Roy Bhaskar

Ram Roy Bhaskar[lower-alpha 1] (1944–2014) was an English Marxist philosopher of science best known as the initiator of the philosophical movement of critical realism (CR). Bhaskar argued that the task of science is "the production of the knowledge of those enduring and continually active mechanisms of nature that produce the phenomena of the world"[4] rather than the discovery of quantitative laws, and that experimental science only makes sense if such mechanisms exist and operate outside the lab as well as inside it. He went on to apply this realism about mechanisms and causal powers to the philosophy of social science, and also elaborated a series of arguments to support the critical role of philosophy and the human sciences.[5]

Roy Bhaskar
Born
Ram Roy Bhaskar

(1944-05-15)15 May 1944
Teddington, England
Died19 November 2014(2014-11-19) (aged 70)
Leeds, England
Alma mater
EraContemporary philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolCritical realism (philosophy of the social sciences)
Doctoral advisorRom Harré
Main interests
Notable ideas

He was a World Scholar at the Institute of Education, University College London.[6]

Background

Bhaskar was born on 15 May 1944 in Teddington, London, the first of two sons. His Indian father and English mother were Theosophists. Bhaskar said his childhood was unhappy, his father having high expectations of him.[6][7]

In 1963 Bhaskar attended Balliol College, Oxford, on a scholarship to read philosophy, politics and economics. The scholarship freed him from his father's influence over his chosen academic path. Having graduated with first class honours in 1966, he began work on a PhD thesis about the relevance of economic theory for under-developed countries. His DPhil changed course and was written at Nuffield College, Oxford, where Rom Harré became his supervisor, on the philosophy of social science and then the philosophy of science. His thesis was failed twice, he believed partly for political reasons, but the second version was published largely unchanged as his influential text, A Realist Theory of Science in 1975.[8]

Bhaskar lectured at the University of Edinburgh from 1975, later moving to the University of Sussex. He held visiting positions in several Scandinavian universities-adjunct professor in philosophy at the Centre for Peace Studies at the University of Tromsø, Norway, and guest professor in philosophy and social science, Department of Caring Sciences, Örebro University, Sweden. From 2007 Bhaskar was employed at the Institute of Education in London where he was working on the application of CR to Peace Studies. He was a founding member of the Centre for Critical Realism, International Association for Critical Realism and the International Centre for Critical Realism (2011), the latter at the Institute of Education.

Bhaskar married Hilary Wainwright in 1971. He died in Leeds with his partner, Rebecca Long, by his side on 19 November 2014.[9]

Critical realism

Bhaskar's consideration of the philosophies of science and social science resulted in the development of critical realism, a philosophical approach that defends the critical and emancipatory potential of rational (scientific and philosophical) enquiry against both positivist, broadly defined, and 'postmodern' challenges. Its approach emphasises the importance of distinguishing between epistemological and ontological questions and the significance of objectivity properly understood for a critical project. Its conception of philosophy and social science is a socially situated, but not socially determined one, which maintains the possibility for objective critique to motivate social change, with the ultimate end being a promotion of human freedom.

The term "critical realism" was not initially used by Bhaskar. The philosophy began life as what Bhaskar called "transcendental realism" in A Realist Theory of Science (1975), which he extended into the social sciences as critical naturalism in The Possibility of Naturalism (1978). The term "critical realism" is an elision of transcendental realism and critical naturalism, that was accepted by Bhaskar after being proposed by others.[10]

Critical Realism should not be confused with various other critical realisms, including Georg Lukács' aesthetics, and Alister McGrath's, Scientific Theology (or Theological Critical Realism), although they share common goals. In contemporary critical realist texts "critical realism" is often abbreviated to CR.

Bhaskar's critical realism can be divided into several phases, although he insisted that the later phases preserved and extended, rather than invalidating, the earlier phases of his work. The simplest and most common division is into three phases: original, dialectical, and transcendental, but original critical realism can also be divided further into transcendental realism and critical naturalism.

Original critical realism

The first 'phase' of Critical Realism accrued a large number of adherents and proponents in Britain, many of whom were involved with the Radical Philosophy Group and related movements, and it was in the Radical Philosophy journal that much of the early CR scholarship first appeared. It argued for an objectivist, realist approach to science based on a Kantian transcendental analysis of scientific experimental activity. Stressing the need to retain both the subjective, epistemological or 'transitive' side of knowledge and the objective, ontological or 'intransitive' side, Bhaskar developed a theory of science and social science which he thought would sustain the reality of the objects of science, and their knowability, but would also incorporate the insights of the 'sociology of knowledge' movement, which emphasised the theory-laden, historically contingent and socially situated nature of knowledge. What emerged was a marriage of ontological realism with epistemological relativism, forming an objectivist, yet fallibilist, theory of knowledge. Bhaskar's main strategy was to argue that reality has depth, and that knowledge can penetrate more or less deeply into reality, without ever reaching the 'bottom'. Bhaskar has said that he reintroduced 'ontology' into the philosophy of science at a time when this was almost heresy, arguing for an ontology of stratified emergence and differentiated structure, which supported the ontological reality of causal powers independent of their empirical effects; such a move opened up the possibility for a non-reductivist and non-positivistic account of causal explanation in the human and social domain.

This explanatory project was linked with a critical project the main idea of which is the doctrine of 'Explanatory Critique' which Bhaskar developed fully in Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation (1987). This developed the critical tradition of 'ideology critique' within a CR framework, arguing that certain kinds of explanatory accounts could lead directly to evaluations, and thus that science could function normatively, not just descriptively, as positivism has, since Hume's law, assumed. Such a move, it was hoped, would provide the Holy Grail of critical theory, an objective normative foundation.

Transcendental realism

'Transcendental realism' is the term that Bhaskar used to describe the argument he developed in his first book A Realist Theory of Science (1975).[11] (Not to be confused with F. W. J. Schelling's transcendental realism, or Arthur Schopenhauer's transcendental realism.) The position is based on Bhaskar's transcendental arguments for certain ontological and epistemological positions based on what reality must be like in order for scientific knowledge to be possible.

Transitive and intransitive domains

A Realist Theory of Science starts with a proposed paradox: how it is that people create knowledge as a product of social activities and at the same time knowledge is 'of' things that are not produced by people at all?[12]

The former is inspired by Kuhnian arguments of how scientific communities develop knowledge and asserts all observation is theory-laden based on previously acquired concepts. As such, it is not a naïve realist perspective that knowledge is a direct acquisition of facts through observation of the real world, but rather that knowledge is fallible. This aspect of knowledge is described as the transitive domain of knowledge, in that knowledge can change over time.

The second part of the paradox is asserted to be based on a real world, which exists and behaves in the same manner regardless of whether or not people exist or whether they know about the real world. This is described as the intransitive objects of knowledge.[12]

Bhaskar refers to the elimination of the intransitive objects of knowledge, and thus the reduction of ontology to epistemology, as the epistemic fallacy, a fallacy that Bhaskar asserts has been made repeatedly over the last 300 years of philosophy of science. The epistemic fallacy "consists in the view that statements about being can be reduced to or analysed in terms of statements about knowledge".[13]

The transcendental argument from experimental science

The core argument of A Realist Theory of Science begins as a critique of positivist/empiricist understandings of how science works. Bhaskar focuses on the empiricist argument that science produces true knowledge of invariant causal laws through observing causal regularities: "a constant conjunction of events perceived".[14] Bhaskar develops what he calls an immanent critique of empricism in which he takes some of its core assumptions as correct for the purpose of the argument and then shows that this leads to an incoherence in the empricist argument. In particular, he accepts the premise that experimental science produces useful knowledge (without committing himself to the claim that the knowledge it produces is true) and then asks what the world must be like if this is the case.[15] In this sense, his arguments take a similar form to Kant's transcendental arguments, and he employs this term to describe them.[16]

He argues that experimental science is only necessary when, and because, "the pattern of events forthcoming under experimental conditions would not be forthcoming without it".[17] In experiments scientists manipulate the conditions to exclude some causal factors so that they can focus on others. Any causal regularity they observe, then, is in part the product of their activity, which is only necessary because those causal regularities do not occur consistently in the outside world, in what Bhaskar calls open systems. These are not, therefore, constant conjunctions in the sense required by empiricism. Yet, we do believe they produce useful knowledge of how the world works, and in particular scientists form beliefs about how the world outside the laboratory works on the basis of their experiments, even though they know that outside the laboratory these constant conjunctions do not occur. Indeed, doing experimental science only makes sense if it tells us something useful about what occurs beyond the laboratory.[18]

What experimental scientists are learning about, therefore, cannot be causal laws, understood as invariant patterns of events. Instead, he argues, they are learning about causal mechanisms, which operate as tendencies, in the sense that they tend to bring about certain types of outcome, but do not always do so.[19] They may not do so because they may only operate under certain conditions, or because they are sometimes obstructed by other causal mechanisms, since multiple mechanisms interact to produce any given event.[20] The role of the experimental scientist is to prevent such obstructions to that she can isolate a particular mechanism.[21] Mechanisms, in turn, or generative mechanisms as he often calls them, are properties of things (objects) and Bhaskar usually also identifies them with the causal powers of those things.[22]

Real, actual, and empirical

The exposition of transcendental realism continues that not only is the world divided into a real world and our knowledge of it, but it is further divided into the real, the actual and the empirical. The real is the intransitive domain of things that exist (i.e. the real world): objects, their structures and their causal powers. It is important to note that even though these objects and structures may be able to perform certain action, those actions may go unrealized. This gives rise to the actual, which is the events that actually occur, regardless of whether or not people are aware of them. The empirical contains the events that people have actually experienced.

Stratification and emergence

Transcendental realism further argues for a stratified reality. The relationships between objects and the combinations of their causal powers may create entirely new structures with new causal powers. The typical example of this is of water, which has a causal power of extinguishing fire, but is made up of hydrogen and oxygen that have causal powers of combustion. This stratification spans through all sciences: physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, etc. This implies that objects in sociology – labor markets, capitalism, etc. – are just as real as that of physics. This is not a reductionist position: while each stratum is dependent on the objects and their relationships in the strata below it; the difference in causal powers means that they are necessarily different objects.

Critical naturalism

Critical naturalism is the term that Bhaskar used to describe the argument he developed in his second book The Possibility of Naturalism (1979). It argues that the transcendental realist model of science is equally applicable to both the physical and the human worlds. However, when we study the human world we are studying something fundamentally different from the physical world and must, therefore, adapt our strategy to studying it. Critical naturalism, therefore, prescribes social scientific methods which seek to identify the mechanisms producing social events, but with a recognition that these are in a much greater state of flux than those of the physical world (as human structures change much more readily than those of, say, a leaf). In particular, we must understand that human agency is made possible by social structures that themselves require the reproduction of certain actions/pre-conditions. Further, the individuals that inhabit these social structures are capable of consciously reflecting upon, and changing, the actions that produce them—a practice that is in part facilitated by social scientific research.

Dialectical critical realism

The 'second phase' of Critical Realism, the dialectic turn initiated in Dialectic: the Pulse of Freedom (1993) and developed further in Plato, etc (1994) won some new adherents but drew criticism from some Critical Realists. It argued for the 'dialecticising' of CR, through an elaborate reading of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx. Arguing against Hegel and with Marx that dialectical connections, relations and contradictions are themselves ontological – objectively real – Bhaskar developed a concept of real absence which it was claimed could provide a more robust foundation for the reality and objectivity of values and criticism. He attempted to incorporate critical, rational human agency into the dialectic figure with his 'Fourth Dimension' of dialectic, thereby grounding a systematic model for rational emancipatory transformative practice.

Transcendental dialectical critical realism

In 2000, Bhaskar published From East to West: The Odyssey of a Soul, in which he first expressed ideas related to spiritual values that came to be seen as the beginning of his so-called 'spiritual' turn, which led to the final phase of CR dubbed 'Transcendental Dialectical Critical Realism'. This publication and the ones that followed it were highly controversial and led to something of a split among Bhaskar's proponents. Whilst some respected Critical Realists cautiously supported Bhaskar's 'spiritual turn', others took the view that the development had compromised the status of CR as a serious philosophical movement.

In his Reflections on Meta-Reality, he describes meta-reality as "a new philosophical standpoint".[23] The main departure, it seems, is an emphasis on the shift away from Western dualism to a non-dual model in which emancipation entails "a breakdown, an overcoming, of the duality and separateness between things."

Criticism

Whilst his early books were considered "models of clarity and rigour", Bhaskar has been criticised for the "truly appalling style" (Alex Callinicos, 1994) in which his "dialectical" works are written. He won the Bad Writing Contest in 1996, for a passage taken from Plato etc. (1994).[24]

Other criticisms have been levelled at the substance of Bhaskar's arguments at various points. One objection to Bhaskar's early Critical Realism is that it begs the question, assuming, rather than proving, the existence of the intransitive domain.

Another objection, raised by Callinicos and others, is that Bhaskar's so-called "transcendental arguments" are not really that. They are not typical transcendental arguments as philosophers such as Charles Taylor have defined them, the distinguishing feature of which is the identification of some putative condition on the possibility of experience. (However, his arguments function in an analogous way since they try to argue that scientific practice would be unintelligible and/or inexplicable in the absence of the ontological features he identifies.) On the other hand, some critics have taken Bhaskar at his word and criticised his use of transcendental arguments on the grounds that the term suggests (because of its usage by Kant) that these arguments provide foundational conclusions with absolute certainty, whereas elsewhere Bhaskar advocates a fallibilist view of knowledge.[25] Bhaskar, however, has repeatedly made clear that "transcendental realism is fallible, as corrigible as the outcome of any other piece of human argument".[26]

It has been alleged that the dialectical phase of his philosophy proves too much, since Critical Realism was already dialectical.

Bhaskar's concept of real absence has been questioned by, among others, Andrew Collier, who points out that it in fact fails to distinguish properly between real and nominal absences.[27]

Bhaskar's most recent 'spiritual' phase has been criticised by many adherents of early Critical Realism for departing from the fundamental positions which made it important and interesting, without providing philosophical support for his new ideas.[28]

Bibliography
  • Bhaskar, R.A., 1997 [1975], A Realist Theory of Science, London: Verso. ISBN 1-85984-103-1
  • Bhaskar, R.A., 1998 [1979], The Possibility of Naturalism (3rd edition), London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-19874-7
  • Bhaskar, R.A., 1986, Learning procedures in arithmetic: the principle of cognitive vigor. Yorktown Heights, N.Y.: International Business Machines Inc., Thomas J. Watson Research Center.
  • Bhaskar, R.A., 1987, Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation, London: Verso. (ch.1)
  • Bhaskar, R.A., 1989, Reclaiming Reality: A Critical Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy, London: Verso. ISBN 0-86091-951-X
  • Bhaskar, R.A., 1990, Philosophy and the Idea of Freedom, London: Blackwell.
  • Bhaskar, R.A. (Ed.). 1990, Harre and his critics: Essays in honour of Rom Harre with his commentary on them. Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Bhaskar, R.A., & Edgley, R. (Eds.). 1991. A meeting of minds: Socialists discuss philosophy. London: Socialist Society.
  • Bhaskar, R.A., 1993, Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom, London: Verso. ISBN 0-86091-583-2
  • Bhaskar, R.A., 1994, Plato, etc.: The Problems of Philosophy and Their Resolution, London: Verso. ISBN 0-86091-649-9
  • Bhaskar, R.A. 2000, From east to west: Odyssey of a soul. London: Routledge.
  • Bhaskar, R.A., 2002, Reflections on Meta-Reality: A Philosophy for the Present, New Delhi/London Sage. ISBN 0-7619-9691-5
  • Bhaskar, R.A. 2002, From science to emancipation: Alienation and the actuality of enlightenment. London: SAGE.
  • Bhaskar, R.A. 2002, The Philosophy of Meta-Reality: Creativity, Love and Freedom. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
  • Bhaskar, R.A. 2002, Reflections on Meta-Reality: Transcendence, Enlightenment, and Everyday Life. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.
  • Bhaskar, R.A. 2002, Beyond east and west: spirituality and comparative religion in an age of global crisis. New Delhi ; Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
  • Bhaskar, R.A. 2006, Understanding Peace and Security. Routledge.
  • Bhaskar, R.A. et al. 2007, Interdisciplinary and Health. Routledge.
  • Bhaskar, R.A. 2008, Fathoming the depths of reality. London: Routledge.
  • Bhaskar, R.A. et al. 2008, The formation of critical realism: a personal perspective. London ; New York: Routledge.
  • Bhaskar, R.A. et al. (eds.) 2010, Interdisciplinarity and climate change: transforming knowledge and practice for our global future. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York: Routledge.

See also

Notes
  1. Pronounced /ˈbæskɑːr/.

References

Footnotes
  1. King, Anthony (2010). "The Odd Couple: Margaret Archer, Anthony Giddens and British Social Theory". The British Journal of Sociology. 61 (special issue): 255. doi:10.1111/j.1468-4446.2009.01288.x. ISSN 1468-4446. PMID 20092496.
  2. "Review Article: Alister E. McGrath's A Scientific Theology" (PDF). Andrews University Seminary Studies. 44 (2): 343, 345. 2006. ISSN 0003-2980. Retrieved 25 February 2019.
  3. Dew, James K., Jr. (2011). Science and Theology: An Assessment of Alister McGrath's Critical Realist Perspective. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock. pp. 109, 111. ISBN 978-1-60899-855-5.
  4. Bhaskar, Roy (2008). A realist theory of science. London: Verso. p. 47. ISBN 978-1-84467-204-2. OCLC 154707552.
  5. Bhaskar, Roy, 1944-2014. (2010). Reclaiming reality : a critical introduction to contemporary philosophy. London: Routledge. pp. 1–10. ISBN 978-0-203-84331-4. OCLC 712652144.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. http://roybhaskar.wordpress.com/
  7. Hartwig, M (2008), 'Introduction', in Bhaskar, R., A Realist Theory of Science (Routledge 'With a new introduction' edition), Abingdon: Routledge.
  8. Bhaskar, Roy, 1944-2014. (2010). The formation of critical realism : a personal perspective. Hartwig, Mervyn. (1st ed.). London: Routledge. pp. 42–49. ISBN 978-0-415-45502-2. OCLC 455418555.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. "Roy Bhaskar, 1944-2014". socialontology.eu. 20 November 2014. Archived from the original on 19 February 2015.
  10. Bhaskar, Roy, 1944-2014. (2010). Reclaiming reality : a critical introduction to contemporary philosophy. London: Routledge. p. 190. ISBN 978-0-203-84331-4. OCLC 712652144.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  11. Bhaskar, Roy, 1944-2014. (2008). A realist theory of science. London: Verso. p. 25. ISBN 978-1-84467-204-2. OCLC 154707552.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  12. Bhaskar, Roy, 1944-2014. (2008). A realist theory of science (3rd ed.). London: Verso. p. 21. ISBN 978-1-84467-204-2. OCLC 154707552.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  13. Bhaskar, Roy, 1944-2014. (2008). A realist theory of science (3rd ed.). London: Verso. p. 36. ISBN 978-1-84467-204-2. OCLC 154707552.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  14. Bhaskar, Roy, 1944-2014. (2008). A realist theory of science. London: Verso. p. 33. ISBN 978-1-84467-204-2. OCLC 154707552.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  15. Bhaskar, Roy, 1944-2014. (2008). A realist theory of science. London: Verso. p. 36. ISBN 978-1-84467-204-2. OCLC 154707552.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  16. Bhaskar, Roy, 1944-2014. (2008). A realist theory of science. London: Verso. p. 30. ISBN 978-1-84467-204-2. OCLC 154707552.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  17. Bhaskar, Roy, 1944-2014. (2008). A realist theory of science. London: Verso. p. 33. ISBN 978-1-84467-204-2. OCLC 154707552.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  18. Bhaskar, Roy, 1944-2014. (2008). A realist theory of science. London: Verso. p. 33. ISBN 978-1-84467-204-2. OCLC 154707552.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  19. Bhaskar, Roy, 1944-2014. (2008). A realist theory of science. London: Verso. p. 49. ISBN 978-1-84467-204-2. OCLC 154707552.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  20. Bhaskar, Roy, 1944-2014. (2008). A realist theory of science. London: Verso. pp. 46–7. ISBN 978-1-84467-204-2. OCLC 154707552.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  21. Bhaskar, Roy, 1944-2014. (2008). A realist theory of science. London: Verso. p. 46. ISBN 978-1-84467-204-2. OCLC 154707552.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  22. Bhaskar, Roy, 1944-2014. (2008). A realist theory of science. London: Verso. p. 50. ISBN 978-1-84467-204-2. OCLC 154707552.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  23. Bhaskar, Roy, 1944-2014,. Reflections on metaReality : transcendence, emancipation and everyday life. London. p. 10. ISBN 978-0-415-61903-5. OCLC 668196819.CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  24. http://denisdutton.com/bad_writing.htm
  25. Kaidesoja, Tuukka. Naturalizing critical realist social ontology. London. ISBN 978-1-138-91938-9. OCLC 813857010.
  26. Bhaskar, Roy, 1944-2014. (1998). The possibility of naturalism : a philosophical critique of the contemporary human sciences (3rd ed.). London: Routledge. p. 170. ISBN 0-203-97662-2. OCLC 252978412.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  27. "On Real and Nominal Absences", in After Postmodernism (2001)
  28. Pawson, Ray (2013). The Science of Evaluation: A Realist Manifesto. London: SAGE. p. 5. ISBN 9781446290989.

Works cited
  • Archer, M., et al. 1998, Critical Realism: Essential Readings. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-19632-9
  • Collier, A., 1994, Critical Realism: An Introduction to Roy Bhaskar's Philosophy, London: Verso. ISBN 0-86091-602-2
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