Daniel Little
Hilton Root has published some very interesting ideas about systems thinking in international relations theory in Dynamics among Nations: The Evolution of Legitimacy and Development in Modern States. Here he offers an approach to social, political, and economic change through a set of ideas that are not yet strongly integrated into IR theory — the perspective …
Continue reading "International relations and complexity theory"
I've always felt that scientific realism is almost self-evidently true. Scientific theories and hypotheses put forward ideas that go beyond the evidence of direct experience. They postulate the existence of entities and forces that cannot be directly observed but whose effects can be teased out through the assumptions we have made about their characteristics. And …
Mervyn Hartwig is an important exponent of the classic version of Roy Bhaskar's theory of critical realism. He has contributed a great deal to the interpretation of Bhaskar's thinking through a number of publications, including The Formation of Critical Realism: A Personal Perspective and Dictionary of Critical Realism, and he is the founding editor of the Journal of …
Continue reading "Response by Mervyn Hartwig to Little on critical realism"
[Tuukka Kaidesoja accepted my invitation to write a response to my discussion (link) of his book, Naturalizing Critical Realist Social Ontology. Currently Kaidesoja works as a post-doctoral researcher at the Finnish Academy Centre of Excellence in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Department of Political and Economic Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland. Thanks, Tuukka!] Thanks, …
Continue reading "Invited response by Tuukka Kaidesoja on naturalized critical realism"
Mervyn Hartwig is an important exponent of the classic version of Roy Bhaskar's theory of critical realism. He has contributed a great deal to the interpretation of Bhaskar's thinking through a number of publications, including The Formation of Critical Realism: A Personal Perspective and Dictionary of Critical Realism, and he is the founding editor of the …
Continue reading "Discussion with Mervyn Hartwig and Dan Little on historical ontology"
Justin Cruickshank is senior lecturer in Sociology in the School of Govt and Society at the University of Birmingham. He researches and teaches in the areas of classical and contemporary social and sociological theory as well as the philosophy of the social sciences. His books include Critical Realism: The Difference That It Makes (edited 2004) and Realism and …
Continue reading "Guest post by Justin Cruickshank on critical realism"
Tuukka Kaidesoja provides an important analysis and critique of Roy Bhaskar's philosophical method in his theory of critical realism in Naturalizing Critical Realist Social Ontology. This work provides a careful and detailed account of the content of Bhaskar's central ideas, as well as the relation those ideas have to other positions within and adjacent to critical …
Critical realism is a hot topic now in sociological theory and philosophy of social science. It turns out that there are some pretty strong disagreements about the foundations of the theory. Recent posts here have highlighted my own (admittedly non-expert) reading of Bhaskar’s assumptions about ontology (link), my discussion of the limited and friendly critique …
Continue reading "Reply to Elder-Vass, Hartwig, and Groff on critical realism"
Two leading exponents of critical realism, Dave Elder-Vass (The Causal Power of Social Structures: Emergence, Structure and Agency) and Mervyn Hartwig (Dictionary of Critical Realism), have offered critical replies to my post presenting some of Justin Cruickshank's criticisms of CR and indirectly to my own post on "Bhaskar's Core Ideas." I have invited them to …
Continue reading "Replies by Elder-Vass and Hartwig to Cruickshank/Little"
Ruth Groff is Assistant Professor of Political Science at St. Louis University. She specializes in the philosophical underpinnings of Western social and political thought. She is author of Powers and Capacities in Philosophy: The New Aristotelianism (2012, with John Greco), Ontology Revisited: Metaphysics in Social and Political Philosophy (Ontological Explorations) (2012), and Revitalizing Causality: Realism about Causality in Philosophy and Social …
Continue reading "Guest post by Ruth Groff on the ontology of critical realism"
