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 ---
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