Showing papers on "Realism published in 1989"

Reclaiming Reality: A Critical Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy

Abstract: Originally published in 1989, Reclaiming Reality still provides the most accessible introduction to the increasingly influential multi-disciplinary and international body of thought, known as critical realism. It is designed to "underlabour" both for the sciences, especially the human sciences, and for the projects of human emancipation which such sciences may come to inform; and provides an enlightening intervention in current debates about realism and relativism, positivism and poststucturalism, modernism and postmodernism, etc. Elaborating his critical realist perspective on society, nature, science and philosophy itself, Roy Bhaskar shows how this perspective can be used to undermine currently fashionable ideologies of the Right, and at the same time, to clear the ground for a reinvigorated Left. Reclaiming Reality contains powerful critiques of some of the most important schools of thought and thinkers of recent years—from Bachelard and Feyerabend to Rorty and Habermas; and it advances novel and convincing resolutions of many traditional philosophical problems. Now with a new introduction from Mervyn Hartwig, this book continues to provide a straightforward and stimulating introduction to current debates in philosophy and social theory for the interested lay reader and student alike. Reclaiming Reality will be of particular value not only for critical realists but for all those concerned with the revitalization of the socialist emancipatory project and the renaissance of the Marxist theoretical tradition. Roy Bhaskar is the originator of the philosophy of critical realism, and the author of many acclaimed and influential works including A Realist Theory of Science, The Possibility of Naturalism, Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation and Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom. He is an editor of the recently published Critical Realism: Essential Readings and is currently chair of the Centre for Critical Realism.

Realism, Mathematics, and Modality

Abstract: Fictionalism, epistemology and modality realism and anti-realism about mathematics is mathematical knowledge just logical knowledge? on conservativeness and incompleteness Platonism for cheap? - Crispin Wright on Frege's context principle can we dispense with space-time? realism, mathematics and modality.

Mind in Action

Abstract: 1. Epistemic Sociology 2. The Socio-Logic of Knowledge and Belief 3. The Cognizing Subject 4. Knowledge of Mind 5. Praxis and Personality 6. Realism and the Mind 7. Explanation, Psychologism and Social Construction Concluding Remarks.

The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880-1940

Abstract: In this classic study of the relationship between technology and culture, Miles Orvell demonstrates that the roots of contemporary popular culture reach back to the Victorian era, when mechanical replications of familiar objects reigned supreme and realism dominated artistic representation. Reacting against this genteel culture of imitation, a number of artists and intellectuals at the turn of the century were inspired by the machine to create more authentic works of art that were themselves "real things." The resulting tension between a culture of imitation and a culture of authenticity, argues Orvell, has become a defining category in our culture. The twenty-fifth anniversary edition includes a new preface by the author, looking back on the late twentieth century and assessing tensions between imitation and authenticity in the context of our digital age. Considering material culture, photography, and literature, the book touches on influential figures such as writers Walt Whitman, Henry James, John Dos Passos, and James Agee; photographers Alfred Stieglitz, Walker Evans, and Margaret Bourke-White; and architect-designers Gustav Stickley and Frank Lloyd Wright.

On war and morality

Abstract: The threat to the survival of humankind posed by nuclear weapons has been a frightening and essential focus of public debate for the last four decades and must continue to be so if we are to avoid destroying ourselves and the natural world around us. One unfortunate result of preoccupation with the nuclear threat, however, has been a new kind of "respectability" accorded to conventional war. In this radical and cogent argument for pacifism, Robert Holmes asserts that all war--not just nuclear war--has become morally impermissible in the modern world. Addressing a wide audience of informed and concerned readers, he raises dramatic questions about the concepts of "political realism" and nuclear deterrence, makes a number of persuasive suggestions for nonviolent alternatives to war, and presents a rich panorama of thinking about war from St. Augustine to Reinhold Niebuhr and Herman Kahn.Holmes's positions are compellingly presented and will provoke discussion both among convinced pacifists and among those whom he calls "militarists." "Militarists, " we realize after reading this book, include the majority of us who live a friendly and peaceful personal life while supporting a system which, if Holmes is correct, guarantees war and risks eventual human extinction.

Realism and instrumentalism in the development of econometrics

Abstract: WHEN, in the early decades of this century, various economists took a critical stance towards the application of formal probabilistic methods to the material of economic time-series, the proponents of these methods, whatever their intentions, apparently conveyed the view that all legitimate concerns were being attended to. In fact, this impression seems to have been so pervasive amongst the econometrics community that a somewhat dismissive attitude came to be adopted towards those economists, including Keynes, who continued to display any reservations about the soundness and relevance of the project (See e.g. Koopmans, 1941; Haavelmo, 1943a; Schumpeter, 1946). As Vining (1949b) observes economists came to regard Keynes' concerns about econometrics as the "conclusions of a sadly misinformed and misguided man" (p. 93). In truth, however, it is not clear that such concerns have ever been adequately met in practice. Indeed, today, as economists find themselves reluctantly still puzzling over the essential nature of, and the claims that can legitimately be made for, econometric analysis, the sort of concerns put forward by Keynes and others are generally accepted as being as relevant and pressing as ever (see e.g. Meeks, 1978; Hendry, 1980; Lawson, 1985; Pesaran and Smith, 1985a, 1985b; Epstein, 1987; Gilbert, 1987; Rowley and Hamouda, 1987; Rowley and Jain, 1987; and Gillies, 1988). A relevant question, then, is what lies behind this state of affairs? Why are the sort of worries expressed by Keynes still being resurrected? And how were these concerns allayed in the first place? In what follows I want to address these sorts of issues from an explicit philosophy of science vantage point. A general neglect of philosophical considerations in this area has often been noted, (e.g. Caldwell, 1982, p. 216) and what is proposed can best be considered as an exploratory first step. Specifically I want to delineate two largely oppositional positions, realism and instrumentalist (defined below), and to indicate their bearing on the development of the subject in general and particularly on the issues referred to above. This philosophical opposition has often been found to provide a leverage to a better understanding of developments in the 'natural sciences' and in what follows I want to suggest that its explanatory potential with regard to econometric analysis may be no less significant.

Extragalactic Reality: The Case of Gravitational Lensing

Abstract: My Representing and Intervening (1983) concludes with what it calls an experimental argument for scientific realism about entities. The argument is evidently inapplicable to extragalactic astrophysics, but leaves open the possibility that there might be other grounds for scientific realism in that domain. Here I argue for antirealism in astrophysics, although not for any particular kind of antirealism. The argument is conducted by a detailed examination of some current research. It parallels the last chapter of (1983). Both represent the methodological opinion that abstract or semantic realism/antirealism debates are empty, and typically lead to confused or wrong conclusions because they pay so little attention to the details of a science.

Tristees tropes: post-modern anthropologists encounter the other and discover themselves

Abstract: This essay presents a critical review of recent work in postmodern anthropology, especially that published in Clifford and Marcus' Writing Culture and Marcus and Fischer's Anthropology as Cultural Critique. The essay concentrates on three problems in particular: the postmodernists conflation of ethnography and fiction in their critique of ‘realism’ their conceptualisation of ‘dialogic’ writing; and their construction of ethnographic ‘collages’. In our view the postmodern preoccupation with genres of representation has obstructed a serious consideration of the social, political, cultural and individual contexts in which ethnographic knowledge is produced and consumed. If anthropological interpretation is constructing a reading of what happens, then to divorce it from what happens-from what, in this time or that place, specific people say, what they do, what is done to them, from the whole vast business of the world-is to divorce it from its applications and render it vacant. A good interpretation of anythi...

Writing Realism: Howells, James, and Norris in the Mass Market

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Reality at Risk: A Defence of Realism in Philosophy and the Sciences

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Voluntarism and realism in medieval ethics.

Abstract: In contrast to other articles in this series on the history of moral philosophy the present essay is not devoted to expounding the views of a single author, or to examining a particular moral theory. Instead it discusses an important dispute between two medieval accounts of the relation between theological and moral propositions. In addition to its historical interest this debate is important both because it connects earlier and later ethical thought--being influenced by Greek moral theories and influencing subsequent European philosophy--and because it concerns issues that remain important to philosophers and to those who claim that their ethical beliefs are dictated by religious convictions.

Hume and causal realism

Abstract: (1989). Hume and causal realism. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 67, No. 2, pp. 172-190.

Reality and the Physicist: Knowledge, Duration and the Quantum World

Abstract: Preface Introduction Part I. Instrumentalism and Science: 1. The positivism of the physicists 2. Positivism and fallibilism: philosophical controversies 3. Border areas of instrumentalism Part II. Physical Realism and Contemporary Physics: 4. Physical realism and fallibilism 5. Microrealism and non-separability 6. Physical realism in trouble Part III. Causality, Reality and Time: 7. Irreversibility 8. Sensible reality 9. Independent reality 10. The dilemma of modern physics: reality or meaning? 11. Questions and answers 12. Summary and perspectives Appendixes Addendum Notes References Index.

The realism of Realism: the state and the study of International Relations

Abstract: On the face of it, the title of this article must look rather odd, especially to any non-specialist who happens to light upon it. For ‘Realism’ surely connotes enterprises and appraisals of a realistic kind, ones which take full account of the facts and constraints of life. Accordingly, it might well be thought clearly superfluous to assert that such things, already identified as realistic, are indeed so.

In pursuit of a scientific culture: Science, art, and society in the Victorian age

Abstract: One of the preoccupations of victorian writers was the search for a philosophical replacement for romanticism. "In Pursuit of a Scientific Culture" traces the course of that search. As Peter Dale points out, two aspects of it are important: "One, of little practical relevance in its own time but extremely potent in ours, was that offered by Marx in deliberate opposition to the aesthetic and metaphysical totalities of the romantic period ...The other philosophical project for achieving totality in the postromantic period we hear relatively little of as a nineteenth-century phenomenon, though it made far more of an impact on the contemporary mind than Marxism". That project was positivism. Like Marxism, positivism was militantly realistic and antiromantic. Its realism, however, was based not on an analysis of history and economics, but on the structures of the natural world and the scientific method that seemed the only reliable way to understand those structures. Positivism became the dominant ideology of the later Victorian age, and Dale argues that because of its influence on both practical and contemplative life, it was the true intellectual successor to romanticism. Dale approaches positive through the writings of George Henry Lewes and extends his focus to George Eliot, Leslie Stephen, Darwin, George Meredith, Thomas Hardy, and Freud in an effort to show an ongoing engagement between science and the imagination.

The Cambridge History of Russian Literature

Abstract: Preface 1. The literature of old Russia, 988-1730 Jostein Bortnes 2. The eighteenth century: neoclassicism and the Enlightenment 1730-90 Ilya Serman 3. The transition to the modern age: sentimentalism and preromanticism, 1790-1820 Mark Altshuller 4. The nineteenth century: romanticism, 1820-40 John Mersereau Jr 5. The nineteenth century: the natural school and its aftermath, 1840-55 Richard Peace 6. The nineteenth century: the age of realism, 1855-80 Richard Freeborn 7. The nineteenth century: between realism and modernism, 1880-95 Julian Connolly 8. Turn of a century: modernism, 1895-1925 Evelyn Bristol 9. The twentieth century: the era of socialist realism, 1925-53 Victor Terras 10. The twentieth century: in search of new ways, 1953-80 Geoffrey Hosking 11. Russian literature in the 1980s Efim Ethird Bibliography Charles Moser Index.

Reification and Realism in Marketing: In Defense of Reason:

Abstract: Recent Journal of Macromarketing articles by Monieson (1988) and Dholakia (1988) attack "positivism" and "positivistic social science" which, they contend, dominate contemporary marketing and social science. Although their articles constructively extend marketing's "Xcrisis literature" on several dimensions, numerous aspects of their articles are problematical and a historical. This article reviews and evaluates three major themes that emerge in the articles by Monieson and Dholakia: (1) the law-like generalizations issue, (2) the rigor/relevance issue, and (3) the reification/realism issue.

Reid's anti-sensationalism and his realism

Abstract: I wish to discuss Thomas Reid's defense of and case for realism with respect to mind-independent bodies (material objects). While Reid's realism has received a good deal of attention lately, what I believe to be the centerpiece of Reid's case for his realism his anti-sensationalist view of our concepts of bodies and their qualities-has been largely neglected. In what follows, I show the connection between Reid's anti-sensationalism and his realism, and I then critically assess Reid's anti-sensationalism. Reid's views are developed largely as a reaction to the views of Berkeley and Hume. It will be important, therefore, to examine some of the relevant aspects of these philosophers' thought and Reid's interpretation of them.

An Introduction to the Politics and Philosophy of Jose Ortega y Gasset

Abstract: Acknowledgements Introduction Part I: 1. History, politics and biography Part II. 2. Socialism and capitalism 3. Liberalism and democracy 4. Conservatism and elitism 5. Nacionalizacon and decentralisation 6. Fascism? Part III. 7. What is philosophy and why is it done? 8. Idealism, realism and radical reality 9. Perspectifism and truth 10. Razon vital - reason from the point of view of life Bibliography Index.

The Voice of the Narrator in Children's Literature: Insights from Writers and Critics

Abstract: Preface The Illustrated Book Introduction Folk Literature and Myth Fantasy Realism Poetry Historical Fiction Biography Informational Books Index