Being and Knowing

Abstract

This chapter consists of an account of Roy Bhaskar’s philosophy. In the first of two interviews we discussed the three phases of critical realism , ethics , predetermination , four-planar social being , epistemic relativism , ontological realism , judgemental rationality , emergence , mind and the world. A metaphor that he used in relation to basic critical realism, that of under-labouring , is foregrounded. Science , and social science, insofar as the latter includes the possibility of making value statements, are about the world . This is a fundamental theme that runs through basic critical realism and it is retained in the other phases: dialectical critical realism and metaReality . Basic critical realism consists of transcendental realism , critical naturalism and a theory of explanatory critique ; that is, a philosophy of science , a philosophy of social science and a development towards ethics. The theme of ontology is probably the single most important theme in basic critical realism, but along the way at the level of science and at the level of social science, and proto-ethics, it seeks to resolve certain long-standing philosophical problems. So, in the philosophy of science, transcendental realism seeks to resolve, for example, the problem of induction ; and in the philosophy of social science transcendental realism seeks to resolve the problem of structure and agency , or the problem of the role of conceptuality in social life; and the theory of explanatory critique seeks to show how you can derive value judgements or value implications from factual statements.