t see Yahya personally relating to anything else in the post. You might have cited Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Genghis Kahn if you wanted to draw a contrast to “methodological individualism makes nicer guys”. Though I don’t see how it does. Knowing about MI sure hasn’t made *me* any nicer.
Methodological individualism attributes all behavior to individuals, not groups (social class, race, etc), the individuals’ actions being directed by incentives, genetically determined behaviors interacting with the environment, desires and so on. It can be counter-intuitive to Marxists and SJWs, but once one grasps the idea that there is no ESP creating group-mind behavior, it’s pretty basic. Individuals in all species act as individuals. Yeah. Darwin, 1859.
MI is often invoked to claim we humans have no “hive mind” directing our actions. But this is just confused thinking as hive creatures have no “hive mind” either, they all act as individuals too. Individual worker ants have distinct personalities, range from workaholics to slackers, other workers have ways to discipline the slackers, etc. (there are people who actually study this!). Yet an ant colony as a whole acts as a complex “hive mind” “collective mind” creature conducting such acts as sending troops out in organized columns in predatory attacks on rivals they capture and return as slaves, and so on — behavior that could never be predicted, or even imagined, by examining the ants as individuals.
And so it is with bees and the rest. “Hive mind, collective mind”-like behavior certainly does exist in many social species, individuals’ behavior being highly coordinated not via ESP but by common genetic heritage. And humans are the most social species by far. Nobody’s got hives like our hives!
Einstein said good ideas should be taken as far as they work and no further. “society can only be understood by starting from the thoughts and actions of the individuals who compose it” is fine, the operative words being “starting from”. From there we continue on to “emergent behavior”…
So what does this mean?…
a whole—including a social whole—is not greater than its parts if we include in it the relations between the parts.
The behavior of the whole definitely *is* more, being both different from and unpredictable from the parts. Your qualification that the whole is not more than the parts “if we include in it the relations between the parts” contains a heck of an “if” — it means “if we look at the behavior of the whole and ‘we include it in‘ the parts” … which is something we can’t do, definitionally. So it’s a self-contradicting statement.
In human societies emergent systems produce many kinds of predictable dysfunctional tribal-ideological social behaviors, which I presume you have noticed! So I won’t expand on them (yet).
Yahya Sinwar, having noticed these in Israel, and “relying on his judgment of Israeli society after two decades studying it” (perhaps with added insight from reading excellent books about evolutionary psychology that weren’t available to Hayek) may think he can predict how they will work out under specific circumstances.
If he thinks he can make them work out in his favor, why wouldn’t he try? Why would his knowledge of MI stop him? After all he, like all humans, is a product of the processes of MI. And self-interest is a pretty good motivator for individuals.
Also, note that the words “Israel’s Psyche” are never spoken by or attributed to Sinwar. So that’s a total red herring. If you believe methodological individualism says that one can’t form good judgments about a society after two decades of studying it, make that claim. If you don’t like how the WSJ writes its headlines, that’s something else.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 16 2023 at 11:33am
Jim: Regarding your last paragraph, if you read the actual WSJ report, you will find this (it’s not only in the headline and it is exactly what I quote in my post):
Note also the caveat in my post, meant to answer in advance one of your criticisms in that paragraph:
I added, lest the reader did not notice my “alas”:
Dylan
Dec 16 2023 at 4:07pm
This is a great comment and well stated. To me, it seems fairly obvious from observing human behavior that some aspects of what we do are best modeled by focusing on the individual as unit of analysis while others have more explanatory power when you look at the group. It’s not that the whole is (always) more than the sum of the parts, it is just different than the sum of the parts.
Jon Murphy
Dec 16 2023 at 4:19pm
Precisely. And thus methodological individualism. You cannot treat a collective the same as an individual.
Dylan
Dec 16 2023 at 6:48pm
No, but you can make coherent observations about a group that are more than just the sum of the individuals in it.
Jon Murphy
Dec 17 2023 at 10:06am
Agreed. But that was never the issue. As far as I can tell, the only one who is saying you can’t is Mactoul. Many methodological individualists (like Hume, Smith, Hayek, Ferguson, etc) make exactly that point: an emergent order comes about even though no person intends its result.
The point is not observations. It’s not explanations. Methodological individualism is not a method of observation: it’s a method, which is about explanations. You cannot form a coherent explanation of those observable phenomena without discussing the actions, incentives, and behaviors of individiuals.
Dylan
Dec 17 2023 at 12:30pm
@Jon – I disagree with this. It would be like trying to explain climate by looking at the daily weather. There’s a whole academic discipline dedicated to studying the behavior of groups apart from any individual behaviors. There are a lot of behaviors that are more accurately modeled if you look at group incentives first.
I know we are not likely to agree about this, and I should be doing other things, so this will likely be my last comment.
Jon Murphy
Dec 17 2023 at 1:24pm
Irrelevant. We’re talking social science, not hard sciences.
Comments are closed.