File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2002/bhaskar.0211, message 76


Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 10:01:24 +0000
From: "John Mingers" <John.Mingers-AT-mail.wbs.warwick.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: BHA: nature of the split in Critical Realism


Phil

I am not sure that I can answer your very general question for all the
ways that CR may have been used in research. What I can do is justify
what I said in my email about the perceived role of CR vis a vis science
with the following quotes:

"The essays collected in this volume all seek to underlabour - at
different levels and in different ways - for the sciences and especially
the human sciences ...They attempt, that is to say, for the
explanatory-emancipatory sciences today the kind of 'clearing' of the
ideological ground which Locke set out to achieve ..."
Reclaiming Reality p. vii (1989)

"CR embraces a coherent account of the nature of nature , society,
science, human agency, and philosophy (including itself). Its intent is
to underlabour for science ......"
Reclaiming Reality p. 191 (1989)

".. philosophy can tell us that it is a condition for the possibility
of scientific activities... that the world is stratified and
differentiated ... But it cannot tell us what structures the world
contains or how they differ. These are entirely matters for substantive
scientific investigation."
PON, p. 5 (1979)

This certainly captures for me why CR is important and what I want to
use it for in the disciplines within which I work (Information Systems,
Operational Research, and Systems Thinking). Others may have different
viewpoints and need to speak for themselves.

I do not feel that you have addressed the points I made in my email and
would welcome some clarification.

Do, in fact, other listers "have a sense of the split" you are
identifying, and do they devalue the side who simply use CR rather than
develop it as much as you?

Or, do I misunderstand what you are actually saying?

John





-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

John 
Despite what you say I think that most people on this list will have a
sense
of the split I am identifying.  Just for clarification, what is your
evidence that Roy Bhaskar intended his early critical realism to be
used in
social scientific research in the way that it actually generally has
been?
Has Roy told you that himself?

Phil


I would like to comment on Philip's views about the use of CR, as
summarised from his post

"  It is the difference between those who are merely
instrumentally using Critical Realism as a frozen dogma which is
forced
into
a mould they need for the pre-determined purposes of their research,
on
the
one hand, and those who are genuinely intellectually struggling to
develop
Critical Realism (including examining how it compares with rival
approaches)
on the other.  I hope that clarifies what I said."

I don't know if it is intended but I find this incredibly patronising
and arrogant towards people, like myself, who find CR useful in their
own work but are not themselves particularly contributing to its
further
development.

Bhaskar himself began by seeing his work  developing as a
philosophical
underlabourer for the (social) sciences not replacing the sciences in
themselves. I don't know if he still holds to that, or now sees CR as
having some greater purpose. For myself, I think that to have created
a
philosophy that is useful, and being used increasing, in a whole range
of disciplines is a major achievement and that people who use it as it
was originally intended should not be denigrated in this way.

We came to CR, generally in its earlier forms, because it addressed
genuine problems in our disciplines and has provided fruitful
solutions.
We are "creative" and we do "struggle intellectually " but the
struggle
is one of interpretation and application rather than development.

As to why we (I) tend not to be so interested in the later work, then
I
would echo Doug - we have just not yet found it so helpful and
necessary
for our particular problems.

For myself, I have spent much time struggling with DPF and Plato etc
and I have to say that marginal returns set in. They seem generally to
provide an exceptionally complex terminology together with arguments
that are so sweeping and yet so gnomic that one hardly knows where to
start with them. And at the end of the day I am not sure of what the
great intellectual insights are over the earlier work.

Bhaskar has now moved on again and had his "spiritual" turn. If people
want to follow him there that is fine but I wouldn't like them to
think
they are the only true followers and everyone else is simply an
"instrumental" consumer.

Many great thinkers have had major shifts in their work (eg Heidegger,
Marx, Foucault, Habermas etc) and sometimes history has judged the
earlier  work to be more substantive that the later. We will have to
see
with Bhaskar.

In the meantime let's value all the ways in which his insights are
contributing to the development of human knowledge and well-being
rather
than scorn those not part of the magic circle.

We should perhaps remember what  Edward Said said:

"It is not practising criticism either to validate the status quo or
to
join up with a priestly caste of acolytes and dogmatic
metaphysicians...
the realities of power and authority - as well as the resistance's
offered by men, women, and social movements to institutions,
authorities, and orthodoxy's - are the realities that... should be
taken account of by criticism and the critical  consciousness."

John






Dr. John Mingers
Professor of OR and Systems
 Warwick Business School
 Warwick University
 Coventry CV4 7AL UK
phone: +2476 522475
fax: +2476 524539
email: j.mingers-AT-warwick.ac.uk 


     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---




     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

Dr. John Mingers
Professor of OR and Systems
 Warwick Business School
 Warwick University
 Coventry CV4 7AL UK
phone: +2476 522475
fax: +2476 524539
email: j.mingers-AT-warwick.ac.uk


     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005