scholarly journals Roy Bhaskar’s Core Critical Realism and the Philosophy of Nancy Cartwright: Common Ground

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Radu Andrei Pârvulescu
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Open Systems ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
Nancy Cartwright

This paper compares Roy Bhaskar’s core critical realism with the philosophy of science of Nancy Cartwright. It argues for either profound similarity or exact correspondence between the two on a number of key elements: strong realism, depth ontology, closed and open systems, intransitive and transitive dimensions of science, philosophical method, emergence and stratification, and explanatory critique. Through detailed, side-by-side textual comparison this paper provides a rigorous first step for critically engaging, and ultimately integrating, two influential and highly complementary philosophies of science.

scholarly journals Utopias and Dystopias as Models of Social Technology

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Ferreira da Cunha
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
Unusual Feature ◽  
Social Technology ◽  
Social Planning ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Nancy Cartwright ◽  
Social Arrangements

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1808-1711.2015v19n3p363This paper presents some proposals for social science advanced by Otto Neurath, focusing on scientific utopianism. Neurath suggests that social scientists should formulate ideals of social arrangements in utopian style, aiming at discussing scientific proposals with a community. Utopias are deemed as models of social science, in the sense proposed by Nancy Cartwright. This view is contrasted with the claim that scientism might lead to dystopian consequences in social planning, drawn from Aldous Huxley’s fiction and from Paul Feyerabend’s philosophy of science. Thus, social science displays a unusual feature: sometimes a model has to be called off, in spite of its perfect functioning, because it brings about unwanted consequences. In the planning of a free democratic society, this ambiguity of utopia and dystopia is highly desirable, for it stimulates essential debates. Social science, therefore, is to be regarded from a plural and fallibilist standpoint.

Critical Realism

2021 ◽  
pp. 69-72
Author(s):  
Dominik Giese ◽  
Jonathan Joseph
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Scientific Realism ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Science And Society ◽  
The Real ◽  
Critical Realist ◽  
Ontological Question ◽  
The World

This chapter evaluates critical realism, a term which refers to a philosophy of science connected to the broader approach of scientific realism. In contrast to other philosophies of science, such as positivism and post-positivism, critical realism presents an alternative view on the questions of what is ‘real’ and how one can generate scientific knowledge of the ‘real’. How one answers these questions has implications for how one studies science and society. The critical realist answer starts by prioritizing the ontological question over the epistemological one, by asking: What must the world be like for science to be possible? Critical realism holds the key ontological belief of scientific realism that there is a reality which exists independent of our knowledge and experience of it. Critical realists posit that reality is more complex, and made up of more than the directly observable. More specifically, critical realism understands reality as ‘stratified’ and composed of three ontological domains: the empirical, the actual, and the real. Here lies the basis for causation.

Critical Realism for Ethnography

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant Banfield
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Sociological Practice ◽  
Critical Realist ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theoretical Developments ◽  
British Philosopher

While specific applications of critical realism to ethnography are few, theoretical developments are promising and await more widespread development. This is especially the case for progressive and critical forms of ethnography that strive to be, in critical realist terms, an “emancipatory science.” However, the history of ethnography reveals that both the field and its emancipatory potential are limited by methodological tendencies toward “naïve realism” and “relativism.” This is the antimony of ethnography. The conceptual and methodological origins of ethnography are grounded in the historical tensions between anti-naturalist Kantian idealism and hyper-naturalist Humean realism. The resolution of these tensions can be found in the conceptual resources of critical realism. Working from, and building upon, the work of British philosopher Roy Bhaskar, critical realism is a movement in the philosophy of science that transcends the limits of Kantian idealism and Humean realism via an emancipatory anti-positivist naturalism. Critical realism emerged as part of the post-positivist movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. From its Marxian origins, critical realism insists that all science, including the social sciences, must be emancipatory. At its essence, this requires taking ontology seriously. The call of critical realism to ethnographers, like all social scientists, is that while they must hold to epistemological caution this does not warrant ontological shyness. Furthermore, critical realism’s return to ontology implies that ethnographers must be ethically serious. Ethnography, if it is to hold to its progressive inclinations, must be about something. Critical realism for ethnography pushes the field to see itself as more than a sociological practice. Rather, it is to be understood as a social practice for something: the universalizing of human freedom.

The application of critical realism as a basis for agency in environmental education: The case of Roy Bhaskar

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 230-238
Author(s):  
Mehri Mirzaei Rafe ◽  
Khosrow Bagheri Noaparast ◽  
Afzal Sadat Hosseini ◽  
Narges Sajadieh
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Environmental Education ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Real ◽  
New Materialisms ◽  
Human Habitation

AbstractThis article will investigate the philosophy of science of Roy Bhaskar (1944–2014) as a coherent basis for environmental education. The work of Bhaskar serves as an in-depth approach to understanding how to apply critical realism (the critical and the realist) to matters such as environmental education, because he concretely theorises the connections between science, social change and metaphysics. By mobilising key Bhaskarian motifs — that is, the primacy of ontology over epistemology, the laminated system as a means to understand reality, the ways in which inquiry may be organised through the real, actual and the empirical, and the positive application of dialectics — this article constructs a new approach to environmental education and positions it in the field of environmental education by comparing it to posthumanism and the new materialisms. This article contains inquiry-based study outlines for enhanced thinking around: (1) climate change and social justice; (2) movements towards a carbon-free economy; (3) water, food and population; and (4) the future of human habitation.

scholarly journals General Psychology as Common Ground and Point of View: Enduring and Evolving Features

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Osbeck
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Data Analytics ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Big Data Analytics ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Critical Psychology ◽  
General Psychology ◽  
The Past

The article draws from historical and contemporary resources to articulate the enduring or persistent responsibilities of general psychology, suggesting “common ground” and “point of view” as useful concepts in line with these. It then explores three important developments in the discipline over the past several decades—big data analytics, methodological proliferation, and critical psychology—and considers the role of general psychology in relation to these developments. The point of the article is to claim and illustrate that general psychology includes a philosophy of science from within, and that it has lasting importance to the broader discipline, even as the discipline itself transforms.

The Lawless Frontier

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Gelernter
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Nancy Cartwright

Rethinking Order: After the Laws of Nature, edited by Nancy Cartwright and Keith Ward, is a collection of recent essays about the philosophy of science. Daniel Gelernter offers a critical review.

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