ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some clarificatory remarks about composition and then move on to addresses individualism in its reductive and non-reductive forms. It outlines the thesis of global reduction because if it were to prove our best model of the world, then there would be a sense in which individuals are more fundamental than groups. Such identification fails because it entails the identity of a group changes with every change in membership and because of the difficulties it encounters handling counterfactual claims. Groups do not exist as entities in their own right, but analysis, description and explanation of the social world must be conducted in terms of individuals standing in relations to one another. The elimination of groups is not the mere denial there are real entities that are the referents of group names, but that the very category group' or collective' is part of a radically false theory.
