Individualism and Concept Formation in the Social Sciences

The main concern of this book is to develop and present a theory of multi-agent action. Given that we succeed in that and in creating a system of social action concepts, we may ask how other social concepts, such as the concepts of group, institution, and organization, relate to our system of social action concepts. To this question our answer is that from the conceptual point of view, or “in the conceptual order”, all social concepts can in a sense be built out of social action concepts. This, if acceptable, bestows much extra importance to the enterprise of this book. As our general programme for the construction of social concepts (especially holistic ones) does not depend on the details of our theory of social action to be developed and as it is useful to have these broader perspectives in mind before going into the technical details of this theory of social action, we shall below sketch our view of how to build social concepts individualistically out of social action concepts (including we-intentions and mutual beliefs). The second aim of the present chapter is to elucidate individualistically the notion of we-intention. This concept is going to play a central role in our theory of social action quite irrespective of how our general programme of concept formation in the social sciences fares.