Realist Account Research Articles

Falsehoods and myths in famine research: The Bengal famine and Daoud

AbstractDecision makers on famine and food policy may be influenced by myths, some of which reappear after being refuted. The subject of famine is highly emotive and politically charged which means that many authors cherry‐pick or invent evidence, suppress evidence or use bad economics. Daoud's (2018) paper ‘Synthesizing the Malthusian and Senian approaches on scarcity: A realist account’ contains many falsehoods supporting myths, both misrepresentations of what people have written on the 1943 Bengal famine (suggestio falsi) and suppression of what they did say (suppressio veri). The statistics are unacceptable. The claims about the Malthusian approach are untenable.

Understanding and scientific progress: lessons from epistemology

Contemporary debate surrounding the nature of scientific progress has focused upon the precise role played by justification, with two realist accounts having dominated proceedings. Recently, however, a third realist account has been put forward, one which offers no role for justification at all. According to Finnur Dellsén’s (Stud Hist Philos Sci Part A 56:72–83, 2016) noetic account, science progresses when understanding increases, that is, when scientists grasp how to correctly explain or predict more aspects of the world that they could before. In this paper, we argue that the noetic account is severely undermotivated. Dellsén provides three examples intended to show that understanding can increase absent the justification required for true belief to constitute knowledge. However, we demonstrate that a lack of clarity in each case allows for two contrasting interpretations, neither of which serves its intended purpose. On the first, the agent involved lacks both knowledge and understanding; and, on the second, the agent involved successfully gains both knowledge and understanding. While neither interpretation supports Dellsén’s claim that understanding can be prised apart from knowledge, we argue that, in general, agents in such cases ought to be attributed neither knowledge nor understanding. Given that the separability of knowledge and understanding is a necessary component of the noetic account, we conclude that there is little support for the idea that science progresses through increasing understanding rather than the accumulation of knowledge.

Political realism and the quest for political progress

Political realism and the quest for political progress

Scientific Perspectivism and the Methodology of Modern Mathematical Physics

AbstractPerspectival realists often appeal to the methodology of science to secure a realist account of the retention and continued success of scientific claims through the progress of science (e.g., Massimi [2016]). However, in the context of modern physics, the retention and continued success of scientific claims are typically only definable within a mathematical framework. In this article, I argue that this concern leaves the perspectivist open to Cassirer’s (1910/1923) neo-Kantian critique of the applicability of mathematics in the natural sciences. To support this criticism, I present a case study on the conservation of energy in modern physics.

NATURE'S POWERS AND GOD'S ENERGIES

AbstractThis is an exploration into the synthesis of Mumford and Anjum's pandispositionalist philosophy with Deacon's emergent dynamics, which when interpreted within the theological framework of Palamas’s essence–energies distinction, it all comes together into a new metaphysics that offers a more satisfactory account of the God–world relation. The argument proceeds in two stages. First, a philosophical framework for establishing a dual‐aspect monistic view of the world in terms of presence/absence (or manifested/unmanifested), acknowledging unmanifested powers as a genuine mode of actuality. Second, a theological consideration for a befitting conception of God within this scheme, according to which nature's powers are equated with God's energies, though God's essence is not exhausted by them. The resulting proposition promises a non‐Whiteheadian process view, a panentheistic (not pantheistic) articulation of divine presence, and an account of reality as the dramatization of God's manifestation in the world and our participation in that cosmic revealing.

Building on the shoulders of Bhaskar and Matthews: a critical realist criminology

ABSTRACT Building on the insights of the late Roy Bhaskar and the late Roger Matthews, as well as some recent developments in ultra-realist criminology, this article introduces and delineates some core intellectual contours of a Critical Realist Criminology (CRC) based on the principles of: The ‘emergent,’ stratified ontology of crime and of the offender; the full critical realist account of the dialectics of being and becoming, including the spiritual turn in critical realism, applied to processes of criminal justice and reform; maximal inclusion of diverse theoretical research positions and the primacy of ontology in methodological selection; a ‘serious’ critical relationship of criminologists with professionals, institutions and policy-makers of criminal justice. These principles are directed at developing a criminology that ‘underlabours’ the recovery of human flourishing for the victims and perpetrators of crime and for society at large, including in-depth inquiry into what counts as crime and the purposes of incarceration.

Introduction: Measurement at the Crossroads

Introduction: Measurement at the Crossroads

Diversity and Interpretation. Toward a Pluralist Realist Description of Religious Experience

This paper attempts to offer a pluralist realist account of the diversity of religious experience. In the first part, I show that an influential trend in contemporary philosophy of religious experience and religious pluralism is based on the mediational image of knowledge and a problematic notion of interpretation, which generates irresoluble problems. I then attempt a redescription based on an extension of Heidegger’s theory of understanding as pre-theorical engagement with the world, which allows for the conciliation of the diversity of religious experience with its claimed epistemic force. To develop this argument, finally, I present the experience of diversity proper of the contemporary world as a type of spiritual experience in which the traits of a pre-theoretical religious understanding can be found. As a result, the paper suggests a move from epistemology to spirituality for a better understanding of religious experience.

Transgender debates and healthcare: A critical realist account

The meta-theoretical resource of critical realism (CR) is deployed in order to examine transgender and healthcare. CR treads a middle way between positivism and postmodernism, within post-Popperian discussions of the philosophy of natural and social science. It focuses on the conditions of possibility for the emergence of a phenomenon under investigation. In this case, the focus is on the emergence of debates about transgenderism in healthcare. These have been technological (about the prospect of biomedical solutions to personal problems) and ideological, with the enlarged salience of identity politics and our currently unresolved "culture wars." Identity politics have brought a focus on epistemological privilege or "lived experience" and on rights to healthcare being driven by consumer choice. The current contestation and its history are discussed in relation to our four planar social being (nature, relationality, socio-economic structures, and our particular personalities) and future scenarios are rehearsed.

Past Facts and the Nature of History

Abstract We defend a realist account of history: past facts are discoveries not creations. We show how ‘moderate’ realists, who admit the critical role of perspective, while insisting on history’s metaphysical independence from historians, can accommodate Paul Roth’s arguments in favor of irrealism. Moreover, our position is consistent with a dynamic past: as history unfurls past events gain new properties. Realism is necessary, we argue, to capture substantive disputes within history. It also grounds history’s reflexivity: the point of the continual re-examination of history (and history’s history!) turns in part on there being mind-independent past facts to be had.

Metaphysics, Natural Science and Theological Claims

In this paper, I aim to discuss E. J. Lowe's view of the synergy between metaphysics and natural science. In doing so, I will extend Lowe’s synergistic model to develop a realist account of theological claims thereby responding to Byrne’s strong form of eliminativism and agnosticism about theological claims. The paper is divided up as follows. In section 1, I will discuss Lowe’s view of metaphysics. In section 2, I will explain how Lowe thinks metaphysics and natural science are related. In section 3, I will respond to objections against Lowe’s conception of metaphysics. In section 4, I will discuss the implications of Lowe’s conception of metaphysics for a realist account of theological claims. In section 5, I will conclude this paper by claiming that there are excellent reasons to extend the synergy between metaphysics and natural science to that of theology as well.

Human rights violations, detention conditions and the invisible nature of women in European immigration detention: a legal realist account

PurposeThe purpose of this paper was to conduct a legal realist assessment of women’s situation in European immigration detention which focuses on relevant international and European human rights instruments applicable to conditions and health rights in detention settings, academic literature and relevant European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) jurisprudence since 2010.Design/methodology/approachIn spite of the United Nations human rights frameworks and European Union (EU) standards, conditions in European immigration detention settings continue to pose a health risk to those detained. Migrant health rights when detained are intertwined with the right not to be subjected to arbitrary detention, detention in conditions compatible for respect for human dignity and right to medical assistance. Migrant women are particularly vulnerable requiring special consideration (pregnant and lactating women; single women travelling alone or with children; adolescent girls; early-married children, including with newborn infants) in immigration detention settings.FindingsThe situation of women in immigration detention is patchy in EU policy, academic literature and ECtHR jurisprudence. Where referred to, they are at best confined to their positionality as pregnant women or as mothers, with their unique gendered health needs ill-resourced. ECtHR jurisprudence is largely from male applicants. Where women are applicants, cases centre on dire conditions of detention, extreme vulnerability of children accompanying their mother and arbitrary or unlawful detention of these women (with child).Originality/valueConcerns have been raised by the European Parliament around immigration detention of women including those travelling with their children. There is a continued failure to maintain minimum and equivalent standards of care for women in European immigration detention settings.

Systems and Relations All the Way Down, All the Way Across

This article proposes a hyper-relational theory of the world, conjoining cybernetics, information theory, general systems theory, the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari and quantum physics in order to show that systems and relations go all the way down, all the way across. I give an exposition of Shannon’s information theory, and draw connections with quantum mechanics. The work of Bertalanffy is discussed and its relationship to philosophy and quantum mechanics outlined. I then critique the naive, realist account of reality; what is proposed in its place is a hyper-relational ontology whereby entities (being) are epiphenomena of relations (becoming). The implications of this ontology in relation to architecture are discussed by contrasting it with, on the one hand, a hylomorphic approach to the essence of architecture (which foregrounds entities) and, on the other, a hermeneutic approach (which foregrounds meaning). Buildings are epiphenomena of broader political, interpersonal, ecological and essentially relational matters, assemblages, systems and interplays, and this hyper-relationality is the ontology of architecture.

The time-lag argument and simultaneity

The time-lag argument seems to put some pressure on naïve realism to agree that seeing must happen simultaneously with what is seen; meanwhile, a wide-accepted empirical fact suggests that light takes time to transmit from objects at a distance to perceivers—which implies what is seen happened before seeing, and, accordingly, naïve realism must be false. In this paper, I will, first of all, show that the time-lag argument has in fact involves a misunderstanding concept of simultaneity: according to Special Relativity, simultaneity is a matter of convention rather than a matter of fact, so, in principle, we can stipulate a perceptual conception of simultaneity, according to which what is seen is simultaneous with seeing. Secondly, the generalized time-lag argument has a mistaken view on the perceived events and perceiving; it has a doubtful assumption that these events are momentary in the mathematical sense. Such idealization is the main reason why we have the intuition that the time-lag effect of perceiving is in conflict with our ordinary perceptual experiences. Finally, I argue that the naïve realist account of the perceptual relation is a nontemporal constitutive relation; and hence naïve realism is compatible with the claim that we can perceive things as they were, and it should not be weakened by the time-lag argument.

A psychological perspective of agency and structure within critical realist theory: a specific application to the construct of self-efficacy

ABSTRACT The discipline of psychology has been under-represented in the critical realist account of the relationship between structure and agency. In this paper a critical realist perspective of educational psychology research focuses on the psychological analysis of the individual and what might be considered as ‘real' and having causal power. Bhaskar's criteria for an entity to be ontologically real are applied to the psychological entity of self-efficacy in the context of a typical piece of classroom teacher-pupil interaction. The role of self-efficacy alongside other psychological, social and cultural entities is presented as a causal mechanism for the generation of Archer’s internal conversation which leads to agency. Self-efficacy is further examined in relation to criteria of ontological depth and emergence. This perspective creates the basis for a consistent ontological framework across educational psychology and that of the social sciences and a sound basis for interdisciplinary research and theory development.

Can we make true statements about the world through videogames? An indirect realist account of Alexander Galloway’s notion of social realism in gaming

In recent years, game-related scholars have claimed that the study of videogames can reveal important insights for understanding and challenging the concept of realism advocated by previous theories of visual culture. In fact, videogames have increasingly been acknowledged as a valuable site for opening up new ways of interrogating traditional theories of realism. Drawing upon Alexander Galloway’s seminal work Social realism in gaming, the argument we seek to advance here is that: his theorizations of social realism in gaming alongside the notion of “congruence requirement” are largely grounded on indirect realist assumptions. In order to provide support to our claim, we assumed that his theory of realism is suggestive of an indirect form of correspondence between the fidelity of gamers’ ordinary world, their derivative actions within the gaming-world and the modes of representation of objective reality depicted in videogames

Pragmatism as Transcendental Philosophy, Part 2: Peirce on God and Personality

Pragmatism as Transcendental Philosophy, Part 2: Peirce on God and Personality

Realism and the Epistemic Objectivity of Science

Abstract The paper presents a realist account of the epistemic objectivity of science. Epistemic objectivity is distinguished from ontological objectivity and the objectivity of truth. As background, T.S. Kuhn’s idea that scientific theory-choice is based on shared scientific values with a role for both objective and subjective factors is discussed. Kuhn’s values are epistemologically ungrounded, hence provide a minimal sense of objectivity. A robust account of epistemic objectivity on which methodological norms are reliable means of arriving at the truth is presented. The problem remains that deliberative judgement is required to determine the relevance and relative significance of a range of methodological norms. A role is sketched for cognitive virtues which may be exercised in the course of the deliberative judgement.

Emotions, personhood and social ontology: A critical realist approach

AbstractThis paper addresses the question of the relations between emotions and personhood, with a view to advancing a critical realist account of the role of emotions in social life. It is argued that the constitution of persons has to be approached from an ontological perspective, and that this raises questions about how sociology has addressed the meaning and role of emotions. Margaret Archer's critical realist perspective on them as commentaries on human concerns is broadly endorsed, but some significant correctives are proposed, especially with respect to the important distinction between primary and secondary emotions. To this end, it is argued that the affect spectrum theory advanced by Warren TenHouten can be fruitfully appended to a critical realist theory of emotions.

State Legitimacy and Religious Accommodation

Abstract In this paper, we put forward a realist account of the problem of accommodation of conflicting claims over sacred places. Our argument takes its cue from the empirical finding that modern, Western-style states necessarily mould religion into shapes that are compatible with state rule. At least in the context of modern states, there is no pre-political morality of religious freedom that states ought to follow when adjudicating claims over sacred spaces. Liberal normative theory on religious accommodation which starts from the assumption of a pre-political morality of religious freedom is therefore of limited value. As an alternative, we suggest that the question of contested sacred places should be settled with reference to the purposes of the state, at least as long as one is committed to the existence of modern states. If one finds the treatment of religion by the state unsatisfactory, our argument provides a pro tanto reason for seeking alternative forms of political organization.