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the laws that govern it can only be identified at some more basic, e.g.
neurophysiological, level. But positivists are wrong to expect the social sciences
o find constant conjunctions in the human world, for they are scarce enough in
the natural; while hermeneuticiss are wrong to conclude from the absence of
such conjunctions that the human sciences are radically unlike the natural
sciences. Closed systems cannot be artificially established in the human
sciences. But [] this does not mean that the identification of epistemically
significant non-random patterns or results cannot provide the empirical controls
and contrasts that experimentation plays in physics and chemistry. [] But there
is no grounds for treating these data as exhaustive of the subject matter of social
science, as incorrigible or they operation as non-causal. [?]
The positive case for critical naturalism turns on the extent to which an
independent analysis of the objects of social and psychological knowledge is
consistent with the transcendental realist theory of science. (xv)
The CR conception stresses that society is both (a) a pre-existing and
(transcendentally and causally) necessary condition for intentional agency but
equally (b) as existing and persisting only in virtue of it. On his conception, then,
society is both the condition and outcome of human agency and human agency
both reproduces and transforms society. However there is an important
asymmetry here: at any moment of time society is pre-given for the individuals
who never create it, but merely reproduce and transform it. The social world is
always pre-structured. This is a major difference between Bashkar and Giddenss
theory of structuration. It means that agents are always acting in a world of
structural constraints and possibilities that they did not produce. Social structure,
then, is both the ever-present condition and the continually reproduced outcome
of intentional human agency.
On this conception, in contrast to the hermeneutical perspective, then, actors
accounts are both corrigible and limited by the existence of unacknowledged
conditions, unintended consequences, tacit skills and unconscious motivations;
but in opposition to the positivist view, actors accounts form the indispensable
starting point of social enquiry. The transformational model of social activity
entails that social life possesses a recursive and non-teleological character, as
agents reproduce and transform the very structures which they utilize (and are
constrained by) in their substantive activities. It also indicated a relational
conception of the subject matter of social science, in contrast to the
methodological individualist and collectivist conceptions characteristic of the
utilitarian (and Weberian) and Durkheimian traditions of social thought.
Related to this is the controversy about ideal types. For critical realists the
grounds for abstraction lie in the real stratification (and ontological depth) of
nature and society. The are no subjective classifications of an undifferentiated
empirical reality, but attempts to grasp (for example, in real definitions of forms
of social life already understood in a pre-scientific way) precisely the generative
mechanisms and causal structures which account in all their complex and
multiple determinations for the concrete phenomena of human history. Closely
but not explicitly articulated, in some notion; or (2) by repairing some want, lack
or inadequacy in it. In either case some absence or incompleteness in the preexisting conceptual field comes to be experienced as an inconsistency which is
remedied by resort to a greater totality. (xxi)
The mystical shell of Hegelian dialectics is ontological monovalence, manifest
inter alia in the absence of the concept of determinate absence, and with it of
uncancelled contradiction, open totality and ongoing transformative praxis.
For DCR, dialectic is essentially the positive identification and elimination of
absences, whether then conceived as argument, change or the augmentation of
(or aspiration to) freedom. For these depend upon the positive identification and
elimination of mistakes, states of affairs and constraints, all of which can be seen
as involving or depending upon absences. Indeed the absence is ontological prior
to, and the condition for, presence or positive being. It includes processes as well
as states (product) and states-in-process as well as process-in-states. Moreover it
opens up, in what DCR styles the dialectic of dialectical and analytical reasoning
(in which dialectical reasoning overreaches but contains analytical reasoning),
the critique of the fixity of the subject, in the traditional subject-predicate form.
The moments of the system of DCR will now be briefly rehearsed. 1M is
characterized by non-identity relations such as those involved in the critique of
the epistemic and anthropic fallacies, of identity theory and actualism. Unified by
the concept of alterity, it emphasizes scientific intransitivity, referential
detachment (the process by whereby we detach the referent (and referential act)
from that to which it refers), the reality principle and ontology which it
necessitates. More concretely, 1M fastens on to the transcendentally necessary
stratification and differentiation of the world, entailing concepts of causal powers
and generative mechanisms, alethic truth and transfactuality, natural necessity
and natural kinds. Alethic truth is the truth of, or real reason(s) for, or dialectical
ground of, things as distinct from propositions. This is possible in virtue of the
ontological stratification of the world and attainable in virtue of the dynamic
character of science, social science, explanatory critique and emancipatory
axiology.
2E is unified by the category of absence, from which the whole circle of 1M-4D
can be derived. Its critical cutting edge is aimed at the Parmenidean doctrine of
ontological monovalence, the Platonic analysis of negation in terms of difference
and the Kantian analysis of negative into positive predicates. It spans the gamut
of categories of negativity, contradiction and critique. It emphasizes the try-unity
of causality, space and time in tensed rhythmic spatializing process,
thematizing the presence of the past and existentially constitutive process. (xxii)
3L is unified by the category of totality. It pinpints the error of ontological
extensionalism, including the hypostatization of thought.
4D is unified by the category of transformative praxis or agency. [] Agency is
sustained philosophically in opposition to dualistic disembodiment and
reductionist reification by an emergent powers materialist orientation and
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)
(v)
conjunctions (or regular sequences) of events and causal laws. This double
identification involves two category mistakes, expressed most succinctly in the
concepts of the empirical world and the actuality of causal laws.
In fact, experience is significant to science only if: the perceiver is theoretically
informed; the system in which the events occur is closed. (26)
[in open systems causal laws are out of phase with patterns of events and
experiences ]
The status of ontology and its dissolution in classical philosophy
This enables us to identify a series of metaphysical, epistemological and
methodological mistakes within the tradition of empirical realism. If the
intelligibility of experimental activity entails that the objects of scientific
understanding are intransitive and structured then we can establish at one
stroke: (i) that a philosophical ontology is possible; (ii) some propositions in it
(causal laws are distinct from patterns of events, and events from experiences);
and (iii) the possibility of a philosophy which is consistent with [] the realist
practice of science.
Ontology does not have as its subject matter a world apart from that
investigated by science. Rather, its subject matter just is that world, considered
from the point of view of what can be established about it by philosophical
argument.
Philosophical ontology asks what the world must be like for science to be
possible; and its premises are generally recognised scientific activities. Is method
is transcendental; its premise science its conclusion the object of our present
investigation.
The metaphysical mistake the argument of the previous section allows us to
pinpoint may be called the epistemic fallacy. This consists in the view that
statements about being can be reduced to or analysed in terms of statements
about knowledge; i.e. that ontological questions can always be analysed in terms
of our knowledge of being. (27)
And it is manifest in the prohibition on any transcendent entities.
The epistemic fallacy is most marked, perhaps, in the concept of the empirical
world. But it is manifest in the criteria of significance and even the problems
associated with the tradition of empirical realism. [example for Popper: if a
proposition is not empirically verifiable (or falsifiable) or a tautology, it is
meaningless] Verificationism indeed may be regarded as a particular form of
epistemic fallacy, in which the meaning of a proposition about reality (which
cannot be designated empirical) is confused with our grounds, which may or
may not be empirical, for holding it.
More generally, the epistemic fallacy is manifest in a persistent tendency to read
the conditions of a particular concept of knowledge into an implicit concept of
the world. Thus the problem of induction is a consequence of the atomicity of the
events conjoined, which is a function of the necessity for an epistemically certain
base. (28)
To say that every account of science, or every philosophy in as much as it is
concerned with science, presupposes an ontology is to say that the philosophy
of science abhors an ontological vacuum. The empiricist fills this vacuum he
creates with his concept of experience. In this way an implicit ontology,
crystallized in the concept of the empirical world, is generated. (30)
Ontology vindicated and the real basis of causal laws
Only if causal laws persist through, which means they must be irreducible to, the
flux of conditions can the idea of the universality of a known law be sustained.
And only if they have a reality distinct from that of events can the assumption of
a natural necessity be justified. On this view laws are not empirical statements,
but statements about the forms of activity characteristic of the things of the
world. And their necessity is that of a natural connection, not that of a human
rule. There is a distinction between the real structures and mechanisms of the
world and the actual patterns of events that they generate. And this distinction
in turn justifies the more familiar one between necessary and accidental
sequences.
The world consists of mechanisms not events. Such mechanisms combine to
generate the flux of phenomena that constitute the actual states and happenings
of the world. They may be said to be real, though it is rarely that they are
actually manifest and rarer still that they are empirically identified by men. They
are the intransitive objects of scientific theory. (34)
Causal laws cannot simply be analysed as powers. Rather they must be analysed
as tendencies. For whereas powers are potentialities which may or may not be
exercised, tendencies are potentialities which may be exercised or as it were in
play without being realized or manifest in any particular outcome. They are
therefore just right for the analysis of causal laws.
It is the idea of continuing activity as distinct from that of enduring power that
the concept of tendency is designed to capture. In the concept of tendency, the
concept o power is thus literally dynamized or set in motion.
[Bhaskar is thus concerned with] possibilities which need not be manifest in any
particular outcome. Such conditionals are normic, rather than subjunctive. They
do not say what would happen, but what is happening in a perhaps unmanifest
way.
The world consists of things, not events. Most things are complex objects, in
virtue of which they possess an ensemble of tendencies, liabilities and powers. It
is by reference to the exercise of their tendencies, liabilities and powers that the
phenomena of the world are explained. (37)
X
X
X
Domain of
Actual
Domain of
Empirical
X
X
Note. For transcendental realism dr da de (i) where dr, da, de are the domains of the
real, the actual and the empirical respectively. For empirical realism d r = da =de (ii)
(ii) is a special case of (i), which depends in general upon antecedent social activity, and
in which
(a) For da = de the events are known under epistemically significant descriptions,
which depends upon skilled perception (and thus a skilled perceiver);
(b) For dr = da an antecedent closure has been obtained, which depends upon skilled
experimentation (and thus the planned disruption of nature [i.e. a closed system])
imaginary, for realism it may be real, and come to be established as such. [to
check whether it is, stage 3 is necessary]
For transcendental realism the move from (2) to (3) involves experimental
production and control, in which the reality of the mechanisms postulated in the
model are subjected to empirical scrutiny.
[These are not chronological stages] but phases of science. (50)
It is only [] if we allow the possibility of the move from (2) to (30 that we can,
in the end, uphold the legitimacy of the move from (1) to (2). Moreover it is only
if we begin to see science in terms of moves [] that we can give an adequate
account of science. (51)
[transcendental realism opposes to deductivism the idea of science as a critical
social activity]
Scientific development [] consists in the transformation of social products,
antecedently established items of knowledge, which may be regarded as
Aristotelian material causes.
[consequences:]First, that men never construct their knowledge from scratch.
[] man never creates, but only changes, his knowledge, with the cognitive tools
at his disposal. Secondly, what is to be changed, has first to be acquired. And
what is acquired consists always of an ensemble of theoretical and empirical
ideas, so that knowledge can never be analysed out as a function of individual
sense-experience.
Science then is an ongoing social activity which pre-exists any particular
generation of scientists and any particular moment of consciousness. Its aim is
the production of the knowledge of the independently existing and transfactually
active mechanisms of nature. (52)
The surplus-element in the analysis of law-like statements: a critique of
the theory of models
[the problem of necessity and accident or nomic and non-nomic universals has to
be addressed i.e. when is a correlation a direct causal relation and when not.
There needs to be a surplus-element which implies natural necessity]
[one solution to this is to refer to pre-existing theory, or more specifically by
analogy with existing models. This is Campbells position. The problem is that it
does not account for radical breaks in science, for example from Newtonian to
Einsteinian dynamics](54-55) A new scientific ontology or a fundamental
change in scientific concepts may transform our conception of what is plausible.
(56)
[For Campbell] science still remains [] a purely internal process, locked in a
close circle of thought.
necessarily peopled. Since realism insists upon a stratified view of the social, like
any other reality, then there are properties and powers particular to people
which include a reflexivity towards and creativity about any social context which
they confront.
There is, in short, no such thing as an enclosed order in society because it is not
just the investigators but the inhabitants who can engage in thought
experiments and put them into practice. (190)
[structure/agency problem: four major solutions offered]
The first two contenders locate these [ultimate constituents of social reality]
respectively in agency and structure. [originally in the nineteenth century as a
debate between individualism and collectivism]. (191)
To talk about emergent properties is simply to refer to those entities which come
into being through social combination. They exist by virtue of interrelations
(although not usually interpersonal ones) and not all social relations give rise to
them. [ex: Adam Smiths pin makers generate the power of mass production; the
sewing bee does not]
Yet the reality of relational concepts cannot be secured on the perceptual
criterion of empiricism; the alternative is to demonstrate their causal efficacy,
that is employing a causal criterion to establish reality. [empiricism isnt enough,
for there might be powers that remain unexercised, unperceived]
Only with the demise of the empiricist hegemony and the undermining of
positivist domination, did siding with neither individualism nor collectivism
become a genuine option. (192)
[critique of postmodernism]
Ultimately any representation of structures as constructs, subject only to
discursive negotiation, sells out on human emancipation.
[critique of postmodernisms refusal to talk about humanity](193)
Bhaskars chater for social realism is based four square on a rejection of
positivism but it is not neutral towards the variety of approaches current in social
theorising. A social ontology does not dictate a specific form of practical social
theory, but since it commits itself (corrigibly) to what exists, then it necessarily
regulates the explanatory programme because its specification of the
constituents (and non-constituents) of reality are the only ones which can appear
in explanatory statements (which does not rule out substantive debate about the
most promising contenders within the abstractly defined domain of the real).
Realist social theory begins from three basic ontological premises about social
reality. (chapter 1 of TPN the possibility of naturalism). intransitivity,
transfactuality, and stratification. (194)
their realisation (and equally necessary to account for the systematic nonactualisation of non-events and non-experiences such as the absence of black
prime ministers in the West). Ontological depth necessarily introduces vertical
causality which simultaneously entails temporality. (196)
This historicity-temporality of vertical explanation is intrinsic to the fact that all
legitimatory practices presuppose an ideological stratum that they did not
create religion reproduces the churches, not vice versa. (197)
CR believes that emergent properties can be upheld as pertaining to society sui
generis. [how to vindicate ontological depth and warrant structure and agency
as being treated as distinct strata of social reality without denying societys
activity-dependence upon its agents? [by] emphasising, as Bhaskar does, the
importance of distinguishing categorically between people and societies,
because the properties possessed by social forms may be very different from
those possessed by the individuals upon whose activity they depend. Now to
Bhaskar this effect of emergent properties implies that some point of contact is
required between the two and that their linkage depends upon a mediating
system consisting of the positions (places, functions, rules, tasks, duties, rights,
etc.) occupied (filled, assumed, enacted, etc.) by individuals, and of the practices
(activities, etc.) in which, in virtue of their occupancy of these positions (and vice
versa), they engage.
This distinction between positions and practices is crucial and it is by maintaining
it and working on its implications that what is sui generis to society can be
extracted. (200)
In short, positions must predate the practices they engender: although activity is
necessarily ceaseless for society to be, it is discontinuous in nature because
changes in societys structure then condition practices in distinctively different
ways. (201)
This means that structural and agential transformation are not just randomly out
of synchrony [] but that we are dealing with an inherently tensed
phenomenon because given structures and given agents stand in temporal
relations of priority and posterity towards one another. Hence to stress the
necessary continuity of activity for the existence of society is only to assert the
truism no people:no society.
Morphogenic cycles, based on two simple propositions, that structure necessarily
predates the actions which transform it and that structural elaboration
necessarily post-dates those actions, provide social realism with a method of
explaining social structuring over time in terms of the interplay between
structure and agency which can be used to generate practical social theories in
particular domains. (202)
I argue that societies are irreducible to people and [] that social forms are a
necessary condition for any intentional act, that they pre-existence establishes
their autonomy as possible objects of scientific investigation and that their
causal power establishes their reality. The pre-existence of social forms will be
seen to entail a transformational model of social activity, from which a number of
ontological limits on any possible naturalism can be immediately derived. (206)
The transformational model of social activity developed here will be seen to
entail a relational conception of the subject-matter of social science. On this
conception society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of the
relations within which individuals stand. And the essential movement of
scientific theory will be seen to consist in the movement from the manifest
phenomena of social life, as conceptualized in the experience of the social
agents concerned, to the essential relations that necessitate them. Of such
relations the agents involved may or may not be aware. Now it is through the
capacity of social science to illuminate such relations that it may come to be
emancipatory. But the emancipatory potential of social science is contingent
upon, and entirely a consequence of, its contextual explanatory power. (207)
[Bhaskar argues that] societies are complex real objects irreducible to simpler
ones, such as people.
Against individualism
Methodological individualism is the doctrine that facts about societies, and social
phenomena generally, are to be explained solely in terms of facts about
individuals.
[Obviously untenable]
Sociology is not concerned [] with large-scale, mass or group behaviour.
Rather, it is concerned ,a t least paradigmatically, with the persistent relations
between individuals (and groups) and with the relations between these relations
(and between such relations and nature and the products of such relations).
(209)
There is in fact one body of social doctrine, whose avatars include utilitarianism,
liberal political theory and neo-classical economic theory, which does conform to
individualistic prescriptions, on the assumption that what is in effect a
generalized aggregation problem can be solved. [] Relations play no part in this
model and this model, if it applies at all, applies as much to Crusoe as to
socialized humanity with the corollary expressed by Hume that mankind is
much the same at all times and places, simultaneously revealing its ahistorical
and a priori biases. (210)
Now the relational conception of the subject-matter of sociology may be
contrasted not only with the individualist conception, illustrated by utilitarian
theory, but with what I shall call the collectivist conception, best exemplified
perhaps by Durkheims work.
The key concepts of the Durkheimian corpus [] all derive their meaning from
their relationship to the concept of the collective nature of social phenomena.
Thus [] enduring relationships must be reconstructed from collective
phenomena; whereas on the realist and relational view advanced here collective
phenomena are seen primarily as the expressions of enduring relationships.
(211)
On the society/person connection
It is customary to draw a divide between two camps in sociological theory:
Weber social objects are seen as the results of (or as constituted by)
intentional or meaningful human behaviour;
Durkheim social objects are seen as possessing a life of their own, external to
and coercing the individual.
With some stretching the various schools o social thought [] can then be seen
as instances of one or other of these positions. And the varieties of Marxism can
then also be neatly classified.
Now it is tempting to try and develop a general model capable of synthesizing
these conflicting perspectives, on the assumption of a dialectical
interrelationship between society and people. I want to discuss a plausible
variant of such a model, advocated most convincingly b Peter Berger and his
associates. (212)
According to the Berger model [Model III] society forms the individuals who
create society; society, in other words, produces the individuals, who produce
society, in a continuous dialectic.
This scheme thus seems able to do justice both to the subjective and intentional
aspects of social life and to the externality and coercive power of social facts.
[] For a categorical distinction is now drawn between natural and social facts,
in that the latter, but not the former, depend essentially upon human activity.
[] the advocates of this model regard such systems, instruments and practices
as objectivations that, under conditions, take on an alienated form. According to
them, objectivation is the process whereby human subjectivity embodies itself in
products that are available to oneself and ones fellow men as elements of a
common world and alienation is the process whereby the unity of the producing
and its product is broken. Hus language, forms of political and economic
organization, and cultural and ethical norms are all ultimately embodiments of
human subjectivity. []
On Model III, then, society is an objectivation or externalization of human beings.
And human beings, for their part, are the internalization or reappropriation in
consciousness of society. (213)
[For Bhaskar this is misleading, since it] encourages, on the one hand, a
voluntaristic idealism with respect to our understanding social structure and, on
their occupancy of these positions (and vice versa), they engage. I shall call this
mediating system the position-practice system. Now such positions and
practices, if they are to be individuated at all, can only be done so relationally.
[] the initial conditions in any concrete social explanation must always include
or tacitly presuppose reference to some or other social relation. And it is in the
differentiation and stratification, production and reproduction, mutation and
transformation, continual remoulding and incessant shifting, of the relatively
enduring relations presupposed by particular social forms and structures that
sociologys distinctive theoretical interest lies. Thus the transformational model
implies a relational interest for sociology.
One advantage of the relational conception [is that it] allows one to focus on a
range of questions having to do with the distribution of the structural condition of
action, and in particular with differential allocations of: (a) productive resources
(of all kinds, including for example cognitive ones) to persons (and groups) and
(b) persons (and groups) to functions and roles (for example in the division of
labour). In doing so, it allows one to situate the possibility of different (and
antagonistic) interests, of conflicts within society, and hence of interestmotivated transformations in social structure. (221)
Marx combined an essentially relational conception of social science and a
transformational model of social activities with the additional premise of
historical materialism that it is material production that ultimately determines
the rest of social life. Now, as is well known, although it can be established a
priori that material production is a necessary condition of social life, it cannot be
proved that it is the ultimately determining one.
[the philosophy of internal relations is dogged by dogma] It is essential to
recognize that some relations are internal, and some are not. Moreover, some
natural relations (such as that between a magnet and its field) are internal, and
man social relations (such as that between two cyclists crossing on a hill top) are
not. It is in principle an open question whether or not some relation, in historical
time, is internal.
A relation RAB may be defined as internal if and only if A would not be what it
essentially is unless B is related to it in the way that it is. R AB is symmetrically
internal if the same applies also to B (A and B ma designate universals of
particulars, concepts or things, including relations). The relation bourgeoisieproletariat is symmetrically internal; traffic warden-state asymmetrically internal;
passing motorist-policemen not (in general) internal at all. (222)
[] there can be no presumption of explanatory equality between the relata of
an internal relationship. Thus capitalist production may dominate (determinate
forms of) exchange, without the latter ceasing to be essential for it. Internally
related aspects may command, as it were, differential causal force. Or, to put it
another way, ontological depth or stratification, defined causally, is consistent
with relational internality, including symmetry, that is, existential parity.
Now most social phenomena, like most natural phenomena, are conjuncturally
determined and, as such, in general have to be explained in terms of a
multiplicity of causes. But, given the epistemic contingency of their relational
character, the extent to which their explanation requires reference to a totality of
aspects, bearing internal relations to one another, remains open.
This ever present possibility of discovering what is a (potentially new) totality in
a nexus accounts for the chameleon-like and configurational quality of a
subject-matter which is no only always changing but may (in this respect like any
other) be continually redescribed. Now although totalization is a process of
thought, totalities are real. Although it is contingent whether we require a
phenomenon to be understood as an aspect of a totality (depending upon our
cognitive interests), it is not contingent whether it is such an aspect or not.
Social science does not create the totalities it reveals, although it may itself be
an aspect of them. (223)
[Marxism claimed to be be able to grasp social life as a totality to display I as a
connection and complexus, in virtue of a theory of history]
On the limits of naturalism
[Two more limits on naturalism: epistemological and relational]
Society, as an object of enquiry, is necessarily theoretical, in the sense that, like
a magnetic field, it is necessarily unperceivable. As such it cannot be identified
independently of its effects; so that it can only be known, not shown, to exist.
[moreover society does not exist independently of those effects.]
[this is an ontological problem, but not a major epistemological one. the chief
epistemological limit on naturalism is the impossibility of closed systems to
experiment on this is why all orthodox philosophy of science positions are
inapplicable to the social sciences]
The real methodological import of the absence of closed systems is strictly
limited: it is that the social sciences are denied, in principle, decisive test
situations for their theories. This means that criteria for the rational development
and replacement of theories in social science must be explanatory and nonpredictive. [this has no ontological significance]. (225)
[there is also a problem with attempts to measure stuff in the social sciences]
[Also, the social sciences are] internal with respect o their subject-matter in a
way in which the natural sciences are not. This necessitates a precision in the
sense in which their objects of knowledge can be said to be intransitive. For it is
possible, and indeed likely, given the internal complexity and interdependence of
social activities, that these objects may be causally affected by social science,
and in some cases not exist independently of it. (226)
Conversely, one would expect social science to be affected or conditioned by
developments in that it patently cannot exist independently of, viz. the rest of
And fetishism consists in their transformation in thought into the natural, and so
ahistorical, qualities of things. [idealistic mystification works similarly, with a
conventional origin being assigned to something for example money]
[Marx however employs a first-order critique of consciousness- when phenomena
themselves are false] or, more formally, shows that a certain set of categories is
not properly applicable to experience at all. (231)
Thus, contrary to what is implied in hermeneutical and neo-Kantian traditions,
the transformation P T both (1) isolates real but non-empirical and not
necessarily adequately conceptualized conditions and (2) consists essentially, as
critique, in two modes of conceptual criticism and change. Now the appellation
ideology to a set of ideas P is only justified if their necessity can be
demonstrated: that is, if they can be explained as well as criticized. This involves
something more than just being able to say that the beliefs concerned are false
or superficial, which normally entails having a better explanation for the
phenomena in question. It involves, in addition, being able to give an account of
the reasons why the false or superficial beliefs are held a mode of explanation
without parallel in the natural science. (232)
The transformational model implies that social activities are historical,
interdependent and interconnected. The law-like statements of the social
sciences will thus typically designate historically restricted tendencies operating
at a single level of the social structure only. Because they are defined for only
one relatively autonomous component of the social structure, and because they
act in systems that are always open, they designate tendencies which may never
be manifested, but which are nevertheless essential to the understanding (and
the changing) of the different forms of social life, just because they are really
productive of them.
Society is [] a complex and causally efficacious whole a totality, which is
being continually transformed in practice.
Social science as critique: facts, values and theories
[Hume: the transition from is to ought, factual to value statements, indicatives
o imperatives, is, although frequently made, logically inadmissible. This has
become an article of faith for the entire analytical tradition]
For that anti-naturalist tradition in ethics, no factual proposition can be
derived from any value judgement; and no value judgement can be
derived from any factual proposition.
Accordingly, social science is viewed as neutral in two respects: first, in that its
propositions are logically independent of, and cannot be derived from, any value
position (1); second, in that value positions are logically independent of, and
cannot be derived from, any social scientific position (2). (233)
It is not often conceded that some facts are in some sense tainted by, or
contingent upon, our values. But whatever doubts is cast upon (1), (2) is still
deemed canonical. That is, it is still held that the findings of social science are
consistent with any value-position; so that even if social science cannot be valuefree, social values remain effectively science-free.
[Bhaskars] primary argument is against (2). But I reject (1) as well; that is, I
accept the thesis of the value-dependency of (social) facts, and will consider it
first. It will be seen, however, that without a rejection of axis (2), criticism
directed at axis (1), or its implications, must remain largely ineffectual. And my
aim will be to show how theory, by throwing into relief the (ever-diminishing)
circle in which facts and value move, can presage its transformation into an
(expanding) explanatory/emancipatory spiral.
(1) Has been criticized from the standpoint of the subjectivity of both (a) the
subject and b) the object of investigation (as well as, more obliquely, in the
hermeneutical, critical and dialectical traditions from the standpoint of (c) the
relationship between the two).
[lets consider (a): it has been argued that] the social values of the scientist
determine (i) the selection of the problems; (ii) the conclusions; and even (iii) the
standards of inquiry. (234)
[against relativism] two objections are regularly trotted out: first, that it is selfrefuting; second, that it denies what we do in fact do.
The argument for the self-refuting character of relativism is easily refuted. The
argument asserts that if all beliefs are relative, then there can be no good
grounds for relativism; hence one has no reason to accept it. Conversely, if one
has reason to accept it, then at least one belief is not relative; so that relativism
is false. Now this argument confuses two distinct theses. The first is the correct
thesis of epistemic relativity, which asserts that all beliefs are socially produced,
so that all knowledge is transient, and neither truth-values nor criteria of
rationality exist outside historical time. The other is the incorrect thesis of
judgemental relativism, which asserts that all beliefs (statements) are equally
valid, in the sense that there can be no (rational) grounds for preferring one to
another. Denying the principle of epistemic relativism inevitably entails
embracing some type of epistemological absolutism, while acceptance of
judgemental relativism inevitably leads to some or other form or irrationalism.
(236)
Objection (b) usually depends upon the fact that the subject-matter of social
science is itself in part constituted by, or indeed just consists in, values or things
to which the agents themselves attach value, that is, objects of value. (237)
[] just as natural science has no foundations, there are no foundations of social
knowledge scientific or lay. (238) [out of context, maybe]
Positivist dogma (1) must thus be rejected both on the grounds that it ignores
the subjects interest in the object and one the grounds that the nature of the
object is such that criteria for descriptive (and more generally scientific)
adequacy entail at least the possibility of irreducibly evaluative descriptions.
Criticism of (1) however leaves the questions of the determination, and noninstrumental justification, of values unresolved. Moreover, by making facts
partially dependent upon values (and leaving value-choice undetermined) a
seemingly inevitable element of arbitrariness is introduced into the scientific
process. (239)
Indeed there seems no reason why, in the light of our special interests, we
should not generate whatever facts we please. [in order to counter that, lets
turn to side (2)] and see if science has any implications for values; if one can
break the circle here. (240)
My argument, it is important to note, does not permit a simple inference from
facts to values. It turns, rather, on the capacity of a theory to explain false
consciousness, and in particular on the capacity of a theory to allow the
satisfaction of minimal criteria from the characterization of a system of beliefs as
ideological.
Now it will be remembered that I argued [] that one is only justified in
characterizing a set of ideas p as ideological if both (a) P is false, that is, one
possesses a superior explanation for the phenomena in question; and (b) P is
more or less contingently (conjuncturally) necessary, that is, one possesses an
explanation of the falsity of the beliefs in question.
If, then, one is in possession of a theory which explains why false consciousness
is necessary, one can pass immediately, without the addition of any extraneous
value judgements, to a negative evaluation of the object (generative structure,
system of social relations or whatever) that makes that consciousness necessary
(and, ceteris paribus, to a positive evaluation of action rationally directed at the
removal of the sources of false consciousness). (241)
Now if beliefs are not to be given a totally voluntaristic explanation; if they are at
all recalcitrant like the rest of the social structure (as is implied by their
internality to it); or if a sociology of knowledge is o be possible and necessary
(and one is already implicit I lay practice); then the form of ideological
explanation schematized [] is a condition of every rational praxis.
[truth, consistency, rationality etc are good because commitment to them are
conditions of the possibility of discourse in general]
Now it is certainly the case that to say of some belief P that it is illusory is ceteris
paribus to imply that it is detrimental to the achievement of human goals and
the satisfaction of human wants. But it is not because of this, on the argument I
have advanced, that P is bad. (242)
The most powerful explanatory theory, by situating the greatest range of real
(non-Utopian) possibilities, will increase our rational autonomy of action. But it is
a mistake of the greatest magnitude to suppose that [] it will tell us what to do.
The most powerful explanatory theory in an open world is a non-deterministic
one.
Aside from this, science, although it can and must illuminate them, cannot finally
settle questions of practical morality and action, just because there are always
and necessarily social practices besides science, and values other than
cognitive ones.
On the other hand, once we break from the contemplative standpoint of
traditional epistemology and conceive human beings as engaged in practical and
material activity, and not just thinking and perceiving, it becomes difficult to see
how (2) could have held philosophers in thrall for so long.
Appendix: A note on the Marxist concept of ideology
[Two problems associated with Marxist concept of ideology] The first concerns
the location of ideology (and science) within the topography of historical
materialism; the second concerns the criteria for the characterization of beliefs
as ideological, and specifically for distinguishing ideology from science.
A. Sciences and ideologies in historical materialism
In the work of the mature Marx the concept of ideology has a double designation:
on the one hand, it is assigned to the superstructure to be explained in terms of
the base; on the other, it forms part of the analysis of the base itself, most
notably in the figure of commodity fetishism. Now this double designation, not to
say schism, in the thematization of the concept of ideology within Marxism itself
reflects a historical fact of some importance. (243)
Marx inaugurated two distinct research programmes: an economic theory, or
critique, of the capitalist mode of production, elaborated above all in Capital; and
a theory of history, historical materialism []. But he never satisfactorily
integrated the two.
Foremost among such problems is of course that of reconciling the thesis of the
relative autonomy and specific efficacy of the various superstructures (however
individualed and enumerated) with that of their determination in the last
instance by the base (however identified and defined).
In general terms Marxists have long recognized two errors: idealism, dislocation
of a superstructure from the base (or the totality); and reductionism (or
economism), reduction of a superstructure to a mechanical effect or
epiphenomenon of the base (or to an expression of the totality). Now if one
places science within society, as one surely must, these opposed errors can be
identified with the works of Althusser in the mid-1960s (in his so-called
theoreticist phase) and of the early Lukacs respectively. Thus for Althusser
science is effectively completely autonomous, while for Lukacs it tends to be
merely an expression of (the reification intrinsic to) capitalist society.
This problem of simultaneously avoiding economic reductionism and theoretical
idealism has a direct counterpart on the plane of ideology. For, on the one hand,
there is, in Capital, a theory of false or superficial economic ideas, which cannot
just be extrapolated (without detailed independent investigations) into a general
For Marx vulgar economy merely reflects the phenomenal forms of bourgeois life.
It does not penetrate to the essential reality that produces these forms. But it is
not just laziness or scientific bad faith that accounts for this. For the
phenomenal forms that are reflected or rationalized in ideology actually mask
the real relations that generate them. As Godelier has put it: it is not the subject
who deceives himself, but reality that deceives him.
I noticed above how fetishism, by naturalizing value, dehistoricizes it. Its social
function is thus to conceal the historically specific class relationships that
underlie the surface phenomena of circulation and exchange. Now the wage
form, in confusing the value of labour and the value of labour power, reduces
powers to their exercise. Its social function is thus to conceal the reality, in the
process of capitalist production, of unpaid labour (the source of surplus value).
[] So both the value and wage forms, on which Marxs critique of political
economy turn, involve characteristic, and readily explicable, category mistakes.
Now once one accepts that phenomenal forms are necessary to the functioning
of a capitalist economy (that is, once one rejects a crude materialistic inversion
of the Hegelian notion of the autonomy of the ideal), one can set out the
following schema, adapted from an article by John Mepham. (247)
consciousness may yet be necessary. It follows from this also that, although a
critique in Marxs sense is at once transcendentally and subversively critical,
Marxist science is subversive in virtue of its cognitive power alone.
Finally, it should be noted that Marxs analysis of political economy reveals not
only a gap between how an object is and how it appears to be, but a
contradiction;, which I shall call a Colletti contradiction, between the way it
presents itself in experience and the way it really is. This is not just because
analysis reveals a level of structure and set of relations not manifest to
experience or bourgeois ideology), which it does, but which does not justify
reference to a contradiction Nor is it only because the very forms in which social
life presents itself to experience embody fundamental category mistakes. Rather
it is because, through the theorem of the necessity of phenomenal forms of
social life, they are themselves internally related to (that is, constitute necessary
conditions for) the essential structures that generate them. On Marxs analysis,
social reality is shot through with such Colletti contradictions.
[] it is important to stress that such contradictions, which involve merely the
necessary co-existence in social reality of an object and a categorically false
presentation of it, can be consistently described. Collettis transcendental
idealism misleads him into viewing the principle of non-contradiction, conceived
as a regulative ideal for thought, as a constitutive principle of thinkable reality.
(248)
But of course where, as in social life, thought is itself par of social reality, there
are bound to exist logical contradictions in reality. And if thought does not
constitute (and so completely exhaust) social reality, there are bound to exist
misrepresentations of reality in reality. And among such misrepresentations will
be some which are necessary for what they misrepresent.
[] concept and object remain distinct; and the relations involved are causal, not
logical. Such a relation is still characterizable as one of contradiction, in virtue
of the misrepresentation involved. But because of the relata consist in a
(misrepresented) real object, the contradiction is not internal to thought, as in
the dialectics of both Plato and Hegel. And because the relata are necessary for
each other, they do not stand in a purely contingent, external relationship to one
another. So that if one choses to use the term dialectical, in deference to
custom but in opposition of history, to refer to such oppositions, it seems
advisable to preface it, to indicate its specific, by some such term as Marxian.
(249)