Abstract
The intuitive notion of level is often employed by social scientists and philosophers of social science to conceptualize tricky theoretical challenges. While it serves as an organizing metaphor for thinking, its assumptions and implications are never fully articulated. Consequently, unacknowledged and unhelpful conceptual commitments may be introduced to the debate. In this paper, I will show how this happens in the case of the sociological micro-macro problem. Sociology deals with phenomena in a wide variety of temporal and spatial scales, from an individual's cognitive and emotional processes to long-term changes in territorial societies. Connecting the data and theories of phenomena at these various scales is an important but thorny theoretical challenge. When combined with competing explanatory ambitions of different research traditions, fears (or fantasies) of reductionism, and general conceptual ambiguity, it is easy to understand why thinking in terms of levels has felt tempting to many. However, we should avoid the temptation for three sorts of reasons. First, conceptualizing the micro-macro problem in terms of levels misses crucial features of the problem. The levels mindset often abstracts away from the heterogeneity of micro and macro properties, making the discussion sterile and difficult to challenge. Similarly, it misses the contrastive nature of the micro-macro distinction: the social scientists use the distinction flexibly, and the same phenomenon can be either micro or macro depending on its contrasts. Finally, the focus on levels perspective makes it difficult to see that the relevant sociological questions are more about causation, dynamics, and history than about constitution or realization. Second, the levels conceptualization introduces assumptions that are both unnecessary and unhelpful. For example, philosophers often automatically assume that the levels in the social sciences are both comprehensive and unique. However, neither of these assumptions has ever been demonstrated. On the contrary, there exist substantial challenges to such presumptions. Even the less assuming question: "how many levels are there in the social sciences?" might not have a meaningful answer. Furthermore, the levels mindset invites poorly justified causal assumptions. For example, the beliefs that there is some explanatorily privileged level or that causes and effects must be at the "same level" or of the same granularity lack independent justification. Third, thinking about the micro-macro problem in terms of levels suggests solutions that are distractions from the point of view of the development of substantial social scientific theories. The conceptualization of the micro-macro problem has invited philosophers of social science to import conceptual tools from philosophy of mind. There has been a hope that concepts like supervenience, realization, and downward causation could help make sense of the micro-macro problem or the issues related to methodological individualism. However, this has been entirely unhelpful. The relation between micro and macro is not analogical to the relation between mind and brain. Furthermore, the debate has turned a substantial theoretical challenge into a philosophical puzzle that does not need any concrete social scientific concepts.
