ABSTRACT
In this chapter I investigate whether socially embedded individuals can be distinguished and individuated from one another in heterodox economics as I have characterized it in the previous chapter. As with my examination of the problem of individuation in connection with the neoclassical atomistic individual conception, this requires first stating what the relevant conception of the socially embedded individual is, and then asking whether there are reasonable means of distinguishing individuals from one another within the framework of this conception. Thus, in this chapter I begin by going beyond the general characterization of individuals as reflexive beings in the structure-agent framework discussed in the last chapter to advance one specific account of socially embedded individuals. There are of course other accounts of socially embedded individuals than the one advanced here. An advantage of this one is that it explicitly begins with an account of individual behavior in a particular kind of social setting, and thus clearly is about individuals rather than social entities. This makes it possible to formulate the individuation test for at least one account of socially embedded individuals, which is the main issue with which I am concerned in this chapter
It may seem odd, however, to propose that a discussion of socially embedded individuals begin with an account of individual behavior, even if in some social setting, since the idea that individuals are socially embedded seems to require at the very least that the starting point of the investigation be the relationships between individuals. However, the specific account of socially embedded individuals I employ-shared or collective intentionality analysis-is not an account of individuals outside social relationships, but one that instead sees social relationships as embedded in individuals. The basic idea is that, while only individuals form intentions, alongside those intentions expressed from a first-person singular point of view, individuals also express shared or collective intentions from a first-person plural point of view. When we speak of shared or collective intentionality, we focus on a kind of intentional behavior
different in nature from the kind of intentional behavior that underlies the atomistic conception of the individual. In effect, intentions expressed in first-person plural terms make social relationships internal to the individual, because the individual’s use of the first-person plural puts the individual automatically in a relationship with all other individuals to whom it applies. At the same time, that individuals can express themselves in first-person plural terms does not mean they do not also express themselves in first-person singular terms. Thus, my argument in this chapter is not that all individual behavior is based on shared or collective intentionality thinking; my argument is that socially embedded individual behavior is based on this kind of thinking, and a complete account of individual economic behavior should consequently explain both relatively autonomous and socially embedded experience.
