Gary Hawke

Autumn term 201530th November Session 5

Critical Realism Reading Seminars

The Critical Realism Principles

The first is philosophical under-labouring.The second is seriousness.The third is immanent critique.The fourth is the idea of philosophy as a pre-supposition.The fifth is enhanced reflexivity or transformative practice.The sixth is the principle of hermeticism.

Critical realism presupposes that ontology is structured, differentiated and changing. This also involves a switch from events to mechanisms that generate events. In other words, it puts the emphasis on what produces events not the events themselves. To explain the role of mechanisms, events and experiences, critical realism posits three ontological domains: the real, the actual and the empirical.

The empirical domain

relates to our direct or indirect experience. The actual includes the events happening independently of our experience. The real domain identifies the underlying mechanisms that generate events that we experience.

Haji-Abdi A. pp14 Critical Realism, Somalia and the Diaspora Community.

Unholy Trinity

The view that whatever exists most have always existed and cannot change or

cease to exists.

Parmenides also bequeathed another legacy to philosophy: the generation of a purely positive, complementing a purely actual, notion of reality, in what I am going to nominate the doctrine of ontological monovalence. In this study I aim to revindicate negativity. Indeed, by the time we are through, I would like the reader to see the positive as a tiny, but important, ripple on the surface of a sea of negativity. Bhaskar (DPF 2008: 4)

Ontological Monovalence

“The epistemic fallacy involves the fallacious inference that because there is no epistemologically objective view of the world, there is also no objective world ontologically. Such an inference leads to the extravagant and relativist claim that, to the extent that we embrace different world-views, we inhabit objectively different worlds.”

The Epistemic Fallacy

Margaret S. Archer, Andrew Collier and Douglas V. Porpora, Transcendence: Critical Realism and God, Routledge 2004 pp 1

Despain, Hans G Sun Mar 9 11:45:04 MDT 2014http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/pipermail/critical-realism/2014-March/012949.html

The primal squeeze is an argument that […]"squeeze" out the (critical realist) concepts such as ontological stratification, powers, transfactuality, tendency, etc. from a philosophical position for science.

Primal Squeeze

Holy Trinity

The holy trinity of critical realism or basic critical realism is the compatibility of three things: Ontological Realism, that is realism about the world, Epistemological Relativity, that is the idea that the beliefs are socially produced, fallible, unchangeable and changing so our knowledge is relative. And the third principle is that of Judgemental Rationality and this says that even though our knowledge is relative, we can produce in particular contexts, strong arguments for preferring one set of beliefs, one set of theories about the world to another.

A Beginner’s Guide to Critical Realism By Professor Roy Bhaskar Based on “An Introduction to Critical Realism”, a virtual classroom course hosted by Gary Hawke and led by Professor Roy Bhaskar at the Institute of Education – May to July 2014

Holy Trinity

Wilkinson M (2013) Introducing Islamic critical realism, Journal of Critical Realism, 12: 419-442

flat and neither did the experience of living on it […] entities and phenomena can exist without being known or even if there is no possibility that they can come to be known.

A basic understanding of a critical realist ontology is that […] reality exists, absolutely or relatively, independently of our ability to describe it […] That being does not equal knowing is proved by the fact that the globe did not suddenly change shape when it was discovered not to be

Ontological Realism

Margaret S. Archer, Andrew Collier and Douglas V. Porpora, Transcendence: Critical Realism and God, Routledge 2004 pp 1

Epistemic relativism […] means that we are each positioned to see the world somewhat differently. Our experiences of the world vary. […] In terms of epistemic relativism, we can now offer one reason why different people are disposed to believe or disbelieve in transcendent realities like God. Simply put, for whatever reason, some people personally experience such transcendent realities and interpret them as such; others do not.

Epistemic Relativism

Judgemental rationality is mediated through detailed attention to the processes of logic, discourse and debate that pertain

Wilkinson M (2013) Introducing Islamic critical realism, Journal of Critical Realism, 12: pp 435

to any particular field or discipline, the operation of effective and coherent research methods and design and personal introspection and reflexivity.

Judgemental Rationality

“Figure 9.3 Examples of the modes of the fulcrum of ICR transposed into citizenship education.”

Matthew L. N. Wilkinson. “A Fresh Look at Islam in a Multi-Faith World: A Philosophy for Success Through Education.”

Book launch

Tuesday 8 December 5:30-7:30pm