Standard defenses of ontological individualism are challenged by arguments that exploit the dependence of social facts on material facts—that is, facts that are not about human individuals. In this article, I discuss Brian Epstein’s “materialism” in The Ant Trap: granting Epstein’s strict definition of individualism, I show that his arguments depend crucially on a generous conception of social properties and social facts. Individualists, however, are only committed to the claim that projectible properties are individualistically realized, and materialists have not undermined (...) this claim. (shrink)

Methodological individualism has a long, successful, and controversial track record in the social sciences. Its record in ecology is much shorter but proving as successful and controversial with so-called individual-based models. Distinctions and debates about methodological individualism in social sciences clarify the commitments of this general, individualistic approach to modeling ecological phenomena and show that there is a lot recommending it. In particular, a representational priority on individual organisms yields a cogent albeit deflationary account of ecological emergence and helps reveal (...) how quite disparate models and theories in ecology might be unified. (shrink)