Ontological Individualism Defended

Abhinav Kumar

Philosophy of the Social Sciences2026https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931261418171article
ABDC B
Weight
0.50

What the paper says

The paper defends ontological individualism from a prominent challenge: that certain social properties depend on “non-individualistic” physical factors. I propose two responses to show that this challenge fails to undermine the thesis of ontological individualism. First, I argue that it uses an implausible interpretation of physical things to call them “non-individualistic.” Second, I raise some doubts regarding whether the challenge leads to an overly permissive dependence of social properties on physical objects in social-scientific explanations.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931261418171

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@article{abhinav2026,
  title        = {{Ontological Individualism Defended}},
  author       = {Abhinav Kumar},
  journal      = {Philosophy of the Social Sciences},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931261418171},
}

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Ontological Individualism Defended

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Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.