This position holds that individualistic explanations of social institutions are unsatisfactory for principal methodological reasons.
It emphasizes that methodological individualism violates fundamental methodological standards regarding the methodological characteristics of genuine scientific knowledge and explanations.
These standards require that genuine scientific theories a explanations are verified or at least highly probabilified; they require that theories and explanations are proven true, absolutely or highly partially certain and that are as a consequence, ultimate theories and explanations.
This view, however, conflicts with the principles of methodological individualism because individualistic explanations of social processes and institutions seemingly trigger an infinite regress of explanations and do not provide ultimate ones.
The cause of this seeming infinite regress is that individuals always act within a given socio-cultural and economic frame work, and that individualistic explanations of that framework always require the assumption of a previous one.
Thus, in this view, there exists at least one social fact which cannot be explained on an individualistic basis principal reasons.
Accordingly, methodological individualism has to be discarded and substituted by an approach which conforms to the methodological standards of genuine science.