Isn't methodological individualism - the determination to formulate  
explanations in economics in terms of individuals - just altogether  
beside the point when economists don't even know what individuals are?  
Don Ross argues in Economic Theory and Cognitive Science that human  
selves are not economic agents, as most economists think, but are rather  
communities of many subpersonal agents engaged in evolutionary games who  
interact in evolutionary games with other human selves communities of  
many subpersonal agents engaged in evolutionary games.  Phil Mirowski  
argues in Machine Dreams that the economic individual is a cybernetic  
organism without detectable interface between computational machine and  
human qualities or between real and simulacra.  I argue in Theory of the  
Individual in Economics that the utility function offers a circular and  
empty basis for the concept of the individual and that economists have  
never solved the multiple selves problem.  So how could one be a  
methodological individualist?  Methodological about what?  
  
John Davis