A Realist Interpretation of Chika Unigwe's On Black Sisters' Street

This paper is a realist interpretation of Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street. The text is considered for study here because it dwells on the popular, the modern and social issues that define realist works. The paper involves realism of subject-matter and social realism as its theoretical tools for the evaluation of the research subject. Realism of subject-matter deals with themes that are common to society while social realism looks at the poor social conditions of the middle and lower classes. The paper is a qualitative research and it is based on a content analysis of the select text for study. The paper probes the ugly life of four young girls in Nigeria who are trafficked into Antwerp, Belgium, to work as prostitutes and earn income for their traffickers. The girls suffer from sexual abuse and deceit from their parents and older men. They undergo hardship as a result of lack of proper parental care, unemployment, insecurity and poor social services which make them frustrated. All of these make their lives vulnerable. Therefore, the study concludes that, well placed individuals, parents, civil society organizations and the government should make efforts to improve and secure the lives of vulnerable young women in Nigeria in order to help them escape from their vulnerabilities. Also, the novel’s authentic representation of life and society and its focus on character more than plot, including its attention to the lower class, the social and the contemporary issues fits it into the realist agenda.

Conceiving Particles as Undulating Granular Systems Allows Fundamentally Realist Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

The strange behavior of subatomic particles is described by quantum theory, whose standard interpretation rejected some fundamental principles of classical physics such as causality, objectivity, locality, realism and determinism. Recently, a granular relativistic electrodynamical model of the electron could capture the measured values of its observables and predict its mass from the stability of its substructure. The model involves numerous subparticles that constitute some tight nucleus and loosely bound envelope allegedly forming real waves. The present study examines whether such a substructure and associated dynamics allow fundamentally realist interpretations of emblematic quantum phenomena, properties and principles, such as wave-particle duality, loss of objectivity, quantization, simultaneous multipath exploration, collapse of wavepacket, measurement problem, and entanglement. Drawing inspiration from non-linear dynamical systems, subparticles would involve realist hidden variables while high-level observables would not generally be determined, as particles would generally be in unstable states before measurements. Quantum mechanics would constitute a high-level probabilistic description emerging from an underlying causal, objective, local, albeit contextual and unpredictable reality. Altogether, by conceiving particles as granular systems composed of numerous extremely sensitive fluctuating subcorpuscles, this study proposes the possible existence of a local fundamentally realist interpretation of quantum mechanics.

The Virtues of Separability and Locality

This chapter presents the argument for wave function realism that it is the only realist interpretation of quantum theories that can maintain a fundamentally separable and local metaphysics. It is commonly seen as a consequence of entanglement and Bell’s Theorem that quantum mechanics entails quantum nonseparability and nonlocality. Yet although all rival realist ontological interpretations of quantum mechanics involve either a nonseparable or a nonlocal fundamental metaphysics, the metaphysics of wave function realism is fundamentally both separable and local, although the view also makes room for nonfundamental nonseparability and nonlocality. The chapter considers several arguments that could explain why one should prefer interpretations of quantum theories that are separable and local, and concludes with a defense of intuitions in quantum interpretation.

Identifying the Explanatory Domain of the Looping Effect: Congruent and Incongruent Feedback Mechanisms of Interactive Kinds

Ian Hacking uses the looping effect to describe how classificatory practices in the human sciences interact with the classified people. While arguably this interaction renders the affected human kinds unstable and hence different from natural kinds, realists argue that also some prototypical natural kinds are interactive and human kinds in general are stable enough to support explanations and predictions. I defend a more fine-grained realist interpretation of interactive human kinds by arguing for an explanatory domain account of the looping effect. First, I argue that knowledge of the feedback mechanisms that mediate the looping effect can supplement, and help to identify, the applicability domain over which a kind and its property variations are stably explainable. Second, by applying this account to cross-cultural case studies of psychiatric disorders, I distinguish between congruent feedback mechanisms that explain matches between classifications and kinds, and incongruent feedback mechanisms that explain mismatches. For example, congruent mechanisms maintain Western auditory experiences in schizophrenia, whereas exporting diagnostic labels inflicts incongruence by influencing local experiences. Knowledge of the mechanisms can strengthen explanatory domains, and thereby facilitate classificatory adjustments and possible interventions on psychiatric disorders.

Why Are Developed Countries Giving Aid to India?

India is the recipient of substantial aid flows but also a nuclear-armed power and an emerging donor. Why have developed countries provided aid to one of the fastest-growing major economies in the world? Answering this question requires understanding the underlying determinants of these aid flows. Using data from 1960 to 2015, the domestic conditions of India and the external conditions of donors are empirically explored with time-series analysis and panel-data analysis. We find that during the Cold War India received more foreign aid from donors with a larger volume of trade and arms transfers, but from 2000 to 2015 the effect of arms transfers declined while countries with high trade volumes continued to give more aid. Although these findings broadly support the realist interpretation of aid, we conclude that post–Cold War structural shifts in the international aid regime and defense industries need to be considered by future researchers.

Unified Communication Technologies at a Global Automotive Organization

The purpose of the study was addressing the challenge of integrating and managing complex technology-oriented advancements regarding the developing Internet of Things and in the daily lives of people. The research question was: How does digital transformation implemented through Unified Communication and Collaboration (UC&C) technologies impact productivity and innovation within a global automotive organization? A framework for the implementation of UC&C was developed and implemented in one of the world's largest automotive organizations. Following development and implementation of the framework, qualitative and quantitative research were conducted, establishing observational and metric driven data support analysis. A critical realist interpretation of the authoritative research results suggested that digitally transformed UC&C technologies enhance employees' work practices. The study concluded that transformation delivered via a digital framework such as UC&C technologies can impact productivity and create opportunities for driving innovation within a global automotive organization.

The Integration and Implementation of the Internet of Things Through Digital Transformation

The purpose of this chapter is to address challenges related to the integration and implementation of the developing internet of things (IoT) into the daily lives of people. Demands for communication between devices, sensors, and systems are reciprocally driving increased demands for people to communicate and manage the growing digital ecosystem of the IoT and an unprecedented volume of data. A larger study was established to explore how digital transformation through unified communication and collaboration (UC&C) technologies impact the productivity and innovation of people in the context of one of the world's largest automotive enterprises, General Motors (GM). An analysis and exploration of this research milieu, supported by a critical realist interpretation of solutions, suggested that recommendations can be made that the integration and implementation of digital transformation, delivered via UC&C technologies, impact productivity and opportunity for driving innovation within a global automotive enterprise.

Folk psychology and network theory: Fact or gamble? A reply to Kalis and Borsboom

Kalis and Borsboom (2020) defend their realism about folk psychology against my challenge to provide a grounding argument for the correctness of folk psychological explanation (Oude Maatman, 2020). In this reply, I show how their clarified realism in fact vindicates this challenge, as it heavily relies on the predictive success of folk psychology. I then proceed by describing how their realist interpretation of “intentional content” complicates the usability of network theory, and show that both their antireductionism and realism are grounded in an empirical gamble against alternatives. I end with a brief defense of my own version of network theory.

Knowing

The longest chapter of the book examines Kilwardby’s theory of knowledge, from sense perception to intellectual cognition. The key texts to understanding Kilwardby’s interpretation of Aristotelian and Augustinian epistemology are considered and the original solutions presented. Kilwardby combines an active theory of perception of Augustinian influence with a standard interpretation of the doctrine of abstraction. Also examined in this chapter is Kilwardby’s moderate realist interpretation of universals and how their discovery and application is found in scientific demonstrations. The conditions for and the nature of scientific demonstrations are examined in detail.