Abstract
Methodological individualists often claim that any social phenomenon can ultimately be explained in terms of the actions and interactions of individuals. Any Nagelian version of methodological individualism requires that there be bridge laws that translate social statements into individualistic ones. We show that Nagelian individualism can be put to logical scrutiny by making the relevant social and individualistic languages fully explicit and mathematically precise. In particular, we prove that the social statement that a group of (at least two) agents performs a deontically admissible group action cannot be expressed in a well-established deontic logic of agency that models every combination of actions, omissions, abilities, and obligations of finitely many individual agents.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 4165-4185 |
| Number of pages | 21 |
| Journal | Philosophical Studies |
| Volume | 178 |
| Issue number | 12 |
| Early online date | 17 May 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Dec 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Hein Duijf gratefully acknowledges funding from the ERC-2017-CoG Project SEA, No. 771074. Hein Duijf and Allard Tamminga gratefully acknowledge funding from the ERC-2013-CoG project REINS, No. 616512. Frederik Van De Putte’s research was funded by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship, No. 795329, by a grant from the Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen), No. 12Q1918N, and by a grant from the Dutch Research Council, No. VI.Vidi.191.105. The authors thank Frank Hindriks, Hannes Leitgeb, Jeanne Peijnenburg, Friedrich Reinmuth, Olivier Roy, the reviewer of this journal, and the audiences who attended our presentations at the University of Bayreuth, Ghent University, the University of Greifswald, the University of Groningen, the University of Manchester, the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan), Saint Louis University, the University of Twente, and Utrecht University for their questions, comments and suggestions.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).
Funding
Hein Duijf gratefully acknowledges funding from the ERC-2017-CoG Project SEA, No. 771074. Hein Duijf and Allard Tamminga gratefully acknowledge funding from the ERC-2013-CoG project REINS, No. 616512. Frederik Van De Putte’s research was funded by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship, No. 795329, by a grant from the Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen), No. 12Q1918N, and by a grant from the Dutch Research Council, No. VI.Vidi.191.105. The authors thank Frank Hindriks, Hannes Leitgeb, Jeanne Peijnenburg, Friedrich Reinmuth, Olivier Roy, the reviewer of this journal, and the audiences who attended our presentations at the University of Bayreuth, Ghent University, the University of Greifswald, the University of Groningen, the University of Manchester, the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan), Saint Louis University, the University of Twente, and Utrecht University for their questions, comments and suggestions.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Seventh Framework Programme | 771074, 616512 |
Keywords
- Methodological individualism
- Impossibility result
- Collective admissibility
- Modal logic
- Expressivity
- Bisimulation
