Realist Philosophy Of Science Research Articles

Methodological Naturalism and Scientific Success

Several metaphysical naturalists argue that the success of science, together with the claim that scientists adhere to methodological naturalism, amounts to strong evidence for metaphysical naturalism. I call this the scientific-success argument. It is argued that the scientific-success argument is similar to the no-miracles argument for realism in philosophy of science. On the no-miracles argument, the success of science is taken as strong evidence that scientific theories are (approximately) true. Based on this similarity, some considerations relevant to one argument may also be relevant to the other. One particular consideration is explored. The selectionist response to the no-miracles argument states that on an evolutionary model of science, in which scientific theories are accepted only after surviving a rigorous selection process, the no-miracles argument fails. The selectionist response also applies to the scientific-success argument. If scientific theories are selected for success, we do not need to explain the success of science by appealing to metaphysical naturalism.

A realist approach to thematic analysis: making sense of qualitative data through experiential, inferential and dispositional themes

ABSTRACT Thematic analysis (TA) is the most widely used method for analysing qualitative data. Recent debates, highlighting the binary distinctions between reflexive TA grounded within the qualitative paradigm and codebook TA with neo-positivist orientations, have emphasized the existence of numerous tensions that researchers must navigate to produce coherent and rigorous research. This article attempts to resolve some of these tensions through developing an approach to TA underpinned by realist philosophy of science. Focusing on interview data, we propose the use of three types of themes (experiential, inferential and dispositional) and the use of corresponding validity indicators (empirical adequacy, ontological plausibility and explanatory power). Using an illustrative example, we outline the conceptual foundations of a realist approach to TA and present recommendations for conducting it in practice. This approach, we claim, reconciles several existing binaries between distinctive types of TA by incorporating the contributions of both for the development of different types of themes.

Understanding how to enhance efficacy and effectiveness of feedback via e-portfolio: a realist synthesis protocol

IntroductionThe validity of feedback as one of the defining components for electronic portfolios (e-portfolios) to be effective and efficacious has yet to be demonstrated. While the literature has shown individual...

Big data and cumulation in the social sciences

ABSTRACT Research using big data has become popular in the social sciences, raising many new questions. This essay focuses on the question of cumulation, and why the kind of cumulation that is characteristic of social data science is more akin to cumulation in the natural sciences. The reasons for this include how research teams are organized and how they compete to exploit certain data sets to improve upon the work of other teams. There are other factors, however, that mitigate against cumulation, including the lack of access to certain datasets and a lack of building on existing findings in the social sciences. Some of these factors pertain to fundamental philosophical issues in social science, including new ideas about the workings of causal explanation. Others relate to the collaboration or absence of collaboration between different disciplines and to the difference between more applied and more academic research. The essay reviews these factors and develops an account of cumulation anchored in a realist philosophy of science and in the practices and tasks of social science research. It concludes with a call for big data research to be more integrated with already ongoing cumulative findings in the social sciences while recognizing that there are several obstacles to such an integration.

Resisting austerity measures to social policies: multiple explanatory case studies

Since Margaret Thatcher reached power in the United Kingdom, European governments have increasingly turned to neoliberal forms of policy-making, focusing, especially after the 2008 Great Recession on 'austerity policies' rather than investing in social protection policies. We applied a multiple explanatory case studies methodology to examine how and why challenges and resistance to these austerity measures are successful or not in four settings for three different social policy issues: using a gender lens in state budgeting in Andalusia (Spain), maintaining unemployment benefits in Italy and cuts to fuel poverty reduction programs in Northern Ireland and England. In particular, we intended to learn about whether resistance strategies are shared across disparate cases or whether there are unique activities that lead to successful resistance to austerity policies. As our approach drew from realist philosophy of science, we started with initial theories concerning collective action, political ideology and political power of affected populations. Our findings suggest that there are similarities between the cases we studied despite differences in political and policy contexts. We found that joint action between advocacy groups was effective in resisting cuts to social spending. Evidence also indicates that the social construction of target populations is important in resisting changes to social programmes. This was observed in both England and Northern Ireland where pensioners held significant political clout.

Explaining variations in test ordering in primary care: protocol for a realist review

IntroductionStudies have demonstrated the existence of significant variation in test-ordering patterns in both primary and secondary care, for a wide variety of tests and across many health systems. Inconsistent practice...

Leonard Hobhouse as a social theorist

Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse is a neglected figure in social theory, perceived as a social evolutionist with little else to offer to sociological analysis. His realist philosophy of science and his social theory are recovered in order to show him as a key figure in classical sociology as well as a writer of contemporary relevance. He set out a conceptualisation of social action and social structure, of the conditions for social coherence and stability and of the discursive flow of communication that is the basis of mind, self and society.

Choosing PLS path modeling as analytical method in European management research: A realist perspective

Today, there is heightened controversy about the value of partial least squares (PLS) path modeling as a quantitative research method, including within the domain of European management research. Critical lines of argument within the management and psychology literature assert that there is no reason to use PLS path modeling at all. At the same time, authors using PLS path modeling continue to advance fallacious arguments to justify their choice of method. This paper identifies flaws on both sides—invalid arguments in favor of using PLS path modeling and invalid arguments opposing its use—within the context of a unifying framework and a realist philosophy of science.

Symbolic Violence and Collective Identity: Pierre Bourdieu and the Ethics of Resistance

Social movement researchers have only recently begun to make use of the rich explanatory leverage offered by Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice. The normative implications of his framework remain almost entirely undeveloped. This paper seeks to redress these shortcomings by applying central concepts from Bourdieu's work—symbolic violence and his realist philosophy of science—to social movement analysis. Using North American lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer collective identities to illustrate this application, the paper advocates shifting analysis of collective identities from models based on negotiation to one based on domination and advocates treatment of social movement organizations as sites of justice amenable to normative evaluation and critique.

Generative mechanisms in project marketing – an agenda for inquiry

Project-based exchanges have become the dominant mode of doing business for many industrial firms, and therefore research into project marketing activities has come to be of interest for many B2B academicians. In this study, we contribute to this discourse by proposing three macro-level generative mechanisms for connecting project marketing to business performance. To do so, we outline a critical realist philosophy of science and suggest generative mechanisms that constitute business performance. Specifically, the mechanisms we propose are: (1) project construction, (2) project implementation, and (3) project transition & leveraging. Additionally, we suggest that these mechanisms and the micro-mechanisms of which they are constituted could be explored from a critical realist perspective through the use of event-structure analysis (ESA) and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA).

The tenets of hermeneutical realism

This article explores and attempts to resolve some issues that arise when at stake is the need to harmonize philosophical hermeneutics with a kind of realist philosophy of science. The author takes issue with established position in the realism-antirealism controversy. Interventionism is criticized for a residual Cartesian dualism. Cognitive relativism is debated by developing a concept of situated transcendence in the constitution of objects of inquiry. Non-behaviorist arguments against scheme-content dualism are advanced that appeal to context- sensitive theory of meaning. Social constructivism is rejected for the hypostatization of epistemic positions. The article suggests a model of the constitution of meaning. It undertakes an attempt at demonstrating how the integration of this model in a hermeneutic philosophy of science leads to realism without epistemological representationalism, foundationalism, and cognitive essentialism. The article is oriented toward a new dialogue between hermeneutic phenomenology and a holistic epistemology.

Using complexity-consistent theory for evaluating complex systems

This article draws on two recent traditions in evaluation methodology, one grounded in complexity theory and the other in a realist philosophy of science. Sometimes seen as incompatible, it is argued here that complexity theory and realist evaluation are ‘natural bedfellows’. Because of their similarities and differences, evaluators can usefully draw on both perspectives within the same evaluation. One way to do so is to draw on key concepts from each in the selection and use of substantive theory. The article introduces the concept of ‘complexity-consistent’ substantive theories and suggests that this is useful for the evaluation of policies and programs in complex adaptive systems. It demonstrates how substantive theories can be analysed in complexity terms, how multiple theories can be ‘layered’ to reflect multiple levels of systems, and how such theories can be used within evaluation design and analysis.

Professions as Science-Based Occupations

How professions should be defined and separated from other occupations has constituted an enduring theoretical and empirical problem in studies of the professions. In this article, the definitions of the so-called list approaches, involving enumerations of social attributes, are scrutinized. Weak-nesses are highlighted and analysed. It is argued that an alternative approach to the issue of definition, commencing from the epistemic or cognitive dimensions of professions, may be more fruitful. One such possibility is presented by setting out from realist philosophy of science. The links between science and profession are explored by addressing, primarily, the relation between the concepts of mechanism and intervention. A new, ‘invariant’ definition is proposed. In conclusion, a few consequences for future empirical studies of the professions are outlined.

Critical terrorism studies: a political economic approach grounded in critical realism

This article outlines a political economic (PE) approach to critical terrorism studies, one that, derived from Marx, reflects a critical realist philosophy of science. The approach to be delineated is therefore philosophically realist and non-reductively materialist in its attention to non-discursive as well as discursive elements of social context. The article goes on to show that the PE approach offers more than the discursive approaches, which the PE approach actually encompasses, and is better than the discursive approaches in grounding the objectives of critical terrorism studies. The final section of this article presents the kind of research agenda that the PE approach suggests.

Charles Tilly, German Historicism, and the Critical Realist Philosophy of Science

This paper examines Charles Tilly’s relationship to the schools of thought known as historicism and critical realism. Tilly was committed to a social epistemology that was inherently historicist, and he increasingly called himself a “historicist.” The “search for grand laws in human affairs comparable to the laws of Newtonian mechanics,” he argued, was a “waste of time” and had “utterly failed.” Tilly’s approach was strongly reminiscent of the arguments developed in the first half of the 20th century by Rickert, Weber, Troeltsch, and Meinecke for a synthesis of particularization and generalization and for a focus on “historical individuals” rather than abstract universals. Nonetheless, Tilly never openly engaged with this earlier wave of historicist sociology, despite its fruitfulness for and similarity to his own project. The paper explores some of the possible reasons for this missed encounter. The paper argues further that Tilly’s program of “relational realism” resembled critical realism, but with main two differences: Tilly did not fully embrace critical realism’s argument that social mechanisms are always co-constituted by social meaning or its normative program of explanatory critique. In order to continue developing Tilly’s ideas it is crucial to connect them to the epistemological ideas that governed the first wave of historicist sociology in Weimar Germany and to a version of philosophical realism that is interpretivist and critical.

De-anthropomorphizing energy and energy conservation: The case of Max Planck and Ernst Mach

Discussions on the relation between Mach and Planck usually focus on their famous controversy, a conflict between ‘instrumentalist’ and realist philosophies of science that revolved around the specific issue of the existence of atoms. This article approaches their relation from a different perspective, comparing their analyses of energy and energy conservation. It is argued that this reveals a number of striking similarities and differences. Both Mach and Planck agreed that the law was valid, and they sought to purge energy of its anthropomorphic elements. They did so in radically different ways, however, illustrating the differences between Mach's ‘historical’ and Planck's ‘rationalistic’ accounts of knowledge. Planck's attempt to de-anthropomorphize energy was part of his attempt to demarcate theoretical physics from other disciplines. Mach's attempt to de-anthropomorphize energy is placed in the context of fin-de-siècle Vienna. By doing so, this article also proposes a new interpretation of Mach as a philosopher, historian and sociologist of science.

Bodies, pleasure and displeasure

In sociology and cultural studies, the body is often treated only as a symbolic space, as a surface on which sexual meanings are written and from which they are read. Realist philosophy of science and philosophy of mind, however, do not treat discursive meaning as arbitrary and disconnected from the material universe. Using a realist framework, this paper examines areas of collision between values and beliefs about matters of fact concerning men's and women's sexual bodies and sexual pleasure and displeasure. Groups campaigning for and against male circumcision do not argue directly against each other. The first draw on health justifications, while the latter raise difficulties about human rights and loss of sexual sensitivity. Measuring penile sensitivity proves to be difficult. When sexual satisfaction is understood as traditional masculine role adequacy in reproductive coitus, there is no way of understanding complaints about loss of receptive sensuality. Debates about the structure and nomenclature of the clitoris, about the existence of female ejaculation and about the evolutionary function of the female orgasm similarly founder when the protagonists do not share a conceptual framework: macroscopic anatomic structures and physiological processes become invisible to observers and false assumptions are made, for example about when and how orgasm occurs. Most sexual difficulties are not physical dysfunctions, but failures to meet social rules of sexual behaviour. In conclusion, the paper draws attention to issues insufficiently addressed in contemporary sexuality studies and calls for practical engagement by social researchers with public health and policy.

Austrian Economics and Critical Realism

From the perspective of a realist philosophy of social science, the recent explosion of criticisms of mainstream economics, including reinvigorated Austrian criticism, provides what seems like a rich opportunity to join what are too often disjoined disciplinary interests and inquirers, and also to extend the arguments not only as regards the realist theory of social science, but also as regards the implications of this approach for economics. I begin with a minimum sketch of key features of realist philosophy of science as I understand it. The central difference turns on the role and nature of explanation and of theory, between what is frequently termed ‘deductivism’, and on an alternative in which explanation requires the articulation of a causal mechanism, for example, the mechanism provided by molecular chemistry that gives us an understanding of oxidation. I take the position that in social science, explanation requires social causal mechanisms. I consider the Austrian contribution from this point of view and conclude with some hints regarding how the foregoing bears on our understanding of capitalism and socialism.

A structure of the consumption function

It is claimed in the structural realism in philosophy of science that scientists aim to preserve the true structure, represented by the equations in their models. We reinterpret structural realism as a doctrine involving representation. Proving the existence of a representation theorem secures the problem of lacking independent criteria for identification between structure and non‐structure. This paper argues that a similar realist view of structure can be found in the theory of consumption in which the Fisherian framework of intertemporal choices is regarded as the true structure of the consumption function. Unlike the passive strategy of inducing the structure contained in structural realism, economists define structure in terms of invariance under intervention. Such a definition serves as a crucial device to examine and develop models for the adequacy of representing the structure of the consumption functions. JEL Classification: B22, B41, C50, E21

Risk, Trust and ‘The Beyond’ of the Environment: A Brief Look at the Recent Case of Mad Cow Disease in the United States

The epistemologically distant nature of many of today's environmental risks greatly problematises conventional risk analyses that emphasise objectivity, materiality, factual specificity and certainty. Such analyses fail to problematise issues of ontology and epistemology, assuming a reality that is readily ‘readable’ and a corresponding knowledge of that reality that is asocial, objective and certain. Under the weight of modern, invisible, manufactured environmental risks, however, these assumptions begin to crack, revealing their tenuous nature. As this paper argues, statements of risk are ultimately social products that come to us by way of translation. They are statements not of what is (ontology) but of knowledge (epistemology) expressed in probabilistic terms, and are thus thoroughly social in nature, for it is we – through our actions and social networks – that imbue them with meaning. One way we do this is through our social relations of trust. And it is this relationship – between trust and risk – that this paper seeks to detail both conceptually and empirically (while remaining grounded in a realist philosophy of science). While one could look toward any number of case studies to develop the conceptual details of this project, this paper focuses on the relatively recent (and first) case of mad cow disease to have been reported within the United States. Here, we have an epistemologically distant, and thus hotly contested, ‘object’ (or is it?), which has been the source of much risk debate; a debate that is also, in part, the effect of a deeper erosion of trust, particularly toward those managing our meat supply.