Roy Bhaskar

Critical realism : essential readings

Critical realism is a movement in philosophy and the human sciences most closely associated with the work of Roy Bhaskar. Since the publication of Bhaskars A Realist Theory of Science, critical realism has had a profound influence on a wide range of subjects. This reader makes accessible, in one volume, key readings to stimulate debate about and within critical realism. It explores the following themes: * transcendental realist * the theory of explanatory critique * dialectics * Bhaskars critical naturalist philosophy of science.

On the Ontological Status of Ideas

Four recent turns (realist, processual, holistic and reflexive) in social thought are discussed and related to the four dimensional schema of dialectical realism the author has recently outlined. It is shown how ontology matters, and indeed is not only necessary but inevitable, The nature of the reality of ideas (of different types) is demonstrated and the most prevalent mistakes in the metatheory of ideas and ideation analysed. The significance of categorical realism and the character of those specific types if ideas known as ‘ideologies’ are then discussed. Finally some good and bad dialectical connections of ideas and related phenomena are sketched.

From Science to Emancipation : Alienation and the Actuality of Enlightenment

New introduction by Mervyn Hartwig, 1. From a Philosophy of Science to a Philosophy of Universal Self-realisation, 2. Critical Realism and Marxism, 3. Critical Realism and Discourse Theory: Debate with Ernesto Laclau, 4. Critical Realism and Ethnomethodology: Debate with Rom Harre, 5. Critical Realism and Ethics: Introducing Transcendental Dialectical Critical Realism, 6. Critical Realism, Co-presence and Making a Difference, 7. Part I: Reality Check, Part II: Critical Realism and the Left, 8. Critical Realism, Postmodernism and the Global Crisis, 9. Left versus Right Brain, Creativity and Emancipation, 10. The Philosophy of metaReality: Identity, Spirituality, System, 11. Educating the Educators - Or, Empowering Teachers, 12. The Limits of Thought, 13. Unconditionality in Love.

Scientific Explanation and Human Emancipation

What connections, if any, exist between explanations in the human sciences and the project of human emancipation? I want to address this issue in the light of the transcendental realist reconstruction of science [see Bhaskar, 1975/1978, 1982a] and the critical naturalism which that reconstruction enables [see Bhaskar, 1979a].

Introducing Transcendental Dialectical Critical Realism

an epistemological stalemate. Prima facie, unless there are overriding considerations against us, I think it is epistemically rational for each of us to trust or privilege our own personal experience. Thus, for the time being, it is epistemically rational for those who experience God to believe in God, and equally rational epistemically for those who do not experience God not to believe in God.

Realism in the Natural Sciences

Publisher Summary Realism is the theory that the ultimate objects of scientific inquiry exist and act (for the most part) quite independently of the scientists and their activity. The chapter discusses that the case for a metaphysical realism consisting in an elaboration of what the world is prior to any scientific investigation of it and for any scientific attitudes or behavior to be possible. Such realism neither presupposes nor licenses a realistic interpretation of any particular theory. The possibility of such a metaphysical, as distinct from “internal,” realism depends upon the establishment of the possibility of a philosophy, as distinct from sociology (or history) of science. Within philosophy, it also depends upon the possibility of ontology as distinct from epistemology. A realist position in the philosophy of science is a theory about the nature of the being, not the knowledge of the objects investigated by science roughly to the effect that they exist and act independently of human activity, and hence of both sense experience and thought. It is clear that any theory of the knowledge of objects entails some theory of the objects of knowledge; that every theory of scientific knowledge must logically presuppose a theory of what the world is like for knowledge, under the descriptions given it by the theory, to be possible.