File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2003/bhaskar.0312, message 349


Subject: BHA: RE: Transcendental Realism and empirical proof
Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 19:21:35 -0600
From: "Groff, Ruth" <ruth.groff-AT-marquette.edu>


Hi Vito,

Welcome -- thanks for your question.  I only have a stolen moment here to respond to your question, but here goes:

You asked:
What are the ways devised by Transcendental Realists to prove empirically the existence of generative structures in social science? In other words, after denying the positivist account of causality and empirical regularities, how are transcendental realist positions in social science to be empirically supported?

1. Note that the second formulations of your question is not simply a re-wording of the first formulation.

2. It is important to see that there are a number of confusions built into both questions.

That said,

3. The argument for the existence of structures that is offered in the book that you are reading, *The Possibility of Naturalism*, is quick and dirty -- and is attributed by Bhaskar to Durkheim: atomistically construed behaviors of individual actors (e.g., I take money out of a bank machine) in fact presuppose the existence of social stuctures (e.g., monetary and banking systems).  

This is not a "proof" of the existence of structures, but rather a good argument.  It is an empiriCAL argument, in the sense that it makes reference to empirical phenomena, but it is not an empiriCIST argument.  By this I mean that it is analytic rather than descriptive or predictive.  It is an argument of the form: x is presupposed by y, rather than of the form: every time we see y, we also see x.  


On to your second question:

4.  The affirmation of realism about causality does not (I don't think) raise any special questions about how proponents of such a realism support their claims empirically.  

5.  You suggest that critical realists reject the idea that there may be manifest regularities in the social world.  This is inaccurate.  You're right, though, that the prediction of consequences is not regarded by critical realists as an especially important or reliable indicator of a theory's epistemic value.  

6. So far as I know, the concept of validity has not yet been analyzed in a sustained way by anyone working from a critical realist perspective.  At its present level of development, the critical realist position on validity/theory-choice is that competing theories ought to be assessed empirically on what is called their relative "explanatory power."  

This approach to theory-choice is essentially hermeneutic: the better theory is the one that affords greater insight into both the data and the competing theory (especially into weaknesses of the competing theory).  There is no sure-fire quantitative test for this -- though Bhaskar does at times talk about the better theory explaining "more" facts.  (I don't think that this can be formalized into some sort of strict criterion of validity, myself.)  Predictive capacity could conceivably be relevant in deciding the better theory, depending on what it is that is being explained, but in many cases it will be inapplicable.

7. Initially, this hermeneutic approach to theory choice may not seem to be reliable or "scientific" enough, compared to the criterion of predictive capacity.  The thing to appreciate is just how hollow and weak, philosophically, the positivist approach is.  Poke at it just about anywhere, and you find that it doesn't hold up.  So it's a great story, but it's conjured up out of nothing other than a healthy suspicion of dogmatism and speculative metaphysics.

Sorry that this response is written at a fairly high level -- does it help at all?    

Ruth

  


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