Critical Realism

What is Critical Realism?

Even among critical realists there are important differences of position. Some are more optimistic and some more pessimistic about the scope for an explanatory social science. Writers also disagree about the character and implications of the critique implied by the term critical realism. But it is widely recognized that the work of Roy Bhaskar has been foundational in establishing and developing the implications of this distinctive approach to the philosophy of science.

His early work concentrated on challenging empiricist and positivist accounts of the procedures and discoveries of natural science, though by extension this also challenged such approaches within social science. Key arguments focused on the theory-laden (not theory-determined) character of observation and the inappropriateness of constant conjunction as a criterion for causality. These arguments suggested that the relationship between natural reality and scientific knowledge involved a stratified ontology marked by distinctions between the real, the actual, and the empirical.

While the “real” involves the underlying causal properties and powers of nature, the “actual” involves the particular ways in which these powers are expressed as they are triggered by particular conditions or as causal mechanisms interact. Thus causal powers may not be triggered, so “exist unexercised,” or such powers may be disrupted, thus “exercised unactualized” (or in modified form). Since the outcomes of causal mechanisms may not be registered by observers (i.e., as the “empirical”), they may also be “actualized unperceived.” These arguments frame a distinctive account of scientific experiments as efforts to isolate the operation of particular “causal mechanisms” by controlling the contexts within which they operate. This is coupled with a sharp distinction between the system closure that may be achieved by experimentation and the open systems within which natural mechanisms typically operate.

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