Showing papers on "Realism published in 2020"
01 Sep 2020
33 citations
Book•
22 Dec 2020
TL;DR: The authors examined the conditions, constraints and images of photographic realism published in the British press during World Wars I and II, the Falklands campaign, and in relation to terrorism in Northern Ireland.
Abstract: This study examines the conditions, constraints and images of photographic realism published in the British press during World Wars I and II, the Falklands campaign, and in relation to terrorism in Northern Ireland. Focusing on the human interest story, and the presentation of a "necessary war" against a common enemy, the book analyzes a number of photographs, from battles and from the home front, to show how pictures are put to patriotic use in times of national crisis.
32 citations
Dissertation•
01 May 2020
27 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a view of Africa as fertile ground for the medical imagination: from the colonial ‘civilizing mission’ to the ingenuity of post-Ebola ‘pandemic bonds’, African pathologies and potentials have kindled some of biomedicine's wildest fantasies.
Abstract: Africa has long provided fertile ground for the medical imagination. From the colonial ‘civilizing mission’ to the ingenuity of post-Ebola ‘pandemic bonds’, African pathologies and potentials have kindled some of biomedicine’s wildest fantasies (while testing the limits of its efficacy, rationality and universality; see, for example, Fanon 1959; Vaughan 1991; Lyons 2002; Hoppe 2003; Lachenal 2017; 2018). Dystopian images of Africa – of tropical miasma, preventable deaths, barren women and orphaned children, wildfire epidemics depopulating the continent and spreading beyond it – have intersected with visions of discovery, salvation, progress, productivity and mastery, but also with aspirations to equality, welfare, self-determination, authenticity, prosperity and rights.
25 citations
Book•
05 May 2020
TL;DR: Chesnutt and Realism as mentioned in this paper examines the relationship between realism and race in American literature, focusing on a single African American writer, Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932).
Abstract: With the release of previously unpublished novels and a recent proliferation of critical studies on his life and work, Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932) has emerged as a major American writer of his time - the age of Howells, Twain, and Wharton. In "Chesnutt and Realism", Ryan Simmons breaks new ground by theorizing how understandings of literary realism have shaped, and can continue to shape, the reception of Chesnutt's work. Although Chesnutt is typically acknowledged as the most prominent African American writer of the realist period, little attention has been paid to the central question of this study: what does it mean to call Chesnutt a realist? A writer whose career was circumscribed by the dismal racial politics of his era, Chesnutt refused to conform to literary conventions for depicting race. Nor did he use his imaginative skills to evade the realities he and other African Americans faced. Rather, he experimented with ways of portraying reality that could elicit an appropriate, proportionate response to it, as Simmons demonstrates in extended readings of each of Chestnutt's novels, including important unpublished works that have been overlooked by previous critics. Chesnutt and Realism also addresses a curiously neglected subject in American literary studies - the relationship between American literary realism and race. By taking Chesnutt seriously as a contributor to realism, this book articulates the strategies by which one African American intellectual helped to define the discourses that influenced his fate.
24 citations
TL;DR: In this article, political realism is frequently criticised as a theoretical tradition that amounts to little more than a rationalisation of the status quo and an apology for power, and this paper responds to this crit...
Abstract: Political realism is frequently criticised as a theoretical tradition that amounts to little more than a rationalisation of the status quo and an apology for power. This paper responds to this crit...
23 citations
TL;DR: Realism can contribute to a more global understanding of international relations through its most recent variant: neoclassical realism (NCR), which allows for contextualization and historicization of drivers of state behavior as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Realism has long been criticized by global IR, but the former can contribute to the latter and thereby improve explanations of international relations. Global IR criticizes that realism supposedly applies universally, sidelines non-Western perspectives, and misunderstands much of foreign policy, grand strategy, and international affairs. Reviewing global IR’s case against realism, however, exposes avenues for realism to complement global IR. Realism can contribute to a more global understanding of international relations through its most recent variant: neoclassical realism (NCR). This newest realism allows for contextualization and historicization of drivers of state behavior. It can embrace and has already been engaging global questions and cases; global thought and concepts; and global perspectives and scholarship. Mapping 149 NCR publications produced by 96 scholars reveals a slow shift in knowledge production away from North America toward Europe and to a lesser extent Asia and Africa. Creative research designs and scholarly collaboration can put realism in fruitful conversation with global IR. This has implications for theory building and inclusive knowledge production in realism, global IR, and the wider discipline. Only when we discover new avenues for realists to travel can they contribute to a more global IR. In turn, when global IR scholars engage realism, they may be better able to address the Western versus non-Western dichotomies they challenge.
22 citations
TL;DR: The revival of realism in political theory has included efforts to challenge realism's conservative reputation and argue that radical forms are possible as discussed by the authors. But these efforts have been critici... and have been criticised.
Abstract: The revival of realism in political theory has included efforts to challenge realism’s conservative reputation and argue that radical forms are possible. Nonetheless these efforts have been critici...
21 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that agent-enacted values have the same status and thus do not obviate ecological realism or generate subjectivism, and shown that enactivism can enrich ecological accounts of value.
Abstract: A widely cited roadblock to bridging ecological psychology and enactivism is that the former identifies with realism and the latter identifies with constructivism, which critics charge is subjectivist. A pragmatic reading, however, suggests non-mental forms of constructivism that simultaneously fit core tenets of enactivism and ecological realism. After advancing a pragmatic version of enactive constructivism that does not obviate realism, I reinforce the position with an empirical illustration: Physarum polycephalum, a communal unicellular organism that leaves slime trails that form chemical barriers that it avoids in foraging explorations. Here, environmental building and sensorimotor engagement are part of the same process with P. polycephalum coordinating around self-created, affordance-bearing geographies, which nonetheless exist independently in ways described by ecological realists. For ecological psychologists, affordances are values, meaning values are external to the perceiver. I argue that agent-enacted values have the same status and thus do not obviate ecological realism or generate subjectivism. The constructivist-realist debate organizes around the emphasis that enactivists and ecological theorists respectively place on the inner constitution of organisms vs. the structure of environments. Building on alimentary themes introduced in the P. polycephalum example and also in Gibson's work, I go on to consider how environment, brain, visceral systems, and even bacteria within them enter perceptual loops. This highlights almost unfathomable degrees of mutually modulating internal and external synchronization. It also shows instances in which internal conditions alter worldly configurations and invert values, in Gibson's sense of the term, albeit without implying subjectivism. My aim is to cut across the somatic focus of enactive constructivism and the external environment-oriented emphasis of ecological realism and show that enactivism can enrich ecological accounts of value.
21 citations
TL;DR: From Clinton to Bush to Obama to Trump, the personalities, rhetoric, and policies of presidents charged with defining US foreign policy in the post-Cold War era could hardly appear more different as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: From Clinton to Bush to Obama to Trump: the personalities, rhetoric, and policies of Presidents charged with defining US foreign policy in the post-Cold War era could hardly appear more different. ...
Book•
30 Apr 2020TL;DR: The theory of truthmaking has long aroused skepticism from philosophers who believe it to be tangled up in contentious ontological commitments and unnecessary theoretical baggage as discussed by the authors. But Asay shows why that suspicion is unfounded.
Abstract: The theory of truthmaking has long aroused skepticism from philosophers who believe it to be tangled up in contentious ontological commitments and unnecessary theoretical baggage. In this book, Jamin Asay shows why that suspicion is unfounded. Challenging the current orthodoxy that truthmaking's fundamental purpose is to be a tool for explaining why truths are true, Asay revives the conception of truthmaking as fundamentally an exercise in ontology: a means for coordinating one's beliefs about what is true and one's ontological commitments. He goes on to show how truthmaking connects to analyticity, truth, and realism, and how it contributes to debates over nominalism, presentism, mathematical objects, and fictional characters. His book is the most comprehensive exploration to date into what truthmaking is and how it contributes to metaphysical debates across philosophy, and will interest a wide range of readers in metaphysics and beyond.
TL;DR: Thomas Hobbes has been cast as one of the forefathers of political realism as discussed by the authors, and this article evaluates his place in the realist tradition by focusing on three key themes: the priority of legit...
Abstract: Thomas Hobbes has recently been cast as one of the forefathers of political realism. This article evaluates his place in the realist tradition by focusing on three key themes: the priority of legit...
TL;DR: The authors argue that realism will only have been accomplished when readers have learned not merely from George Eliot's early, definitive statement of realism in the seventeenth chapter of Adam Bede, but also from their own reading of the book.
Abstract: I argue that, in George Eliot’s early, definitive statement of realism in the seventeenth chapter of Adam Bede, realism will only have been accomplished when readers have learned not merely
TL;DR: The authors argued that an ethnographic sensibility can go some way to addressing a thorny issue of realism in political theory, and argued that realists are commit-realists are committed to realism.
Abstract: This article argues that ethnographic methods, or an ethnographic sensibility more broadly speaking, can go some way to addressing a thorny issue of realism in political theory. Realists are commit...
TL;DR: In this article, McKean defends utopian political theorising by means of an internal critique of realism, construed as essentially anti-utopian, in order to defend human rights against...
Abstract: In a recent article, Benjamin McKean defends utopian political theorising by means of an internal critique of realism, construed as essentially anti-utopian, in order to defend human rights against...
TL;DR: In this paper, the case for normative behaviourism is made, a new way of doing political philosophy that tries to turn facts about observable patterns of behaviour, as produced by different polit...
Abstract: This article advances the case for ‘normative behaviourism’ – a new way of doing political philosophy that tries to turn facts about observable patterns of behaviour, as produced by different polit...
TL;DR: Porpora as mentioned in this paper discusses how he became a Critical Realist through his early work on the concept of structure, and how drawing can be seen as a form of critical realism.
Abstract: In this wide-ranging interview Professor Douglas V. Porpora discusses a number of issues. First, how he became a Critical Realist through his early work on the concept of structure. Second, drawing...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the historical data are better explained assuming the truth of moral antirealism, and they point out that the realist's explanans has multiple shortcomings, that the antirealist's explananess has several explanatory virtues, and conclude that the latter provides a superior account of the historical shift towards liberal values.
Abstract: Over the course of human history there appears to have been a global shift in moral values towards a broadly ‘liberal’ orientation. Huemer (Philosophical Studies 173: 1983–2010, 2016) argues that this shift better accords with a realist than an antirealist metaethics: it is best explained by the discovery of mind-independent truths through intuition. In this article I argue, contra Huemer, that the historical data are better explained assuming the truth of moral antirealism. Realism does not fit the data as well as Huemer suggests, whereas antirealists have underappreciated resources to explain the relevant historical dynamics. These resources include an appeal to socialization, to technological and economical convergences, to lessons learned from history, to changes induced by consistency reasoning and to the social function of moral norms in overcoming some of the cooperation problems that globalizing societies face. I point out that the realist’s explanans has multiple shortcomings, that the antirealist’s explanans has several explanatory virtues, and conclude that the latter provides a superior account of the historical shift towards liberal values.
31 Aug 2020
TL;DR: The authors argues that as the fin de siecle loomed, attempts to repress the Gothic on stage were met with an increasingly Gothic representation of the theatre itself within the wider popular and literary imagination.
Abstract: Despite its seeming defeat at the hands of the new melodrama and, later, the emerging stage realism, the Gothic continued to stalk the stage long into the nineteenth century. Shape-shifting and refusing to die outright, the Gothic mode would inform melodrama, domestic drama, sensation drama and even the emerging realist dramas to the end of the century. Moreover, whilst according to hegemonic narratives of theatre history, the new modes of realism would claim a victorious precedence over the drama of the shudder, this chapter argues that as the fin de siecle loomed, attempts to repress the Gothic on stage were met with an increasingly Gothic representation of the theatre itself within the wider popular and literary imagination.
TL;DR: In this article, the view of some social realist curriculum theorists that power exists in academic theories although not in everyday understanding is questioned, and questions are considered about how today's schools can promote learning and social justice.
Abstract: Can knowledge be powerful and, if so, what forms do knowledge and power take? The view of some social realist curriculum theorists that power exists in academic theories although not in everyday understanding is questioned. Power is taken to exist through social positions, and to involve
control over resources, decisions and change. Critical realist analysis suggests that four conditions are necessary if knowledge is to be associated with power: the known, the knowers, the social contexts and the practical application of knowledge. Questions are considered about how today's
schools can promote learning and social justice.
TL;DR: Social theory and photographic aesthetics both engage with issues of representation, realism and validity, having crossed paths in theoretical and methodological controversies as mentioned in this paper, and have been discussed in a wide range of contexts.
Abstract: Social theory and photographic aesthetics both engage with issues of representation, realism and validity, having crossed paths in theoretical and methodological controversies. This discussion begi...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show how Karen Barad's agential realism provides a powerful analytical framework for assessing higher education accountability, taking the example of the UK National Student Survey (NSS).
Abstract: This paper shows how Karen Barad’s agential realism provides a powerful analytical framework for assessing higher education accountability. It takes the example of the UK ‘National Student Survey’ ...
TL;DR: This paper argues that a refined version of probabilistic realism, which relies on what Feigl specified as the pragmatic description of the symbolic behaviour of scientists’ estimations and foresight, is defendable and does not need to make the plausibility of realist thesis dependent on the conventional acceptance of a constructed semantic metalanguage.
Abstract: Probabilistic realism and syntactical positivism were two among outdated theories that Feigl criticised on account of their semantical poverty. In this paper, I argue that a refined version of probabilistic realism, which relies on what Feigl specified as the pragmatic description of the symbolic behaviour of scientists’ estimations and foresight, is defendable. This version of statistical realism does not need to make the plausibility of realist thesis dependent on the conventional acceptance of a constructed semantic metalanguage. I shall rely on the Prediction Error Minimisation theory (PEM) to support my probabilistic version of realism with a scientifically-informed and naturalistically plausible statistical account of the theories-world relationship which has a pragmatic ring to it.
TL;DR: A pioneer of International Relations (IR) theory, Hans Morgenthau also wrote on a series of other political themes as mentioned in this paper, especially prominent in his later career is a concern with the...
Abstract: Primarily known as a pioneer of International Relations (IR) theory, Hans Morgenthau also wrote on a series of other political themes. Especially prominent in his later career is a concern with the...
07 Dec 2020
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the representationalism debate loses relevance in an instrumentalist reading of the free energy principle and argue that realism is unwarranted and conceptually incoherent, whereas instrumentalism is safer whilst remaining explanatorily powerful.
Abstract: The free energy principle provides an increasingly popular framework to biology and cognitive science. However, it remains disputed whether its statistical models are scientific tools to describe non-equilibrium steady-state systems (which we call the instrumentalist reading), or are literally implemented and utilized by those systems (the realist reading). We analyze the options critically, with particular attention to the question of representationalism. We argue that realism is unwarranted and conceptually incoherent. Conversely, instrumentalism is safer whilst remaining explanatorily powerful. Moreover, we show that the representationalism debate loses relevance in an instrumentalist reading. Finally, these findings could be generalized for our interpretation of models in cognitive science more generally.
TL;DR: In the critical tradition, environmental education discourse interrogates how knowledge constructs experience as discussed by the authors. But environmental education also emphasises perceiving, understanding and responding to the challenges of perception and understanding.
Abstract: In the critical tradition, environmental education discourse interrogates how knowledge constructs experience. But environmental education also emphasises perceiving, understanding and responding t...
TL;DR: In this article, the analysis of poetics in the system of potamonyms of Kavi Najmi's novel "Spring Winds" is presented, which is considered a classic work of Tatar socialist realism, when all components of a literary text obey the dictates of the dominant ideology.
Abstract: At the turn of the XX-XXI centuries the point of view was established in the Russian literary science, according to which the literature of socialist realism (Soviet literature) has undoubted aesthetic and historical value, and its own unique features At the same time, the conviction matured that it was necessary to reanalyze the classical texts of the Soviet period from extremely non-ideological standpoints (as far as it is possible in humanitarian studies) Kavi Najmi's novel "Spring Winds" is considered a classic work of Tatar socialist realism It clearly expresses the generic features of Tatar socialist realism, when all components of a literary text obey the dictates of the dominant ideology The analysis of the poetics in the system of potamonyms of Kavi Najmi's novel "Spring Winds" convincingly demonstrates this The novel is replete with references to different rivers: Volga, Kazanka, Lena, Pechora At that, the description of these rivers often depends on a hero who perceives them: a positive or a negative one
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose a heuristic theoretical framework for identifying the main areas of policy improvement needed to enhance the engagement of doctoral researchers with industry, which is a critical reali...
Abstract: This article proposes a heuristic theoretical framework for identifying the main areas of policy improvement needed to enhance the engagement of doctoral researchers with industry. A critical reali...
TL;DR: The authors argue that descriptivism is not the right account of the meaning and reference of theoretical terms and suggest that an account along the lines of the causal-historical theory of reference provides a more faithful picture of how terms for unobservable theoretical entities and properties come to refer.
Abstract: This paper continues the defense of a version of scientific realism, Tautological Scientific Realism (TSR), that rests on the claim that, excluding some areas of fundamental physics about which doubts are entirely justified, many areas of contemporary science cannot be coherently imagined to be false other than via postulation of radically skeptical scenarios, which are not relevant to the realism debate in philosophy of science. In this paper we discuss, specifically, the threats of meaning change and reference failure associated with the Kuhnian tradition, which depend on a descriptivist approach to meaning, and we argue that descriptivism is not the right account of the meaning and reference of theoretical terms. We suggest that an account along the lines of the causal-historical theory of reference provides a more faithful picture of how terms for unobservable theoretical entities and properties come to refer; we argue that this picture works particularly well for TSR. In the last section we discuss how our account raises concerns specifically for perspectival forms of scientific realism.