Garry Potter

The Philosophy of Social Science : New Perspectives

1. Importance of Science. 2. Rationalism and Empiricism. 3. Positivism and Its Problems. 4. Expansions of Social Scientific Understanding. 5. Hermeneutics and Science. 6. Feminism and Science. 7. Postmodernism. 8. Hyper-reality and Critical Realism

Reopening the Wound - Against God and Bhaskar

This paper revisits the controversy surrounding Bhaskars ‘spiritualisation’ of critical realism (CR), formally introduced with the publication of From East to West. It describes the principal divisions amongst realists with respect to the five moments of CR theoretical development signified by Bhaskar in terms of his own publications. The article critiques some of his later arguments, such as that for reincarnation; but it also locates and identifies a much earlier error as being consistent with, and fundamental to, the later ideas that so many realists had problems with. The principal error is to be found in the concept of ontological truth.

Induction and Ontology

Abstract The problem of justifying induction has vexed philosophers for centuries. It has been entangled with issues concerning logic and probability and the philosophy of science. This article proposes a new approach to untangling these issues and resolving the overall problem. This new approach is by way of the perspective of realist ontology. Induction should not be seen as a debased form of logic and the search for inflexible rules for justifying particular sorts of inductive inference should be abandoned. Rather, induction can be justified pragmatically as a general practice because reality possesses ordered patterns. Induction, being dependent on repetition, can sometimes identify aspects of those patterns simply because the instances of repetition really do occur. Thus, confidence in conclusions based on inductive inferences is not properly to be derived from unchanging logical rules governing when and where inductive inferences may be successfully applied, but from the involvement of such inferences with a wider, deeper process in which not only deductive inferences and other inductive inferences are involved, but also a set of relations to broader bodies of relevant knowledge. That is, unlike particular deductive inferences, inductive inferences may not be engaged in isolation from all other information about the world and completely in the abstract. Induction is always connected with a process of retroduction.

Critical Realist Strengths and Weaknesses

Forgive me for beginning this review with a list, but it is an impressive list. Analytical dualism with respect to structure and agency is perhaps the cornerstone for a better understanding of either as well as their interrelation. In Chapter 1 Margaret Archer reiterates her crucial contributions to a proper social scientific understanding of agency. Where George Herbert Mead once postulated an acting ‘I’ and a reflected upon ‘me’ in his conception of self, Archer’s ‘me’ becomes the ‘being-with-this-constellation-of-concerns’. This is a much richer conception. Archer makes distinctions between personal identities and social identities. She discusses structurally emergent properties (SEPs) and culturally emergent properties (CEPs). Altogether we can sum up her (and critical realism’s) accomplishment in this area thusly: traditional theorists of agency (as in the case of the aforementioned father of symbolic interactionism) make profound mistakes to do with structure; traditional ‘structural theorists’ make profound mistakes with respect to agents and agency; Archer shows how to avoid these mistakes. The significance of this accomplishment cannot be overstated; it is, as it were, foundational to theoretical understanding in social science. It is, however, but the first item on my list.

Power and Knowledge

Abstract This article theorizes the inseparable relationship of power and knowledge. It argues that there is a transhistorical constant in the production and dissemination of knowledge: a dialectical contradiction within its institutional heart. The production, dissemination and, importantly, the consolidation of knowledge, is bound up with the obfuscation of this and restriction or prevention of knowledge dissemination. These latter processes are part of the concept I call structural mystification. The article explains and theoretically justifies this concept and details the manner of its working, using the example of educational systems.

Reopening the Wound

Abstract This paper revisits the controversy surrounding Bhaskars ‘spiritualisation’ of critical realism (CR), formally introduced with the publication of From East to West. It describes the principal divisions amongst realists with respect to the five moments of CR theoretical development signified by Bhaskar in terms of his own publications. The article critiques some of his later arguments, such as that for reincarnation; but it also locates and identifies a much earlier error as being consistent with, and fundamental to, the later ideas that so many realists had problems with. The principal error is to be found in the concept of ontological truth.