The central focus of this paper is the disjunction between the findings of climate science in revealing the threat of global warming and the failure to act appropriately to these warnings. The development of climate science can be illuminated through the perspective provided by Peircian semiotics, but efforts to account for its success as a science and its failure to convince people to act accordingly indicate the need to supplement Peirce’s ideas. The more significant gaps, it is argued, call for (...) the integration of major new ideas. It will be argued that Peirce should be viewed as a Schellingian philosopher, and it will then be shown how this facilitates integration into his philosophy of concepts developed by other philosophers and theorists within this tradition. In particular, Bourdieu’s concepts of the ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ will be integrated with Peirce’s semiotics and used to analyse the achievements and failures of climate science. It will be suggested that the resulting synthesis can augment Peirce’s evolutionary cosmology and so provide a better basis for comprehending and responding to the situation within which we find ourselves. (shrink)

According to one large family of views, scientific explanations explain a phenomenon (such as an event or a regularity) by subsuming it under a general representation, model, prototype, or schema (see Bechtel, W., & Abrahamsen, A. (2005). Explanation: A mechanist alternative. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 36(2), 421–441; Churchland, P. M. (1989). A neurocomputational perspective: The nature of mind and the structure of science. Cambridge: MIT Press; Darden (2006); Hempel, C. G. (1965). Aspects of scientific (...) explanation. In C. G. Hempel (Ed.), Aspects of scientific explanation (pp. 331–496). New York: Free Press; Kitcher (1989); Machamer, P., Darden, L., & Craver, C. F. (2000). Thinking about mechanisms. Philosophy of Science, 67(1), 1–25). My concern is with the minimal suggestion that an adequate philosophical theory of scientific explanation can limit its attention to the format or structure with which theories are represented. The representational subsumption view is a plausible hypothesis about the psychology of understanding. It is also a plausible claim about how scientists present their knowledge to the world. However, one cannot address the central questions for a philosophical theory of scientific explanation without turning one’s attention from the structure of representations to the basic commitments about the worldly structures that plausibly count as explanatory. A philosophical theory of scientific explanation should achieve two goals. The first is explanatory demarcation. It should show how explanation relates with other scientific achievements, such as control, description, measurement, prediction, and taxonomy. The second is explanatory normativity. It should say when putative explanations succeed and fail. One cannot achieve these goals without undertaking commitments about the kinds of ontic structures that plausibly count as explanatory. Representations convey explanatory information about a phenomenon when and only when they describe the ontic explanations for those phenomena. (shrink)

Critical realism has been an important advance in social science methodology because it develops a qualitative theory of causality which avoids some of the pitfalls of empiricist theories of causality. But while there has been ample work exploring the relationship between critical realism and qualitative research methods there has been noticeably less work exploring the relationship between dialectical critical realism and qualitative research methods. This seems strange especially since the founder of the philosophy of critical realism, Roy Bhaskar, employs and (...) develops a range of dialectical concepts in his later work in order to extend the main tenets of critical realism. The aim of this paper is to draw on Bhaskar's later work, as well as Marxism, to reorient a critical realist methodology towards a dialectical approach for qualitative research. In particular, the paper demonstrates how dialectical critical realism can begin to provide answers to three common criticisms made against original critical realist methodology: that the qualitative theory of causal powers and structures developed by critical realists is problematic; that critical realist methodology contains values which prove damaging to empirical research; and that critical realists often have difficulties in researching everyday qualitative dilemmas that people face in their daily lives. (shrink)

Proponents of the view that social structures are ontologically distinct from the people in whose actions they are immanent have assumed that structures can stand in causal relations to individual practices. Were causality to be no more than Humean concomitance correlations between structure and practices would be unproblematic. But two prominent advocates of the ontological account of structures, Bhaskar and Giddens, have also espoused a powers theory of causality. According to that theory causation is brought about by the activity of (...) particulars, in the social psychological case, individuals of some sort. Consistence would demand that structure be those individuals. But neither Giddens nor Bhaskar wish to reify structure to the extent that would fit it for a role as a powerful particular. If only human beings can be powerful particulars in these contexts, the only way that structures can be real must be as properties of conversational interactions. Human action is social just in so far as people direct themselves to engage well in joint activities with others. (shrink)

This article employs the basic tenets of critical realism to provide a philosophical foundation for understanding and resolving the dualisms of activity theory. Its argument follows in four parts. First I develop an immanent critique that shows the problems within activity theory; it reveals that several dualisms were present from the onset, and further that an implicit ontology allows activity theorists to presuppose critical realism in practice. I claim that the historical development of activity theory is marked by attempts to (...) resolve contradictions, which are signalling devices pointing to the need for theoretical expansion. To shed light on attempts to mend dualisms, I then introduce the notion of a ‘patch’ because it functions as a mechanism that sustains dualisms and gaps in practice. An omissive critique identifies the key omitted element that causes the dualisms; namely, the omission of a critique of Humean philosophy and classical empiricism. Finally,, after effectively isolating and explaining the source of dualisms, I prepare the ground for a protoexplanatory critique to rectify them. (shrink)

After presenting Apostel’s views on scientific realism, I present definitions of the concepts of ontology and metaphysics. I then proceed to develop Apostel’s basic ontology and his metaphysics. Apostel proposed a particular understanding of existence based on his views on causation. He also developed a view of the universe as a causal self-explaining system. I discuss and illustrate three kinds of what he calls “metaphysical deductions” that aim to deliver such a view of the universe. The most important one is (...) the Leibnizian variational method, that should allow us to deduce the existing universe as the ‘best’ of all possible worlds. (shrink)

In the 1980s and 1990s the predominant metatheories in development analysis were cast into doubt by their apparent failure in practice. One response to this impasse in development theory was to turn to postmodern ideas to explain their failure. In particular many analysts utilized Foucauldian discourse theory to critique development as a discourse of power. Such analysis gave rise to a post-development school of thought that condemned development as harmful to people in the Global South and advocated its abandonment. This (...) paper argues that most such attempts at a discourse analysis of development were characterized by serious flaws related to skepticism, notably problems of performative contradiction and relativism. Consequently, the paper argues for an alternative approach in the form of a development ethics drawing on aspects of deconstructionist and critical realist thought. (shrink)

It is not uncommon in educational research and social science in general either to eschew the word truth or to put it in scare quotes in order to signify scepticism about it. After the initial wave of relativism in the philosophy of natural science, a second wave has developed in social science with the rise of postmodernism and poststructuralism. The tendency here is to relativise truth or to bracket out questions of truth. In contradistinction, this paper revindicates the metaphysical nature (...) of truth. Truth is a transcendental precondition of educational inquiry and is best understood as a formal, regulative norm. Realism about truth enjoins a defence of the correspondence theory, which is provided here. At the same time, however, the development of realism in the social sciences has ironically followed the postmodernists in its scepticism about truth and its rejection of the correspondence theory. This paper critically appraises such recent developments, since all research is unintelligible without realism about the social world and whether our substantive knowledge-claims correspond with it. (shrink)

In response to Hostettler, I clarify the intended meanings of ‘After Critical Realism?’ My point is not to abandon critical realism but to develop it further and make it more self-reflexively critical. Bhaskar's journey through different stories about our place in the cosmos is a dialectical learning process from Althusserian scientist existentialism, via an all-encompassing dialectical philosophy as a theory of moral good grounded in every expressively veracious action or remark, to a pluralist notion of God. Bhaskar's questions are deep (...) and his answers pertinent, but there are more hypothetical, scholarly and dialogical ways of telling ethico-political and cosmic stories. (shrink)

Distinguishing between ‘analytical’ or ‘orthodox’ and ‘dialectical’ readings of first-wave critical realism, this review essay engages critically with the former as exemplified in Critical Realism and the Social Sciences: Heterodox Elaborations, edited by Jon Frauley and Frank Pearce. It argues that the ‘orthodox’ reading is fixist and endist and that this is conducive to an ill-informed and unconstructive attitude of hostility to dialectical critical realism and the philosophy of meta-Reality that is at odds with the critical realist embrace and that (...) in turn helps to reproduce the stasis of the reading. If the dynamism that goes hand in hand with the method of immanent critique is embraced, however, the possibility of flourishing two-way constructive critical engagements among the moments of the system is opened up, leading to the invigoration of each and the whole. Notwithstanding limitations - indeed, partly in virtue of them -, Critical Realism and the Social Sciences provides a promising basis for the unfolding of that possibility. (shrink)

Until recently, businesses and corporations could argue that their only real commitments were to maximise the return to their shareholders whilst staying within the law. However, the world has changed significantly during the last ten years and now most major corporations recognise that they have significant responsibility to local and global societies beyond simply making profit. This means that there is now an increasing concern with the question of how corporations, and their employees, ought to behave, and this leads us (...) to consider ethics as the appropriate theoretical and philosophical domain.I will bring into the debate two relatively recent approaches to ethics: Jürgen Habermas's discourse ethics ; and the critical realist approach of Roy Bhaskar. These are interesting for several reasons: they both draw on traditional ethical theories, although different ones; they bring in innovations of practical relevance; and they both share an over-arching critical perspective. After a critical introduction to both ethical theories, their similarities and differences are explored. The article ends by considering the extent to which they may be practically useful within business. (shrink)

The problem of justifying induction has vexed philosophers for centuries. It has been entangled with issues concerning logic and probability and the philosophy of science. This article proposes a new approach to untangling these issues and resolving the overall problem. This new approach is by way of the perspective of realist ontology. Induction should not be seen as a debased form of logic and the search for inflexible rules for justifying particular sorts of inductive inference should be abandoned. Rather, induction (...) can be justified pragmatically as a general practice because reality possesses ordered patterns. Induction, being dependent on repetition, can sometimes identify aspects of those patterns simply because the instances of repetition really do occur. Thus, confidence in conclusions based on inductive inferences is not properly to be derived from unchanging logical rules governing when and where inductive inferences may be successfully applied, but from the involvement of such inferences with a wider, deeper process in which not only deductive inferences and other inductive inferences are involved, but also a set of relations to broader bodies of relevant knowledge. That is, unlike particular deductive inferences, inductive inferences may not be engaged in isolation from all other information about the world and completely in the abstract. Induction is always connected with a process of retroduction. (shrink)

This article aims to contribute to the understanding of Roy Bhaskar's philosophical evolution from critical realism to the philosophy of meta-Reality. Following Bhaskar's own terminology, I define his intellectual journey as the ‘identification of dualism and duality within non-duality’ by proposing that anti-anthropism plays a key role in the developmental consistency of his system from critical realism via dialectical critical realism to meta-Reality. For this purpose, I compare Bhaskar's philosophy with Andrew Collier's theory of human rationality and spiritual emancipation based (...) on Christianity and Tu Wei-Ming's anthropocosmic understanding of human beings and nature based on Confucianism. (shrink)

Cohen employs in his book Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defense in light of its recent republication. In recent years, Roy Bhaskar has provided a convincing critique of the empiricist philosophy of social science that Cohen employs, and this article tries to provide an assessment of his method from a Bhaskarian perspective. It begins with an exposition of functional explanation, followed by the Bhaskarian critique by demonstrating that functionalism is unworkable because it is dependent on an empiricist account of (...) causation. (shrink)

Uniquely among contemporary philosophies, Roy Bhaskar’s system of critical realism attempts to sublate (draw out the real strengths of and surpass) the philosophical discourse of modernity considered as a dialectically developing totality. This paper systematically expounds and comments on Bhaskar’s metacritique of that discourse and situates it briefly in relation to Jürgen Habermas’s earlier critique.

This article opens with a brief analysis of key features of the Mexican semi-authoritarian regime. It then moves to a discussion of the critical realist positions and features that inform the strategic-relational approach. Attention is paid to social interactions and causal relations that enable the SRA to trace patterns of punctuated evolution and to highlight the processes of transformation. Since ideal types serve to highlight key characteristics in specifc phenomena, processes and actors, some features of ideal types of the state (...) and of the transition from one type to another are also discussed. In particular, attention is paid to the Keynesian welfare national state and to the Schumpeterian workfare post-national regime ideal types elaborated by Jessop. For it is contended that the specific features of these ideal types could be of great help in broadening the debate on economic restructuring and political reforms in countries such as Mexico. Moreover, the SRA approach provides an insight into the endogenous features of social change and stresses the importance of networking for a strategic agenda as well. For the never-static dynamics of the processes of change the role of situated agents in context is fundamental, as it injects intentionality and acknowledges the contingency of the conditions that surround them. (shrink)

This paper interprets Karl Polanyi through dialectical critical realism. The paper maintains that this interpretation offers Polanyi methodological coherence and philosophical support. It further provides dialectical critical realism with an exemplar of explanatory critique. It is argued that the social theory of Polanyi aims at the demystification of market-systems as they are theoretically constructed by both orthodox and heterodox accounts of capitalism. Dialectical critical realism is best capable of situating the theoretical accomplishment of Polanyi’s historical and dialectical critiques of social (...) being. (shrink)

Critical realism, especially as developed by Roy Bhaskar, embodies at its heart systemic and holistic concepts such as totality, emergence, open systems, stratification, autopoiesis and holistic causality. These concepts have their own long history of development in disciplines such as systems thinking and cybernetics, but there is an absence in Bhaskar’s writings, and that absence is a lack of any reference to the corresponding systems literature. The purpose of this paper is threefold: (i) to demonstrate the extent of this correspondence; (...) (ii) to show that critical realism can benefit from an exposure to these other discourses; and (iii) to show that systems thinking too can gain philosophically from critical realism. (shrink)

In the context of calls for "postpositivist" sociology, realism has emerged as a powerful and compelling epistemology for social science. In transferring and transforming scientific realism --a philosophy of natural science--into a justificatory discourse for social science, realism splits into two parts: a strict, highly naturalistic realism and a reflexive, more mediated, and critical realism. Both forms of realism, however, suffer from conceptual ambiguities, omissions, and elisions that make them an inappropriate epistemology for social science. Examination of these problems in (...) detail reveals how a different perspective--centered on the interpretation of meaning--could provide a better justification for social inquiry, and in particular a better understanding of sociological theory and the construction of sociological explanations. (shrink)

While recent scientific discoveries and theories can be taken to provide additional evidence for some of the central critical realist claims, overall critical realism seems to be in need of reassessment, revisions and further developments. First, I argue that here has been an inclination among critical realists to prefer the language and model of philosophy to falsifiable science, creating a predisposition towards somewhat sectarian practices. These tendencies also account for the relative lack of substantive research based on, or inspired by, (...) critical realism. Second, I make a case for radicalising the critique of anthropomorphism and applying it to critical realism itself. Third, and in some contrast to the second point, I argue for rethinking the subject-object relationship and the concept of the intransitive dimension of science. The critique of anthropocentrism has been taken too far. We are implicated in and are a part of the object of our study. It even seems that we humans are a part of the process of the cosmos becoming conscious of itself, also through science. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates that the historical materialist framework deployed in Utopia Ltd. is implicitly critical realist at the level of social ontology. It supplies critical realist concepts that are only implicit in the analysis, for example ‘the pulse of freedom’, and suggests a provisional critical realist typology of utopian epochs on the basis of the one that Beaumont implicitly deploys, thereby demonstrating that critical realism can sharpen, deepen and add a more adequate philosophical rationale to substantive Marxist analysis even when, (...) like Beaumont's, it is an outstanding example of its kind. By the same token, it shows that analyses such as Beaumont's can make important contributions to critical realism. (shrink)

Roy Bhaskar's Social Cube model based on critical realist philosophy has not been dealt with in theory of decision-making at any length, nor has it raised any notable debate in social theory in general. The model demonstrates that decision-making is regulated and transformed by a constantly evolving complexity of mechanisms emerging from physical, mental, material, human and social levels of reality. With the help of this device, Graham Allison's argument against the Rational Actor Model that decisions are not so much (...) acts of unitary decision-makers but more outputs of large organisations can be elaborated and converted into a statement that decisions are products of a complexity of knowledge-producing mechanisms. The openness of social systems revealed by the Social Cube therefore requires methodological pluralism, for example the application of psychological theories in order to explain political phenomena. By applying the Social Cube model and by drawing new empirical evidence from the Linda Melvern Rwanda Genocide Archive, this article demonstrates that the Somalia effect on the UN's failure in Rwanda was more complicated than the existing literature claims; it was “multi-layered”, generated not only by intentional political calculations, as previous studies argue, but also by a multiplicity of other mechanisms operative at various levels, particularly cognitive dissonance in organisational learning at the unintentional or subconscious level. (shrink)

This article offers an omissive critique of integral theory. To this objective, the article draws upon dialectical logic to investigate the affinities between integral theory and critical realism. Section 1 identifies new possibilities regarding the role of metatheory in practice by unpacking the metatheoretical coordinates of critical realism and integral theory. After providing a brief history of the origins of critical realism and integral theory, I review the ontological, epistemological, and methodological metatheorems of dialectical critical realism, and I put them (...) to work to provide an omissive critique of integral theory. Then I introduce the notion of strictly non-dialectic because it functions to explain formally how integral theory relates to critical realism. Section 2 isolates the inadequacies at every moment in the passage from the MELD dialectic. Section 3 concludes the article with a discussion of the implications of foregrounding a critical realist ontology for integral theory. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSome eco-philosophers argue that our responsibilities to the natural world are only indirect, that the responsibility to preserve nature or resources, for example, is best understood with respect to the responsibilities that we owe to other humans. Anthropocentric ethics holds that only human beings have moral value. Thus, although we may be said to have responsibilities regarding the natural world, we do not have direct responsibilities to the natural world. As a reaction to anthropocentrism, other eco-philosophers disagree, however, saying that (...) we have direct responsibilities to natural objects other than human beings. Non-anthropocentric ethics grants moral standing to such natural objects as animals, plants and landscapes. Non-anthropocentrism requires an extension and revision of standard ethical principles. My main point in this article is twofold. First, I want to show that there is a serious flaw in anthropocentrism; my argument is that most anthropocentric approaches are based on either a particular scientific and reductionist worldview or a constructivist worldview, neither of which is adequate. Hence the anthropocentrism that follows from these worldviews is inadequate too. Secondly, I claim that most non-anthropocentric approaches are also inadequate in the sense that they are based on anthropocentrism at arm’s length or a disguised anthropocentrism; that is, they are equally scientistic and reductionist, even if by different means. By tracing Bhaskar’s philosophy from basic critical realism to dialectical critical realism and metaReality, relying specifically on Seo MinGyu’s interpretation, I will develop an alternative critical realist non-anthropism and anti-reductionism. By then engaging with Terrence Deacon’s contrasting dynamic systems perspective, which I take to be in line with Bhaskar’s thought, I want to show what is wrong with existing anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric approaches. (shrink)

Amarnath Amarasingham, ed., Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010. xv + 253 pp. ISBN 978-9-0041-8557-9, hardback £81.00/€139.00/$190.00. Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines (religious studies, sociology of religion, sociology of science, philosophy and theology) in order to critically engage with so-called ‘new atheism’. The study is a collection of essays that not so much gives primacy to discrediting the limited scholarship of new atheist (...) literature (although there is plenty of powerful critique to be found in its pages) but demonstrates where we can place new atheism in relation to generally more informed and intellectually rigorous debates about religion and atheism. This review essay examines their powerful arguments and briefly introduces possible Bhaskarian, Hegelian and Darwinian-Marxian contributions to the case against new atheism. (shrink)

This paper examines the points of connection and divergence between critical realism/metaRealism and integral theory, suggesting ways in which they might interact and mutually enrich each other. It highlights the common ground that both metatheories share and also identifies the particular strengths and shortcomings of both, arguing that they stem, in part, from their different emphases: integral theory on individual emancipation and critical realism on social emancipation. It suggests that this different focus has led to different strengths in each that (...) often coincide with an area that needs developing in the other, providing a promising potential for mutual enrichment. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging interview Alan Norrie discusses how he became involved with Critical Realism, his work on Dialectical Critical Realism, and responses to it amongst the Critical Realist communi...

ABSTRACT In this wide-ranging interview Professor Douglas V. Porpora discusses a number of issues. First, how he became a Critical Realist through his early work on the concept of structure. Second, drawing on his Reconstructing Sociology, his take on the current state of American sociology. This leads to discussion of the broader range of his work as part of Margaret Archer’s various Centre for Social Ontology projects, and on moral-macro reasoning and the concept of truth in political discourse.

This essay develops a theory of representation that confirms realism – an objective dependent on establishing that reality is autonomous of representation. I argue that the autonomy of reality is not incompatible with epistemic access and that an adequate account of representation is capable of satisfying both criteria. Pursuit of this argument brings the work of C. S. Peirce and Roy Bhaskar together. Peirce’s doctrine of semiotics is essentially a realist theory of representation and is thus relevant to the project (...) of critical realism. However, critical realism is also required to finesse Peirce’s intricate over-theorising. Although a complete treatment remains absent from Bhaskar’s writings, his philosophy, I discovered, incorporates an implicit theory of representation. Peirce can be employed to extract this theory and amplify it. The only way the problem of representation can be addressed adequately is to locate it in a realist framework. This, however, is contingent on re-conceiving representation as a process rather than an object. Such a ‘perspectival switch’ reconfirms the intentional structure of representation but also suggests that it be considered in teleological terms as an activity oriented to a trans-representational object. Representation finally emerges as a form of inquiry with the aim to make being accessible in its autonomy. (shrink)

This review essay attempts to present a coherent and reasonably unitary picture of the contemporary ‘speculative turn’ in continental philosophy as charted in Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman, eds, The Speculative Turn: Continental Realism and Materialism (2011). Avoiding a more objective yet more anodyne chapter by chapter summary, I paint an intentionally synoptic view by selecting some common concerns of the authors involved, and group them under five ‘core themes’. Throughout, I try to keep open the comparative channel (...) with the realist tenets of critical realism, and conclude vouching for the necessity for more bridge-building works to appear in the future. (shrink)

While powers and tendencies are among the most fundamen- tal concepts of critical realism, there are several problems with these concepts that have been ignored, avoided or glossed. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to tease out these problems and provide clarification and consistency where possible. In the first section of the paper I sketch the existing critical realist conceptualization of tendencies by identifying eight distinct moments in a causal chain, denoted tendency1 to tendency8. In section two I ask: (...) Is there a difference between powers and tendencies? The answer, controversially perhaps, is: ‘No’. In section three I ask: What is the difference between tendency1 and tendency2? The answer considers two possible arguments accounting for the difference, and initiates a re-think of some of the terminology used to discuss tendencies as distinct moments in a causal chain. I conclude by raising the possibility that tendencies or powers are not of an either/or, discrete, dichotomous or discontinuous nature, but are continuous. This raises the further possibility that powers or tendencies can come in stronger and weaker forms. (shrink)

Heikki Patomäki is Professor of World Politics (Global Political Economy) at the University of Helsinki.1 In Part 1 of this interview (Patomäki and Morgan 2023) he discussed his work and career up...

This article analyses and evaluates the uses of the concept of causal power in the critical realist tradition, which is based on Roy Bhaskar's philosophy of science. The concept of causal power that appears in the early works of Rom Harré and his associates is compared to Bhaskar's account of this concept and its uses in the critical realist social ontology. It is argued that the concept of emergence should be incorporated to any adequate notion of causal power. The concept (...) of emergence used in Bhaskar and other critical realists’ works is shown to be ambiguous. It is also pointed out that the concept of causal power should be analysed in an anti-essentialist way. Ontological and methodological problems that vitiate Bhaskar's transcendental account of the concept of causal power are examined. Moreover, it is argued that the applications of the concept of causal power to mental powers, reasons, and social structures in the critical realist social ontology are problematic. The paper shows how these problems might be avoided without giving up the concept of causal power and the notion of structural social causation. (shrink)

This article concerns the problems of guilt that emerge in connection with genocide discussed after the Second World War by Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers, Jean Améry and Primo Levi. It looks at the different forms of guilt: of perpetrators, bystanders, victims who became perpetrators, and of collective guilt. It argues that a way to understand the structure of guilt is to consider the idea of survivor guilt, and its link to an underlying metaphysics of guilt. It considers primarily Levi's account (...) of survivor and accomplice guilt, and the ‘grey zone’ where judgements become problematic. The aim is to consider the ethical structure that supports our understanding of specific guilt categories, and this is linked to Roy Bhaskar's account of metaReality and the sense of a unity or identity that operates at a deeper level than the difference, conflict and change that the other levels of his thought seek to understand. (shrink)

How has the storage of information shaped human cognition? We bring together current advances in cognitive science, the neurobiology of memory, and archaeology to explore how storage of information affects consciousness. These fields strongly suggest that the increase in storage of information in the environment – which we call exosomatic storage of information – may have led to changes in human consciousness and human neurophysiology over time. To bring these findings together conceptually, we develop what we call a dialectical model (...) of the relationship between storage of information and the development of human consciousness. Using the system of dialectic philosophy, we put forward that (a) environmental changes, consciousness, and neurophysiology develop together, (b) these changes were irreversible, (c) quantitative increases in exosomatic storage of information may have led to qualitative changes in human consciousness and neurophysiology, (d) these changes in turn affected how we see ourselves. Indeed, our capacity to store information exosomatically distinguishes us from other animals, and may be a key attribute of our self-awareness and therefore self-consciousness. Because metaphors are central to human thought and can help structure scientific inquiry, we illustrate our model using a metaphor of drops of silver on the back of a glass, eventually making a mirror—where successive quantitative change leads to an irreversible qualitative development in human consciousness. The dialectic model can offer new insights into the co-evolution of material culture and human beings through its broader philosophical foundations and explanatory power. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper is premised on the call to re-orientate marketing as a contributing social science. It gathers together criticisms of marketing research which identify inconsistencies that prevent our progress. It posits that we are driven to reproduce these inconsistencies because of a closed-system of practice and because of the generative absence of an effective, reflexive and integrative metatheoretical structure. In response to these problems, the paper aims to offer an integrative metatheoretical structure from which to ground our research and intervene (...) in the identified inconsistencies. The paper therefore offers a perspective on the constitution of the world, before addressing the terms and conditions on which the world is to be researched and explained. This conceptual contribution employs tools developed in the critical realist philosophy of social science to address: instances of absence within marketing research; and how these instances are generated and reproduced. It then suggests how these absences can be rectified. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between ethics and metaphysics in critical theory through immanent criticism of Fabian Freyenhagen's reconstruction of Adorno. Endorsing Freyenhagen's overall defence of Adorno's position, it argues that several important features of Adorno's position as Freyenhagen interprets it can be made intelligible only on broadly Aristotelian metaphysical presuppositions. These should be thematized explicitly rather than ignored. Moreover, these metaphysical presuppositions are on independent grounds plausible, as recent Aristotelian and critical realist work has indicated, and special difficulties arising (...) for them in the context of a radical negative critical theory can probably be overcome. Further conversation between critical theorists, Aristotelians and critical realists should prove fruitful in elaborating and defending a radical critical theory alternative to the dominant postmetaphysical paradigm. Progress in this direction, though, will entail rejecting the basic postmetaphysical premise that critical theory must proceed in a metaphysically neutral way. (shrink)

The social sciences have paid little sustained attention to society’s relations with the universe. This paper attempts to redress this failure, arguing that human beings have been increasingly alienated from the cosmos. This estrangement is a product of three closely related processes. These are the division between mental and manual labour in master–slave societies, the strengthening of abstraction due to the market, and the tendency of human beings to dichotomize a world they do not understand or experience as threatening. Alienation (...) from the cosmos is a dominant feature of all master–slave societies but it has been made an ingrained, all-pervasive feature of capitalism. Contemporary liberation theology, pre-figured by movements such as the peasant revolts of the fifteenth century and the Diggers of the seventeenth century, have attempted to resist this alienation, making new ‘heavens on earth’. Alternative cosmologies are also being made by scientists that describe the cosmos in forms that can be recognized by lay people. Critical realism, by revealing the links between dominant classes, infantilized cosmologies and human subjectivities, aids the emergence of these contestations and alternatives. (shrink)

A transformational model of professional identity formation, anchored and globalized in workplace conversations, is advanced. Whilst the need to theorize the aims and methods of clinical education has been served by the techno-rational platform of ‘reflective practice’, this platform does not provide an adequate psychological tool to explore the dynamics of social episodes in professional learning and this led us to positioning theory. Positioning theory is one such appropriate tool in which individuals metaphorically locate themselves within discursive action in everyday (...) conversations to do with personal positioning, institutional practices and societal rhetoric. This paper develops the case for researching social episodes in clinical education through professional conversations where midwifery students, in practice settings, are encouraged to account for their moment-by-moment interactions with their preceptors/midwives and university mentors. It is our belief that the reflection elaborated by positioning theory should be considered as the new epistemology for professional education where professional conversations are key to transformative learning processes for persons and institutions. (shrink)

This essay reviews Theatre, Communication, Critical Realism (2010) by Tobin Nellhaus. It begins by outlining the objective of the book and proceeds to evaluate its central argument. The objective is to develop a theory of theatre founded on the premises of critical realism and thereby theoretically situate theatrical performance in its socio-cultural matrix. The argument is that critical realism is effective for developing a comprehensive account of theatrical performance because it has the capacity to reveal truths about the structure of (...) social reality (that correspond to those articulated by critical realism). In the second part of the review, employing the methods of conceptual analysis, I propose that Nellhaus’s thesis of ‘ontological doubling’ (which claims that performance doubles human agency) is undermined by certain epistemological presuppositions regarding the ontology of fictional characters. (shrink)

In the following short essay I set out the key insights and main arguments by chapter of Alison Assiter’s Kierkegaard. This text is an important contribution to the general subject matter of realizable well-being. In a final section I discuss possible elaborations and limitations and challenges to the problem of morals and ethics that can and are developed from a metaphysic of the person.

This essay considers the two-way relation between critical realism and psychoanalysis. Critical realism vindicates and deepens our understanding of ontology by drawing on the sciences for which it...