Theo : Critical realism

Jon Frauley explains

In many respects metatheorising is akin to seeing something from a scenic lookout. An overlook- high above - can offer us a breathtaking panoramic view that can broaden scope

Metatheory

 as an overlook from which we can visualize the process of theory construction and knowledge production, the thing that we produce knowledge of ( including our relation to these things and this process) as well as how the organization of our intellectual and institutional fields enable and constrain our understanding 

The role of critical realism as meta- theory for theological discourse is twofold 

• It aims to clear the ground by providing clarity and consistency in our discourse

• It aims to play midwife assisting in the birthing of new ideas and perspective

Fr. Johnny Go

• A Jesuit advocate of critical realism 

Critical realism

• Focuses its task on making explicit the presupposition of the practice of science: It analyzes the conditions for the possibility of the scientific enterprise and identifies the features of the world that make doing science possible and Intelligible 

• However it was eventually expanded to be a philosophy of the human science aimed at making explicit presupposition that we have about knowing which consequently forces us to make explicit presupposition that we have about reality

Critical realism provides 4 essential principles 

• Intransitivity 

• Stratification 

• Open system causality 

• Emergence 

Concept of Intransitivity 

• The world that we strive to know – whether in science or any other field of knowledge – abides autonomously of our knowing 

When we say the world is intransitive 

• It means that the world is not merely a mental construct, critical realism is making a distinction between the transitive and intransitive 

According to critical realism

 in order to maintain the intelligibility of scientific understanding, particularly the fallibility and transformation of human knowledge

Transitive

the changing knowledge of things what Roy bhaskar call existing theories, technologies, social practices and so on )

Intransitive

 ( relatively unchanging things which we attempt to know; what bhaskar call “ the enduring structures and mechanism of the natural world )

Judgmental relativism

 rashly assume that the contingency of human knowing and its capacity for rational judgement are mutually exclusive

Intransitivity

insist on reality being independent of the humans mental construct of it and can be judged independent of those constructs 

Absolutism

• Reality can only be understood in one unflinching way which is also itself a principle that does not seem consistent with the human experience of the intransitive world  

Epistemological relativism

• That there are many ways of knowing the same intransitive reality a “ legitimate plurality of views’ 

The concept of depth stratification

extends our vision of the world beyond its empirical tip

Empirical tip

which includes everything we have perceived and experienced, both individual as a person and social as a human community 

Roy bhaskar

founded critical realism

Empirical

 the sum, total of all that is perceived, this includes not only the scientist’s observation in the lab but also your perception of the four chairs around your dining room table

Actual

which is the sum total of everything that occurs. This includes  the empirical but also encompasses events that occur without anyone perceiving them, such as the fall of a rock down the side of one of many unnamed mountains in Alaska 

Real

all the exist, reality includes the empirical and actual of course but it alsi includes the causal forces — the powers or mechanism – that brings about those events, including the relation between that alaska rock and the earth that causes the rock to descend the mountainside

Pierpaolo donati

• Italian Philosopher and relations theorist

• Expertly Identifies the notion of the real with regards to transcendent reality 

Open system causality

Bhaskar’s analysis of experimental activity also established that the world is an open system, that the world at large is open

Open system

• Where there operates a flux generative mechanism, that interact and co determine events

• Now it is characteristic of open systems that two or more mechanism perhaps of radically different kind, combine and produce effects; so that because we do not know ex ante which mechanism will actually be at work

Closed system 

• Painstakingly created in laboratories

• Assumes that event A always lead to event x based on prior observations

David Hume 

• His belief in causality based on the constant conjunction of events

Emergence

 The arising of new properties or characteristics at a higher level of reality that cannot be explained by the properties of the lower-level elements that produced them.

Example: water has the property of extinguishing fire, which neither hydrogen nor oxygen has.

Emergent Stratification

 The idea that reality is composed of multiple strata (layers) of causal mechanisms, each with distinct properties and degrees of complexity, which are irreducible to one another.

Reductionism

 The belief that all higher-level phenomena can be fully explained by breaking them down into their lower-level elements, ultimately reducible to the laws of physics.

Example: explaining love only as a by-product of brain chemicals.

Ionian Enchantment

 A term coined by physicist Gerald Holton, referring to the reductionist belief that all phenomena in the universe can ultimately be explained by physical processes, tracing back to Thales of Miletus’ idea that “all matter consists of water.”

Critical Realist View of Emergence

 A critique of reductionism, holding that higher-level realities have real, irreducible properties with their own causal powers, and cannot be fully explained by lower-level processes.

Reasons as Causal Powers

 In critical realism, reasons are considered real, ontologically significant mechanisms that explain human action. They cannot be reduced to either neurophysiological processes (like brain chemistry) or social structures.

Not only are there different causes in the world, but there is also exist different ___ of causes 

type

Sui generis

 a class of its own , unique

Judgemental rationalist

made possible by what bhaskar call the duality of truth 

Epistemic fallacy

Is the tendency to reduce reality into our knowledge it, and to conflate ontology and epistemology  

 reductionism

holding that higher-level realities have real, irreducible properties with their own causal powers, and cannot be fully explained by lower-level processes.

 complex entities, despite their appearances statues , they have no sui generies reality

Judgemental relativist

 rashly assume that the contingency of human knowing and its capacity for rational judgement are mutual excl

 epistemology

( knowledge, system, thoughts, ideas, theories, language….)

 ontology

( being, things, ontics, existence, reality, object of investigation)