This important book provides detailed critiques of the method of transcendental argumentation and the transcendental realist account of the concept of causal power that are among the core tenets of the bhaskarian version of critical realism. Kaidesoja also assesses the notions of human agency, social structure and emergence that have been advanced by prominent critical realists, including Roy Bhaskar, Margaret Archer and Tony Lawson. The main line of argument in this context indicates that the uses of these concepts in critical (...) realism involve ambiguities and problematic anti-naturalist presuppositions. -/- As a whole, these arguments are intended to show that to avoid these ambiguities and problems, critical realist social ontology should be naturalized. This not only means that transcendental arguments for ontological doctrines are firmly rejected and the notion of causal power interpreted in a non-transcendental realist way. Naturalization of the critical realist social ontology also entails that many of the core concepts of this ontology should be modified so that attention is paid to the ontological presuppositions of various non-positivist explanatory methods and research practices in the current social sciences as well as to new approaches in recent cognitive and neurosciences. -/- In addition of providing a detailed critique of the original critical realism, the book develops a naturalized version of the critical realist social ontology that is relevant to current explanatory practices in the social sciences. In building this ontology, Kaidesoja selectively draws on Mario Bunge’s systemic and emergentist social ontology, William Wimsatt’s gradual notion of ontological emergence and some recent approaches in cognitive science (i.e. embodied, situated and distributed cognition). This naturalized social ontology rejects transcendental arguments in favor of naturalized arguments and restricts the uses of the notion of causal power to concrete systems, including social systems of various kinds. It is also compatible with a naturalized version of scientific realism as well as many successful explanatory practices in the current social sciences. By employing the conceptual resources of this ontology, Kaidesoja explicates many of the basic concepts of social ontology and social theory, including social system, social mechanism, social structure, social class and social status. (shrink)

The problem of structure and agency has been the subject of intense debate in the social sciences for over 100 years. This book offers a solution. Using a critical realist version of the theory of emergence, Dave Elder-Vass argues that, instead of ascribing causal significance to an abstract notion of social structure or a monolithic concept of society, we must recognise that it is specific groups of people that have social structural power. Some of these groups are entities with emergent (...) causal powers, distinct from those of human individuals. Yet these powers also depend on the contributions of human individuals, and this book examines the mechanisms through which interactions between human individuals generate the causal powers of some types of social structures. The Causal Power of Social Structures makes particularly important contributions to the theory of human agency and to our understanding of normative institutions. (shrink)

How should critical realism affect the practice of social science? This paper responds to this and related questions by suggesting some methodological implications of the realist theory of emergence. Given that critical realism understands causation as the interaction of emergent causal powers, and that the theory of emergence describes the type of structural relations that underpins such powers, we can practise social ontology by seeking to identify these structural relations in the social domain. Such methods, however, cannot stand or fall (...) purely on philosophical grounds; their validity also depends on whether they work. Hence this paper briefly illustrates the application of the method to social ontology, using examples from the theory of social institutions. (shrink)

'Social construction' is a central metaphor in contemporary social science, yet it is used and understood in widely divergent and indeed conflicting ways by different thinkers. Most commonly, it is seen as radically opposed to realist social theory. Dave Elder-Vass argues that social scientists should be both realists and social constructionists and that coherent versions of these ways of thinking are entirely compatible with each other. This book seeks to transform prevailing understandings of the relationship between realism and constructionism. It (...) offers a thorough ontological analysis of the phenomena of language, discourse, culture and knowledge, and shows how this justifies a realist version of social constructionism. In doing so, however, it also develops an analysis of these phenomena that is significant in its own right. (shrink)

This article discusses the theories of social emergence developed by Roy Bhaskar and Mario Bunge. Bhaskar's concept of emergent causal power is shown to be ambiguous, and some of the difficulties of his depth-relational concept of social emergence are examined. It is argued that Bunge's systemic concept of emergent property is not only different, but also clearer and more consistent than Bhaskar's concept of emergent causal power. Despite its clarity and consistency, Bunge's definition of the concept of emergent property is (...) shown to be too broad and analytically imprecise for the purposes of an emergentist social ontology. It is argued that Bunge's systemic account of social emergence can be developed further by using William Wimsatt's gradual approach to emergent phenomena and his four conditions of aggregativity of a systemic property. It is shown that these conditions provide useful conceptual tools for clarifying and investigating different kinds of mechanisms of social emergence and developing stronger varieties of the concept of emergent social property than that indicated in Bunge's definition of this concept. (shrink)

The grounds for critique offered by Roy Bhaskar have developed over the course of his work, but two claims have remained central: ethical naturalism and moral realism. I argue that neither of these is compatible with a scientific realist understanding of values: a scientific realist approach commits one to treating values as socially produced and historically contingent. This does not, however, prevent us from reasoning about values, nor from developing critiques by combining ethical reasoning with a theoretical understanding of the (...) social world and its possibilities. In particular, we can draw on a variety of Habermas's discourse ethics to offer provisional justifications for value-claims that support a critical stance. Thus we can develop grounds for critique that are both ontologically credible and anti-foundational, but also judgementally rational. (shrink)

In the following essay I use an extended commentary on Dave Elder-Vass’s The Reality of Social Construction to explore the issue of what progress in realism means. I set out and critique the concept of the norm circle in order to consider how an argument is developed as realist social theory and what limits that might have in terms of the recognized realist concept of adequacy. Specifically, I address the way realist social theory can become restricted to an internal exploration (...) of realism whilst issues of real world relevance are deferred. (shrink)

This article takes the form of a debate between the two authors on the social ontology of propositional culture. Archer applies the morphogenetic approach, analysing culture as a cycle of interaction between the Cultural System and Socio-Cultural Interaction. In this model, the Cultural System is comprised of the objective content of intelligibilia, as theorized by Karl Popper with his concept of objective World 3 knowledge. Elder-Vass agrees that culture works through an interplay between subjective belief and an external objective moment, (...) but argues that the external moment cannot take the form of ‘objective knowledge’ as this is understood by Popper. Instead, the external moment of culture takes the form of normative pressures exerted by groups of people: norm circles. Ultimately both authors share a commitment to a similar critical realist ontological framework, while offering alternative accounts of the nature of culture within that framework. (shrink)