Showing papers on "Realism published in 2017"

Evolutionary Debunking, Moral Realism and Moral Knowledge

Abstract: This paper reconstructs what I take to be the central evolutionary debunking argument that underlies recent critiques of moral realism. The argument claims that given the extent of evolutionary influence on our moral faculties, and assuming the truth of moral realism, it would be a massive coincidence were our moral faculties reliable ones. Given this coincidence, any presumptive warrant enjoyed by our moral beliefs is defeated. So if moral realism is true, then we can have no warranted moral beliefs, and hence no moral knowledge. In response, I first develop what is perhaps the most natural reply on behalf of realism – namely, that many of our highly presumptively warranted moral beliefs are immune to evolutionary influence and so can be used to assess and eventually resuscitate the epistemic merits of those that have been subject to such influence. I then identify five distinct ways in which the charge of massive coincidence has been understood and defended. I argue that each interpretation is subject to serious worries. If I am right, these putative defeaters are themselves subject to defeat. Thus many of our moral beliefs continue to be highly warranted, even if moral realism is true.

Political realism as ideology critique

Abstract: This paper outlines an account of political realism as a form of ideology critique. We defend the normative edge of this critical-theoretic project against the common charge that there is a problematic trade-off between a theory’s groundedness in facts about the political status quo and its ability to envisage radical departures from the status quo. To overcome that problem, we combine insights from theories of legitimacy by Bernard Williams and other realists, Critical Theory, and analytic epistemological and metaphysical theories of cognitive bias, ideology and social construction. The upshot is an account of realism as empirically informed critique of social and political phenomena. We reject a sharp divide between descriptive and normative theory, and so provide an alternative to the anti-empiricism of some approaches to Critical Theory as well as to the complacency towards existing power structures found within liberal realism, let alone mainstream normative political philosophy, liberal or otherwise.

Liberal realism: A realist theory of liberal politics

Abstract: Introduction: The resurgence of realist political theory 1. The liberal vision of the political: Consensus, freedom, and legitimacy 2. The realist vision of the political: Conflict, coercion, and the circumstances of politics 3. The realist challenge to liberal theory 4. Liberal alternatives: The liberalism of fear and modus vivendi 5. Bernard Williams and the structure of liberal realism 6. The partisan foundations of liberal realism 7. The moderate hegemony of liberal realism Bibliography Index

With radicals like these, who needs conservatives? Doom, gloom, and realism in political theory

Abstract: This paper attempts to get some critical distance on the increasingly fashionable issue of realism in political theory. Realism has an ambiguous status: it is sometimes presented as a radical chall...

How to do realistic political theory (and why you might want to)

Abstract: In recent years, a number of realist thinkers have charged much contemporary political theory with being idealistic and moralistic. While the basic features of the realist counter-movement are reas...

Mimesis, Genres and Post-Colonial Discourse: Deconstructing Magic Realism

Abstract: General Introduction PART I: ARE DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN GENRES STILL RELEVANT? A Compulsive Search for Taxinomy? Major Themes and Genres PART II: REALITY, REALISM AND MIMESIS A Brief Historical Reminder of the Relationship Between Art and Mimesis Art and a New 'Repossessed' Post-Colonial Reality PART III: FROM FANTASY TO MAGIC REALISM The Fantastic and 'Magic Realism' Definitions of the Fantastic Magic Realism: The Building of a Literary Genre Some Characteristics of Magic Realism in the Works of Rushdie and Garcia Marquez Magic Realism and the New Literatures PART IV: TOWARDS HYBRID AESTHETICS Definitions of 'Culture' Post-Colonial Literatures and Hybridization Edouard Glissant's Aesthetic Theories Wilson Harris and Palace of the Peacock Conclusion Bibliography Index

Carnap, Quine, and Putnam on Methods of Inquiry

Abstract: Carnap, Quine, and Putnam held that in our pursuit of truth we can do no better than to start in the middle, relying on already-established beliefs and inferences and applying our best methods for re-evaluating particular beliefs and inferences and arriving at new ones. In this collection of essays, Gary Ebbs interprets these thinkers' methodological views in the light of their own philosophical commitments, and in the process refutes some widespread misunderstandings of their views, reveals the real strengths of their arguments, and exposes a number of problems that they face. To solve these problems, in many of the essays Ebbs also develops new philosophical approaches, including new theories of logical truth, language use, reference and truth, truth by convention, realism, trans-theoretical terms, agreement and disagreement, radical belief revision, and contextually a priori statements. His essays will be valuable for a wide range of readers in analytic philosophy.

A Theory of Security Strategy for Our Time : Defensive Realism

Abstract: Clearing the Theoretical Underbrush The Security Dilemma: A Conceptual Analysis The Security Dilemma as a Major Cause of War? The Operational Code of Defensive Realism Reassurance: Toward a Coherent Understanding Re-categorizing Realism Theories In Lieu of Conclusion: Policy Implications

After the Enlightenment: Political Realism and International Relations in the Mid-Twentieth Century

Abstract: After the Enlightenment is the first attempt at understanding modern political realism as a historical phenomenon. Realism is not an eternal wisdom inherited from Thucydides, Machiavelli or Hobbes, but a twentieth-century phenomenon rooted in the interwar years, the collapse of the Weimar Republic, and the transfer of ideas between Continental Europe and the United States. The book provides the first intellectual history of the rise of realism in America, as it informed policy and academic circles after 1945. It breaks through the narrow confines of the discipline of international relations and resituates realism within the crisis of American liberalism. Realism provided a new framework for foreign policy thinking and transformed the nature of American democracy. This book sheds light on the emergence of 'rational choice' as a new paradigm for political decision-making and speaks to the current revival in realism in international affairs.

On Systemic Paradigms and Domestic Politics: A Critique of the Newest Realism

Abstract: Both Gideon Rose's neoclassical realism and Andrew Moravcsik's liberalism attempt to solve the problem of how to incorporate domestic factors into international relations theory. They do so in very...

Wittgenstein, Mathematics, and Ethics: Resisting the Attractions of Realism

Abstract: How does Wittgenstein's later thought bear on moral philosophy? Wittgenstein himself having said so little about this, philosophers have been free to take his ideas and methods to have the most various implications for ethics. I shall in this chapter be concerned with Wittgenstein's ideas about mathematics and some possible ways of seeing their suggestiveness for ethics. I shall bring those ideas into critical contact with a rich and thoughtful treatment of ethics, that of Sabina Lovibond in Realism and Imagination in Ethics . She defends a form of moral realism which she takes to be derived from Wittgenstein (RIE, p. 25); and her work is thus of great interest if we are concerned not only with questions about how Wittgenstein's work bears on ethics but also with questions about the relation between his thought and debates about realism. Wittgenstein is misread, I think, when taken either as a philosophical realist or as an anti-realist. Elsewhere I have argued against anti-realist readings. One aim of this present chapter is to trace to its sources a realist reading of Wittgenstein – its sources in the difficulty of looking at, and taking in, the use of our words. At the heart of Sabina Lovibond's account of ethics is a contrast between two philosophical approaches to language. Here is a summary of the approach she rejects, which she refers to as the empiricist view. Language, on that view, is an “ instrument for the communication of thought,” thought being logically prior (RIE, p. 17); the language used in description is conceived of as like a calculus, and descriptive propositions are thought of as “readable” from the facts via determinate rules (RIE, pp. 18–19, 21). The meaning of descriptive terms (and thus the truth-conditions of propositions capable of truth and falsity) is tied to sense experience (RIE, p. 19). Reality is the reality described by the natural sciences; only entities admitted by science are real entities (RIE, p. 20). The “empiricist” view allows for two sorts of judgment, judgments of fact and judgments of value, corresponding to activities of recognition of facts (on the basis ultimately of sense experience) and affective responses to facts. There is thus also, on this view, a distinction between two sorts of meaning: descriptive or cognitive meaning and evaluative or emotive meaning (RIE, p. 21).

Rethinking the empirical in higher education: post-qualitative inquiry as a less comfortable social science

Abstract: In recent years ‘post-qualitative new empiricist’ research has been gaining ground. Such work questions the humanist ontological and epistemological orientation of much mainstream qualitative inquiry and insists on the need to take into account the more-and-other-than-human. Post-qualitative research draws on an eclectic range of theories as a means to reformulate the methodological assumptions on which humanist research rests. In doing so, it problematizes key aspects of the research process – the objects of inquiry, methods used to produce ‘data’, what ‘data’ is, coding as a practice of meaning-making, and the formal conventions of academic article writing for journal publication. Given the relative unfamiliarity of post-qualitative inquiry, this article provides an introduction to its methodological and theoretical terrain. The article has three aims: first, to provide an overview of post-qualitative new empiricisms and outline its five key foci; second, to put to work three theoretical approaches – Jane Bennett’s ‘thing-power’, Graham Harman’s object-oriented ontology and Karen Barad’s agential realism – via a specific example, as a means to formulate some empirical starting points for post-qualitative work in higher education; and third, to assess the promise of post-qualitative inquiry in rethinking the empirical more broadly. Keyword - Post-qualitative; empirical; methodology; thing-power; object-oriented ontology; agential realism

Ethics, morality and the case for realist political theory

Abstract: A common trait of all realistic political theories is the rejection of a conception of political theory as applied moral philosophy and an attempt to preserve some form of distinctively political thinking. Yet the reasons for favouring such an account of political theory can vary, a point that has often been overlooked in recent discussions by realism’s friends and critics alike. While a picture of realism as first-and-foremost an attempt to develop a more practical political theory which does not reduce morality to politics is often cited, in this paper we present an alternative understanding in which the motivation to embrace realism is grounded in a set of critiques of or attitudes towards moral philosophy which then feed into a series of political positions. Political realism, on this account, is driven by a set of philosophical concerns about the nature of ethics and the place of ethical thinking in our lives. This impulse is precisely what motivated Bernard Williams and Raymond Geuss to thei...

The One Thing Journalism Just Might do for Democracy

Abstract: In this article, I discuss counterfactual idealism, liberal optimism, and democratic realism as different ways of thinking about journalism’s role in democracy. On the basis of a democratic realist reading of Michael Schudson’s essay on six or seven things journalism can do for democracy and emphasizing the importance of developing a normative approach (1) based on what actually-existing journalism could conceivably do for democracy, (2) that is rooted in something journalists actually want to do, and (3) that identifies something that is distinct to journalism specifically, I identify one thing journalism just might do for democracy: provide people with relatively accurate, accessible, diverse, relevant, and timely independently produced information about public affairs. This is a more modest ambition than the ones many harbour on journalism’s behalf—less, even, than what Schudson’s liberal optimism asks for. This, I argue, is a strength of a democratic realist approach. We do not get more from journalis...

From revelation to revolution: apocalypticism in green politics

Abstract: Apocalyptic narratives in green politics have provoked much controversy about questions of rhetoric and framing. Critics argue that constant warnings about impending environmental collapse demoralise and demobilise the public, while advocates argue that dire predictions embody a realism necessary if the radical collective action required for a green transition is to be taken. This is not just a debate about the tactics of presentation; at a substantive ideological level, the multilayered questions raised by apocalypticism cut to the heart of significant divisions in the green movement between radical and mainstream currents concerning their orientation to structures of political and economic power. Comparisons with the contested historical tradition of apocalyptics in Christian theology shed light upon the dynamic tensions between movement insurgency and institutionalisation. Apocalypticism has played a key role in framing the green critique of capitalist modernity and is intrinsically connected t...

Optimistic realism about scientific progress

Abstract: Scientific realists use the “no miracle argument” to show that the empirical and pragmatic success of science is an indicator of the ability of scientific theories to give true or truthlike representations of unobservable reality. While antirealists define scientific progress in terms of empirical success or practical problem-solving, realists characterize progress by using some truth-related criteria. This paper defends the definition of scientific progress as increasing truthlikeness or verisimilitude. Antirealists have tried to rebut realism with the “pessimistic metainduction”, but critical realists turn this argument into an optimistic view about progressive science.

The Rise of Realism

Abstract: The Civil War and Postwar Period 1850–1900 On the evening of April 12, 1861, Walt Whitman attended the opera at the Academy of Music in Manhattan. After the opera, he was walking down Broadway toward Brooklyn when, as he later wrote, “I heard in the distance the loud cries of the newsboys, who came presently tearing and yelling up the street, rushing from side to side even more furiously than usual. I bought an extra and crossed to the Metropolitan Hotel . . . where the great lamps were still brightly blazing, and, with a crowd of others, who gathered impromptu, read the news, which was evidently authentic.” The news that Whitman and the others read so avidly was of the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, the opening shots of the Civil War. Thus solemnly began, for one of the few American poets or novelists who would witness it firsthand, the greatest cataclysm in United States history.

The Preemptive Paradox: The Rise of Great Powers & Management of the International System

Abstract: Since the beginning of the modern state system only a few select nations have achieved great power status. But what can account for their rise? The presence of existing great powers would suggest that aspiring states should encounter formidable obstacles that would render their success implausible. In some cases extant great powers sought to counter the rise of a new peer, but the historical record also reveals that incumbents sometimes did not contest the rise of potential competitors. Thus, great powers have pursued two divergent strategies: contestation and nonintervention. How then do great powers decide on which policy to implement? This dissertation advances the argument that a great power’s military strategy is premised on its national interests. It argues that the reason incumbent powers rarely preempt the rise of aspiring powers is because of the low level of threat they pose to states. Incumbent great powers are far more concerned about contemporary rival powers since they possess the immediate capacity to undermine a state’s interests. The Preemptive Paradox: The Rise of Great Powers & Management of the International System by Jeffrey Philip Treistman B.A., University of Colorado, 2003 M.P.P., Harvard University, 2010 M.A., Syracuse University, 2012 Dissertation Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science. Syracuse University December 2017 © Jeffrey Philip Treistman

Understanding the selective realist defence against the PMI

Abstract: One of the popular realist responses to the pessimistic meta-induction (PMI) is the ‘selective’ move, where a realist only commits to the ‘working posits’ of a successful theory, and withholds commitment to ‘idle posits’. Antirealists often criticise selective realists for not being able to articulate exactly what is meant by ‘working’ and/or not being able to identify the working posits except in hindsight. This paper aims to establish two results: (i) sometimes a proposition is, in an important sense, ‘doing work’, and yet does not warrant realist commitment, and (ii) the realist will be able to respond to PMI-style historical challenges if she can merely show that certain selected posits do not require realist commitment (ignoring the question of which posits do). These two results act to significantly adjust the dialectic vis-a-vis PMI-style challenges to selective realism.

Realism and social structure

Abstract: Social constructionism is often considered a form of anti-realism. But in contemporary feminist philosophy, an increasing number of philosophers defend views that are well-described as both realist and social constructionist. In this paper, I use the work of Sally Haslanger as an example of realist social constructionism. I argue: (i) that Haslanger is best interpreted as defending metaphysical realism about social structures; (ii) that this type of metaphysical realism about the social world presents challenges to some popular ways of understanding metaphysical realism.

Rawls and political realism: Realistic utopianism or judgement in bad faith?:

Abstract: Political realism criticises the putative abstraction, foundationalism and neglect of the agonistic dimension of political practice in the work of John Rawls. This paper argues that had Rawls not fully specified the implementation of his theory of justice in one particular form of political economy then he would be vulnerable to a realist critique. But he did present such an implementation: a property-owning democracy. An appreciation of Rawls s specificationist method undercuts the realist critique of his conception of justice as fairness.

How Best to Teach Global Software Engineering? Educators Are Divided

Abstract: Pioneering educators discuss how they inject realism into global-software-engineering education.

The crisis of modernity : realism and the postcolonial Indian novel

Abstract: This thesis attempts to understand, through a study of postcolonial Indian novels, the nature and character of Indian (post)colonial modernity. Modernity is understood as the social condition that (post)colonial modernisation and development have given rise to. This condition underlies a historical crisis which is manifest in various kinds of catastrophic events – famine, peasant insurgency, caste violence, communal riot, state repression, and so on. By analysing three of these historical events – the 1943-44 Bengal famine, the Naxalbari Movement (1967-1972), and the State of Emergency (1975-1977) – this thesis argues that a careful reading of the dialectic between event and crisis can offer crucial insights into the conditions of postcolonial modernity. It claims that novels that register these events are able to capture the event-crisis dialectic through their use of form and mode. Socially committed writers adopt the realist form to represent the historical aspects and traumatising consequences of the events. However, because the nature, form, and orientation of these events are different, their realisms undergo immense stylistic improvisation. These stylistic shifts are shaped primarily by the writers’ adapting of various literary modes to the specific requirements (i.e. the historical context). Modes are chosen to represent and historicise the specific character and appearance of an event. In order to represent the Bengal famine, the thesis argues, Bhabani Bhattacharya and Amalendu Chakraborty use analytical-affective and metafictional modes, while Mahasweta Devi and Nabarun Bhattacharya deploy quest and urban fantastic modes to register the Naxalbari Movement and its aftermath. For the Emergency, writers such as Salman Rushdie, O. V. Vijayan, and Arun Joshi use magical, grotesque and mythical modes, and Nayantara Sahgal and Rohinton Mistry employ critical realist modes, defined sharply by the writers’ class- and caste-based perspectives. These modes shape the realisms in the respective texts and transform realist literary form into a highly experimental and heterogeneous matter. Contrary to the prevailing academic belief that modernity breeds modernism, the thesis posits that, in the postcolonial Indian context, the conditions of modernity have provoked a historically conscious, experimental, and modernistic form of ‘crisis realism’.

Hope over fear: social work education towards 2025

Abstract: Prediction of possible futures is fraught with dangers. Neither the global economic crisis which erupted in 2008 nor the political earthquake which shook Scotland over the issue of independence during 2014 was foreseen by many commentators, if indeed any. Given these experiences, predicting where social work education might be in 2025 is a potentially hazardous enterprise. Nevertheless, the recent resurgence of interest in utopian thinking reflects a widely felt desire to go beyond ‘capitalist realism’ and to envisage different possibilities – a desire also reflected in political developments in Greece and Spain. This development is primarily in reaction to the dominance of another form of utopian (or dystopian) thinking: neo-liberalism, with its message that ‘there is no alternative’. In this paper, I will argue that that search for alternatives has important implications for social work and social work education. Following a discussion of the ways in which neo-liberalism has shaped the professio...

Beyond hierarchical oppositions: A feminist critique of Karen Barad’s agential realism:

Abstract: The article contributes to the debate on new materialism commenced by Sara Ahmed (2008). Taking up Lena Gunnarsson’s (2013) argument that erasing distinctions is no effective antidote to dualistic ...

Revisiting Folk Moral Realism

Abstract: Moral realists believe that there are objective moral truths. According to one of the most prominent arguments in favour of this view, ordinary people experience morality as realist-seeming, and we have therefore prima facie reason to believe that realism is true. Some proponents of this argument have claimed that the hypothesis that ordinary people experience morality as realist-seeming is supported by psychological research on folk metaethics. While most recent research has been thought to contradict this claim, four prominent earlier studies (by Goodwin and Darley, Wainryb et al., Nichols, and Nichols and Folds-Bennett) indeed seem to suggest a tendency towards realism. My aim in this paper is to provide a detailed internal critique of these four studies. I argue that, once interpreted properly, all of them turn out in line with recent research. They suggest that most ordinary people experience morality as “pluralist-” rather than realist-seeming, i.e., that ordinary people have the intuition that realism is true with regard to some moral issues, but variants of anti-realism are true with regard to others. This result means that moral realism may be less well justified than commonly assumed.

Replacing recipe realism

Abstract: Many realist writings exemplify the spirit of ‘recipe realism’. Here I characterise recipe realism, challenge it, and propose replacing it with ‘exemplar realism’. This alternative understanding of realism is more piecemeal, robust, and better in tune with scientists’ own attitude towards their best theories, and thus to be preferred.

The reality of relations

Abstract: Discussing the contemporary debate about the metaphysics of relations and structural realism, I analyse the philosophical significance of relational quantum mechanics (RQM). Relativising properties of objects (or systems) to other objects (or systems), RQM affirms that reality is inherently relational. My claim is that RQM can be seen as an instantiation of the ontology of ontic structural realism, for which relations are prior to objects, since it provides good reasons for the argument from the primacy of relation. In order to provide some evidence, RQM is interpreted focusing on its metametaphysics, in particular in relation to the very concept of relation, and to the meaning such concept assumes in the dispute between realism and antirealism.