Realist Claim Research Articles

Anarchy, Evolution, and Ethics in International Relations

Abstract Challenging the Realist claim that international anarchy produces an amoral sphere of political action, Brian C. Rathbun argues that anarchy has selected for individuals with a particular moral sense. Flipping Realist arguments around, he claims that individuals would have never survived the hardships of anarchy if they were completely amoral. Rather, morality is a precondition for survival in anarchy. But unlike Constructivists, who maintain that socially constructed norms over time have civilized international politics, Rathbun claims that a morality is part of our human nature, and thus, a material feature of the world. To substantiate his claims, Rathbun adeptly applies insights from multiple disciplines, marshalling empirical evidence generated through a variety of natural and social scientific methods.

Neuroidealism, perceptual acquaintance and the Kantian roots of predictive processing

Perception, according to advocates of the predictive processing (PP) framework in cognitive science, is a kind of controlled hallucination. Philosophers interested in PP, however, differ on how best to interpret this slogan. Does it suggest a new kind of idealism about perceptual objects or is it just a useful metaphor, illustrating something about how PP systems work without entailing a radical shakeup of mainstream realist views in the philosophy of perception? In this paper, I take a historically informed approach to this question, drawing on the Kantian roots of the contemporary framework. What perception reveals, according to PP, is a world shaped by the neurocomputational capacities and limitations of perceiving creatures. This means that the properties of perceived objects are, in an important and surprising sense, perceiver-dependent. Nonetheless, thanks to the integration of perceptual and agential capacities envisioned by PP, we should also accept a central claim of realism: in encountering this world we also encounter—come to be acquainted with—mind-independent particulars. PP thus supports a promising next step in the development of a Kantian argument linking the unity of agency to the objectivity of perception. The argument was advanced in its modern form by P.F. Strawson and has later been developed by Susan Hurley and others. In the revised form presented here, it says that PP-perceivers must be practically self-aware agents and that practically self-aware agents embedded in an environment can be acquainted with objects it contains.

The Bastard Child of Historicism? Realisms Roots in History Painting

Summary In her classic 1974 study Realism, art historian Linda Nochlin claims that by the mid-nineteenth century, realism and realism esthetics so had permeated the art world that it also had affected the academic history painters. But what if this is wrong, if it wasn’t the history painters that were affected by the realists, but rather the other way around? In this article, I will make the case that Realism, the esthetical movement of the mid-nineteenth century, had its roots in the historicism of the early nineteenth century and that the realist claims to give a truthful, objective and impartial representation of the real world, based on meticulous observation, were already present in discussions of history and how to represent history in the arts from the years around 1800. Secondly, the study is also a contribution to the research concerning how the idea and concept of history changed in the early nineteenth century.

Nature as a sentient being: Can rivers be legal persons?

AbstractThe concept of ‘legal personhood and rights of rivers’ has developed as an alternative to anthropocentric legal frameworks that focus only on the instrumental values of rivers. Obtaining legal personhood marks a key milestone in legal recognition that could provide for the protection of rivers for more than the instrumental values that they hold. However, who could be considered legal persons is the subject of widespread debate in Western jurisprudence. Legalists hold that anything and anyone can be a legal person while Realists believe that a legal person is defined by certain attributes held only by certain categories of persons. One of the main arguments against the personhood of rivers raised by Realists is that rivers are not sentient beings and, consequently, they are incapable of holding the status of a legal person. The idea that nature is not a sentient being is mainly a Western construct. This research analyses the theory of legal personhood to determine whether rivers can and should be legal persons. It challenges the Realist claim that rivers cannot be legal persons because they lack sentience, drawing on Indigenous Vedda ontologies in Sri Lanka and Aboriginal worldviews from the continent now called Australia. The authors argue that a pluralistic approach to legal personhood is crucial in recognising and valuing our hyperconnected world, preventing categorisation, homogenisation and colonisation of ontologies and addressing sustainability challenges surrounding rivers. The research contributes to the existing scholarly work by defending the concept of legal personhood for rivers within a more pluralistic legal philosophy and addressing one of its major criticisms.

Unmasking International Relations in the Times of War in Africa: Beyond Rhetoric, Reality and Trust

This paper unmasks the concept of international relations using the lenses of realist school of thought. Relations of nation states towards each other, and with international organisations, including sub national entities is what international relations (IR) is all about (Antunes and Camisao, 2018; Adams, 2003; Wendt, 1992; Axelrod and Keohane 1993). The significance of IR in the contemporary world, as it were in the past cannot be overemphasized. It seeks to comprehend the roots of war and the preservation of peace both stemming from the nature and exercise of power within the global system. To this effect, the discipline of international relations comprises of numerous theories, each attempting to explain the power relations and the resultant behaviour of nation states on the international scene. Of particular interest to this article is how the realism theory of IR enhances the prospects of cooperation within the international environment and the realists’ main obstacles to achieving cooperation in international development. As one of the many theories in the IR discourse, Realism claims to explain the reality of international politics. Realists believe that sovereign states are the principal actors on the international political system, having at their disposal justifiable actions or tools for the protection of their interests. Proponents of realism argue that states are unitary and rational actors of importance seeking to secure their survival through reliance on their own means even if it meant war (Glaser, 1994; Brown, 2007; Milner, 1992).Drawing from secondary sources of data and using a desk top review approach, this study found that realists come close to explaining the actual happenings on the IR scene i.e. the survival of the state at all costs, also called the ethics of responsibility rather than by moral principles as other theorists argue. Realism as a school of thought in the IR discourse has generated a significant volume of debate and criticisms igniting valuable insights and remains an important analytical tool for stakeholders in IR.

The Role of Ethical Advertising of Fertility Services

This lecture will highlight the following Health Care marketing is a big business. Approximately 1 billion USD are spending each year across USA. However, it is important to note that marketing and advertising of treatment modalities are here to stay and can be useful and productive. Health care marketing can help remove stigma of certain ailments like infertility, mental illness, HIV etc. Advertising of services can help to create awareness and offer treatment options. However overzealous advertising or mis information can create false hopes in patients, over treatment by health care professional often leading to abuse of certain treatment options and can put an inherently good treatment into disrepute. Hence Hospitals and clinics need to self-regulate themselves. It is often seen that corporate hospitals in particular tend to promote lucrative and profitable services more rather than day to day health care since that may not be profitable. Celebrity endorsements are also seen in fertility services through partnerships with health care companies. It is important that advertising should not only be for professional to seek new patients but should also offer unbiased recommendations and create social awareness of illness Hence it is important that ethical advertising of fertility services Maintain patient confidentiality and anonymity Make realistic claims and promises Develop policies for advertising We recommend in addition that for accreditation of services by regulatory bodies advertising protocols of clinics should also be scrutinized and be part of the checklist.

Heritage and Cultural Affiliation: Archaeological Materials in the Performance of Identity and Belonging in Igbo Ukwu, Southeastern Nigeria

This paper explores the use of images of archaeological objects as a conduit for members of a social group to establish a connection with the past, shape new realities of identity, and express a sense of belonging. With a focus on Igbo Ukwu, a renowned archaeological community in southeastern Nigeria, this paper follows the discourse on images as realistic claims to truth situated within heritage studies. Specifically, we conceptualize archaeological objects as a materiality of belonging, examining how their affect among community members extends beyond the tangible objects to include images of the objects reproduced across different media. By examining the elevation of images of archaeological objects to index cultural affiliation between the past and the present, we highlight the emergence and (re)production of corporate notions of belonging in Igbo Ukwu community. This paper contributes to discourse on a holistic approach to the use of archaeological objects in the (re)construction of identities and ideologies. We argue that by tracing the history of representation and the role that images play in it, we are able to isolate and reconstruct the process through which new, or reimagined, realities emerge.

Introduction – On Joseph Margolis’ Aesthetics. A Symposium

In this paper, we support a continuistic reading of Joseph Margolis’ philosophy, defending the claim that in the 1970s, Margolis tackled the issues suggested by the analytic philosophy of art from an original theoretical perspective and through conceptual tools exceeding the analytical framework. Later that perspective turned out to be a radically pragmatist one, in which explicitly tolerant realistic claims and non-reductive naturalism converged with radical historicism and contextualism. We will endorse this thesis by focusing on two important concepts appearing in Margolis’ aesthetics essays from the late 1950s to the 1970s: the type-token pair and the notion of cultural emergence. On the one hand, we will emphasize Margolis’ indebtedness to Peirce’s first formulation of the type-token distinction, involving a strong interdependence between the two elements of the pair, as well as an anti-essentialistic, historicized, and contextualized notion of type. On the other hand, we will delve into Margolis’ exploration of the concept of emergence and cultural emergence, involving a genuinely pluralistic view of ontology, as well as a non-reductive, continuistic form of naturalism. Finally, we will connect the criticism of the so-called closure of the physical world with Margolis’ anti-autonomistic stance in defining artworks

Why Joseph Margolis Has Never Been an Analytic Philosopher of Art

In this paper, we support a continuistic reading of Joseph Margolis’ philosophy, defending the claim that in the 1970s, Margolis tackled the issues suggested by the analytic philosophy of art from an original theoretical perspective and through conceptual tools exceeding the analytical framework. Later that perspective turned out to be a radically pragmatist one, in which explicitly tolerant realistic claims and non-reductive naturalism converged with radical historicism and contextualism. We will endorse this thesis by focusing on two important concepts appearing in Margolis’ aesthetics essays from the late 1950s to the 1970s: the type-token pair and the notion of cultural emergence. On the one hand, we will emphasise Margolis’ indebtedness to Peirce’s first formulation of the type-token distinction, involving a strong interdependence between the two elements of the pair, as well as an anti-essentialistic, historicised, and contextualised notion of type. On the other hand, we will delve into Margolis’ exploration of the concept of emergence and cultural emergence, involving a genuinely pluralistic view of ontology, as well as a non-reductive, continuistic form of naturalism. Finally, we will connect the criticism of the so-called closure of the physical world with Margolis’ anti-autonomistic stance in defining artworks.

Dasgupta's Detonation

Dasgupta's Detonation

On the indispensability of theoretical terms and entities

Some realists claim that theoretical entities like numbers and electrons are indispensable for describing the empirical world. Motivated by the meta-ontology of Quine, I take this claim to imply that, for some first-order theory T and formula delta (x) such that T vdash exists x delta wedge exists x lnot delta , where delta (x) is intended to apply to all and only empirical entities, there is no first-order theory T' such that (a) T and T' describe the delta :s in the same way, (b) T' vdash forall x delta , and (c) T' is at least as attractive as T in terms of other theoretical virtues. In an attempt to refute the realist claim, I try to solve the general problem of nominalizingT (with respect to delta ), namely to find a theory T' satisfying conditions (a)–(c) under various precisifications thereof. In particular, I note that condition (a) can be understood either in terms of syntactic or semantic equivalence, where the latter is strictly stronger than the former. The results are somewhat mixed. On the positive side, even under the stronger precisification of (a), I establish that (1) if the vocabulary of T is finite, a nominalizing theory can always be found that is recursive if T is, and (2) if T postulates infinitely many delta :s, a nominalizing theory can always be found that is no more computationally complex than T. On the negative side, even under the weaker precisification of (a), I establish that (3) certain finite theories cannot be nominalized by a finite theory.

Navigating Black Identity and White Desire: Seven-Eleven and the 1920s Crossover Musical Comedy

Navigating Black Identity and White Desire: <i>Seven-Eleven</i> and the 1920s Crossover Musical Comedy

Models, Representation and Truth: On Giere’s Perspectival Realism

Could relativist theses about scientific theories be coherent with realist theses about the relationship between such theories and the physical world? This is the central issue of this paper that we approach, mainly, on Giere’s perspectival realism. We consider that his epistemological relativist theses are plausible and sustainable, but his realist thesis about the representational role that plays the theoretical models with respect to real systems as well as his thesis about true hypotheses are not. After trying to show that, we delineate an epistemological version of conceptual relativism which becomes cognate with Giere’s perspectival claims but that it does not comprise realist claims.

The Constructionist as Claims-Maker? A Pragmatist Intervention into Social Problems Theory.

In 1985, Steve Woolgar and Dorothy Pawluch wrote an influential essay about social constructionism, warning against the pitfalls of what they referred to as "ontological gerrymandering," which is to treat certain actors’ claims as socially constructed, while at the same time making realist claims about social conditions. Instead of this unbalanced and asymmetric approach, the best way forward for constructionists is to treat all claims made by any and all acting parties as putative, not necessarily true or false, and to avoid making any independent claims about the actual social conditions that actors are striving to define. Since this time, social problems research, science and technology studies, and environmental sociology have encountered both epistemic and political difficulties with this strict constructionist approach to being fully agnostic about social conditions and the reality of actors’ claims. Drawing on the social pragmatism of George Herbert Mead, I consider some of the problems encountered in the strict constructionist approach, and argue that ultimately, the sociologist herself cannot escape the general problem of having to make objective claims about the empirical social world. Instead of being agnostic about all claims made, sociologists are best to fully accept the responsibility and advantages of being full blown claimsmakers themselves.

Offensive Realism and the Future of China's Rise*

One of the most important questions about China's rising military and economic power is whether this trend will eventually lead to confrontation with the United States in the future or if China will become even more deeply integrated into the contemporary world order. John Mearsheimer's theory of offensive realism claims that great powers relentlessly maximize their power in a highly competitive anarchical world in order to assure their survival by trying to achieve regional hegemony at the expense of other powerful actors. Unlike many other contemporary liberal and realist thinkers, Mearsheimer predicts that China will try to become regional hegemon in Asia, which will inevitably lead to counterbalancing moves by today's sole regional hegemon – the United States. For Mearsheimer, significant change in China's material capabilities will unescapably lead it to a conflict with an American‐led counter‐balancing coalition, similar to the situation during the Cold War superpower competition. In this paper, I argue that the theory of offensive realism is lacking both in theoretical accuracy and in interpretation of empirical cases chosen by its author. That is especially true of contemporary offensive realism's analysis of China's rise to become a true global power. Understanding the deficiencies of offensive realism is crucial for avoiding foreign policy prescriptions that might lead to further deterioration of future Sino–American relations.

The Concept of War in Political Realism

The article deals with the concept of war in modern political realism. Realism claims to have an original notion of war, which distinguishes it from empirical war studies and from other schools in international relations theory. Realism does not have a strict formal definition of war like empirical studies do, it focuses on understanding the causes and nature of war instead. The distinction between realism and other international relations theories like idealism, Marxism or constructivism consists in the realist notion of politics. Realism understands politics as an eternal struggle for power that underlies all social life, while war is the most intense manifestation of this struggle. Thus, the possibility of war cannot be eradicated. The article shows the normative aspects of such understanding of war. Realism, unlike pacifism or just war theory, is less enthusiastic about ethical or legal regulation of war; furthermore, it shows the dangers that may be caused by political moralism and “criminalization” of war. On the other hand, realism fails to provide a set of norms or principles that would surpass the just war principles. The realist principles of national interest and prudence are as vague, unclear and prone to misuse as classic just war principles are. Author draws a conclusion that to be able to create a valid set of principles of war, realism needs to further converge with international relations theory schools and “enlarge” the set of its base theoretical notions.

What\u2019s so na\xefve about na\xefve realism?

Naïve Realism claims that veridical perceptual experiences essentially consist in genuine relations between perceivers and mind-independent objects and their features. The contemporary debate in the philosophy of perception has devoted little attention to assessing one of the main motivations to endorse Naïve Realism–namely, that it is the only view which articulates our ‘intuitive’ conception of perception. In this paper, I first clarify in which sense Naïve Realism is supposed to be ‘naïve’. In this respect, I argue that it is put forward as the only view which can take our introspective knowledge of perception at face value, and I identify the two (alleged) key features of such introspective knowledge. Second, I challenge the claim that one of these features-namely, that it seems as one could not be in the same perceptual state unless the putative objects of perception existed and were perceived–is introspectively evident. Consequently, I argue that a view of perceptual experience–such as Intentionalism–which denies that this feature is true of perception can still take introspection at face value. This undermines the claim that Naïve Realism is the only account which accommodates our intuitions on the nature of perception.

Political normativity and the functional autonomy of politics

This article argues for a new interpretation of the realist claim that politics is autonomous from morality and involves specific political values. First, this article defends an original normative source: functional normativity. Second, it advocates a substantive functional standard: political institutions ought to be assessed by their capacity to select and implement collective decisions. Drawing from the ‘etiological account’ in philosophy of biology, I will argue that functions yield normative standards, which are independent from morality. For example, a ‘good heart’ is one that pumps blood well, and a good army is one that it is effective at exerting military force. I then interpret realism’s naturalistic conception of politics as an etiological function of social groups: namely making binding collective decisions under persistent disagreement. I conclude that political institutions should be evaluated realistically by how well they perform this task. Finally, I assess trade-offs between this functional political normativity and other moral values. I conclude that justice, fairness, freedom and equality remain obviously important concerns, but only once the basic political function is secured.

Indeterminate Canons and the Rule of Law

This Working Paper exposes the indeterminacies of individual of statutory construction and explores their implications for new textualism and the rule of law. Relying on recent empirical studies involving dueling canons, this Paper sets forth a theoretical framework for understanding how each individual canon raises inferences about statutory meaning and how judicial choices between those inferences, not the text itself, determine what the law means as well as the outcome in any given case. This problem goes beyond and compounds the realist claim that judges always choose between at least two different competing canons in any given statutory case. The problem of indeterminate canons escalates and intensifies the relative indeterminacy always present in statutory interpretation by increasing the number of choices available to judges in any given case. At bottom, because judges must always choose between inferences when applying any given canon, the cannot reinforce the rule of law in statutory cases. New textualism, in other words, purports to preserve something that simply cannot exist: a rule of law as a law of rules. This Working Paper earned the first-place Arthur G. Raynes Award from the faculty of Temple University, Beasley School of Law, [f]or scholarly achievement in the law as relates directly to research, organization of thought, clarity, and the ability to draw explicit conclusions.

Comment: Illusions, Then and Now

The situation of mathematical statistics today resembles the situation of Laplacean probability in the mid-19th century. Strong claims are made about how probability theory should be used. Yet it is widely misused and increasingly not used in the analysis of data. Perhaps we need a philosophy of probability that makes more modest and realistic claims.