ABSTRACT
A large amount of debate in the philosophy of social science is devoted to the question of how to understand the relations across levels of the social world. Are higher levels generated by lower levels? Are higher levels emergent with respect to lower levels? Are higher levels supervenient upon lower levels? It is promising to think that the idea of microfoundations can be invoked to trace out the relations among these various inter-level concepts. The call for microfoundations is an assertion that the lower levels of individual and social behavior are more fundamental than the higher levels. Consider Figure 20.1.
