Critical Rationalism and Critical Realism.
I am amazed at Critical Realism, kicked off by Roy Bhaskar’s A Realist Theory of Science (1975) and developed in economics by Tony Lawson. I don’t get it. There is a huge overlap with CR but you can read heaps of Bhaskar and his associates and not get a sniff of Popper or any of the other suspects. What is going on?
I suppose the Critical Realists could say much the same, how much do we refer to Bhaskar. But why would we, Popper said it such a long time ago. What have they added or subtracted that we need to know about?
I have dipped into Tony Lawson on economics and I find a lot of words but not much that adds value.
I have read some of Bhaskar’s book “The Possibility of Naturalism” and I see no sign that Bhaskar understands Popper. He mentions Popper quite a lot but always negatively and often saying things that seem not quite right. I find Bhaskar’s book itself somewhat obscure and difficult to read. My guess is that neither Bhaskar nor his followers understand Popper, but I could be wrong about that.
I suppose they are in a bind with Popper, it they acknoweldge any affinity they would have to refer to his work in a vaguely favourable way but then smart people who checked out Popper would say, “how long did it take you to work that out?” or “how come you never told us back in 1975?” So they just have to fudge the issues.
It is a kind of tell-tale sign that they write so much with so little to say about substantive problems – that is actual problems in some field of science (or economics in the case of Lawson). The same thing could be said about myself but I am not paid to spend all my time in libraries, lecturing, talking to other academics and writing. If I was in that situation I hope I would not write thick books about philosophy and methods without addressing any substantive problems.
One issue here is that Bhaskar does use stock readings of authors rather than reading them closely so, for example: Popper is a positivist; Hume an irrationalist ‘who could not explain why leaving through the door was more rational than leaving through the second floor window’; Hegel was an ‘endist’ etc. Worse, discussion of Popper is reduced to footnotes, so his name is just a tag to pin to the critique of positivism with no real engagement.
The lack of both wide and close reading by most philosophers is amazing, and the lack of reference to primary sources in the case of Popper. They are prepared to trawl the ancient literature for some fresh take on empiricism or whatever without getting to grips with the critique of empiricism to indicate what problem a revised version of empiricism would or could solve. They really work like normal scientists, on little puzzles that are not related to any bigger picture.
yes. critical realism is much about words and nothing more. but the influence of critical realism in the universities is no small thing.
Interesting conversation, and in line with my views which I have held for a long time. The most amazing thing is that Bhaskar seems to be treated with the utmost deference by many qualitative health researchers, while Popper is, in line with Adorno’s poor criticism of Popper treated like the ‘devil incarnate’ of positivism.