Are ABM explanations in the social sciences inevitably individualist?
Agent-based models (ABMs) are increasingly important in social science research. They have two obvious apparent virtues: they can model complex macrosociological phenomena without strong assumptions about agents and without analytic solutions for models, and they seem to instantiate the methodologic...
| Publicado en: | Synthese Vol. 200; no. 1; pp. 1 - 23 |
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| Autores principales: | , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
| Publicado: |
Springer Nature
Feb2022
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=155352140&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 155352140 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00397857 4LI jtl: Synthese issn: 00397857 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Feb2022 vid: 200 iid: 1 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 155352140 10.1007/s11229-022-03465-9 ppf: 1 ppct: 22 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 320KB tig: atl: Are ABM explanations in the social sciences inevitably individualist? aug: au: Kincaid, Harold Zahle, Julie affil: School of Economics, University of Cape Town, Private Bag, 7701, Rondebosch, South Africa Department of Philosophy, University of Bergen, Postboks 7805, 5020, Bergen, Norway sug: keyword: Agent-based modelling Explanation Methodological individualism Social sciences ab: Agent-based models (ABMs) are increasingly important in social science research. They have two obvious apparent virtues: they can model complex macrosociological phenomena without strong assumptions about agents and without analytic solutions for models, and they seem to instantiate the methodological individualist program in a concrete way. We argue that the latter claim is false. After providing schematic accounts of ABM models and a first introduction to ways in which to characterize individualist explanations, we work through six conceptions of individualist explanations that are decreasingly "less individualist" and argue that ABM-based explanations in the social sciences are not inevitably individualist in any of these senses. ABMs allow for explanatory relations among social entities and properties in the model environment and they are silent on what basic agents are, allowing social entities and properties to play basic explanatory roles. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Synthese is a copyright of Springer, 2022. All Rights Reserved. item: Synthese holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2022 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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