Abstract
Agent-based models are sometimes associated with a commitment to methodological individualism. In this paper, we explore this linkage through an examination of the following two claims: (1) agent-based models may only be used to provide individualist explanations, and (2) agent-based models should only be employed to offer individualist explanations. We argue that both these claims should be rejected.
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Notes
- 1.
We refer here throughout to ABMs. Most of what we say should be equally applicable to close cousins in computational social science and to parts of evolutionary game theory models, though we do not make that case here.
- 2.
The following discussion is an extension of earlier work in [24].
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Zahle, J., Kincaid, H. (2020). Agent-Based Modeling with and Without Methodological Individualism. In: Verhagen, H., Borit, M., Bravo, G., Wijermans, N. (eds) Advances in Social Simulation. Springer Proceedings in Complexity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34127-5_2
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