Re: individualism vs holism.

[Ted Winslow <egwinslow@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Stephen Block wrote:

> I am rapidly reading through Lawrence Boland's _The Foundations of Economic
> Method_ for an on-line seminar and I have a question which likely members of
> this list can adequately answer for me. Boland raises a distinction between
> individualist Vs holist assumptions in economics. I have not read enough to
> see exactly where it will end in his book, but it occurs to me that this may
> be one way of distinguishing between Keynes' method and neoclassical and/or
> Schumpeter's method. It also occurs to me that this distinction is likely
> false and is in that respect a false dichotomy. That is, just because Keynes
> rejects methodological individualism does not mean that he is a "holist". I
> guess I am specifically thinking of "aggregate demand", but it may also be
> pertinent elsewhere (or may not be pertinent there). Would "aggregate demand
> " be a holist concept? In other words, does it imply that we must understand
> the behaviour of the whole "group", or society, as a group, or a whole, or
> is it a study of a different kind of "indicator" or set of indicators other
> than households and firms? Does Keynes' method go down the middle in some
> way, as it occurs to me it does. I simply cannot find the proper or adequate
> way to back up what I am considering.
>
> I think that is my question. I hope it is clear. If not, I can attempt to
> clarify it. Any input, as to what Keynes might have said, or meant, in
> relation to this methodological dispute, or if anyone has written on it or
> related subjects, would be much appreciated.
>

I would say Keynes is an "individualist" but not an "atomist".  The usual
treatment of "methodological individualism" conflates "individualism" with
"atomism" i.e. with the idea of individuals as having essences which are
independent of their relations.  The contrasting position to atomism is
"organicism" rather than "holism", where by "organicism" is meant the idea
that individuals owe their essential qualities - their "being" - to their
relations so that these qualities change with changes in the relations on
which they depend.

In "My Early Beliefs", Keynes's explicitly rejects "holism" in the sense of
social wholes as entities to which agency and the realization of value can
reasonably be attributed in favour of "individualism" while at the same time
rejecting the atomic individualism which characterized his "early beliefs"
(this is one of the defining aspects of "analytic philosophy" rejected in
that essay - another is what following Ramsey he calls its "scholastic"
approach to experience and the meaning of language).

"Though one must ever remember Paley's dictum that 'although we speak of
communities as of sentient beings and ascribe to them happiness and misery,
desires, interests and passions, nothing really exists or feels but
individuals', yet we [early Bloomsbury] carried the individualism of our
individuals too far." (X, p. 449)

In his biographical essay on Edgeworth, in the context of a critical
discussion of the adoption of utilitarian ethics and psychology as a
foundation for economics, he explicitly rejects "atomism" in favour of the
hypothesis of "organic unity" as the foundation for "psychics".

"The atomic hypothesis which has worked so splendidly in physics breaks down
in psychics.  We are faced at every turn with the problems of organic unity,
of discreteness, of discontinuity - the whole is not equal to the sum of the
parts, comparisons of quantity fail us, small changes produce large effects,
the assumptions of a uniform and homogeneous continuum are not satisfied."
(X, p. 262)

That he is using the terms "atomic" and "organic unity" in the senses of
"atomism" and "organicism" pointed to above is demonstrated by, among other
things, his elaboration of the "atomic" and "organic" views of natural law
in A Treatise on Probability (VIII, pp. 276-8).  There (p. 278 and p. 468)
he had tentatively embraced atomism as the foundation for both natural and
social science.

Ted