Dr Tim Rogers

Philosophy and theory in practice

Critical realism and action science for emancipatory action research

The claim

That considering, and integrating, philosophy with theory and practice makes for better philosophy, theory and practice

and

Makes sense of the Enlightenment Project of universities, especially De La Salle

Design for the session

❖ Background to critical realism and its implications for the social sciences generally

❖ Background to the theory of action (aka ‘action science’) and its implications for action research theory

❖ A case study of the above applied as method

De La Salle’s mission and ethics❖ Code of ethics: “I will promote a humane and enabling work community

within my organization.”

❖ Liberating action is mutually empowering, enabling the individuals and institutions engaged in such action to increasingly realize their own worth as individuals and as a collective…Liberating action should be capacitating and not a mere transfer of the endowments of a Lasallian individual or institution to less privileged and impoverished groups. The latter simply reproduces the conditions that perpetuate dependence… (http://www.dlsu.edu.ph/inside/lasallian-guiding-principles/social-development.asp)

❖ These pivot on a relationship between values and facts: where science meets human emancipation

Compare with a ‘normal’ Uni mission

University X educates professionals and citizens to the highest standards; creates and disseminates knowledge; and engages with our communities to address the major issues of our time.

Philosophy: Critical Realism❖ Critical realism is a position within the philosophy of

science largely but not exclusively identified with the work of Roy Bhaskar

❖ Surface appearances of the world may be, and often are, misleading

❖ Science is fallible, as are layperson perceptions

❖ Exposing the difference between surface appearances and perceptions of them, with real causes, is potentially emancipatory

The critical realist argument in a nutshell

❖ The transcendental argument from experimentation

❖ Positivism presumes that science is successful, and that conjunction, and so prediction, exhausts the scientific enterprise

❖ But consider the experiment…

Bhaskar, R. (1975). A realist theory of science, p. 65. Brighton, Sussex: Harvester.

“In sum, granted that a causal law is confirmed in a closed (experimental) system and that the degree of

correlation in the open system is likely to be very low or non-existent, the empiricist must either admit that laws are not given in a correlational relationship, or

that laws do not hold in open systems. ”

This all entails the CR concepts…

❖ Transitive and intransitive domains of science: the social aspect of scientific endeavour and the real world

❖ Open and closed systems and the transfactuality of laws

❖ The stratified nature of reality: empirical, actual, and real

Implications for social sciences❖ The Transformational Model of Social Activity (TMSA): social structures

(think ‘society’) provides the conditions for and shape the possibilities for action, but individual agents replicate, and occasionally transform, society

❖ The causal role of structures suggests that tacit and automatic processes are fundamental…

❖ …so agents may not be in a position to cast light on the meaning, purpose and outcomes of their practices even if they can be relied upon to correctly identify them

❖ Causes may be intermittent (it’s an open system), so reasons, rules and norms are legitimate objects of scientific study…

❖ …which entails the primacy of meaning as the causal arbiter of phenomena

Bhaskar, R. (1998b). The possibility of naturalism: A philosophical critique of the contemporary human sciences (3rd ed.), p. 46. London: Routledge.

“... the conceptual aspect of the subject matter of the social sciences circumscribes the possibility of

measurement.... For meanings cannot be measured, only understood. Hypotheses about them must be expressed in language, and confirmed in dialogue. Language here

stands to the conceptual aspect of social science as geometry stands to physics. And precision in meaning

now assumes the place of accuracy in measurement as the a posteriori arbiter of theory. It should be stressed that ... theories may continue to be justified and validly used to

explain, even though significant measurement of the phenomena of which they treat has become impossible.”

Depth-investigation❖ Explanatory critique:

❖ Beliefs may be mistaken

❖ If beliefs are systematically mistaken then there is a ‘belief structure’ that is generating those false beliefs

❖ Depth-investigation: Explanation is thus a precondition for emancipation, conceptualised as the transformation of “sources of determination from unwanted to wanted ones” (Bhaskar, 1982, p. 295 (full citation on next slide)).

❖ A depth-investigation may be defined generally as…

Bhaskar, R. (1982). Emergence, explanation and emancipation, p. 304. In P. Secord (Ed.), Explaining Human Behaviour (pp. 275-310). Beverly Hills: Sage.

“...any cooperative inquiry, which includes the agent, into the structure of some presumed set of

mechanisms, constituting for that agent an unwanted source of determination (which, whether cognitive or

not, will always possess some cognitive manifestation), with a view to initiating, preserving, or restoring that

agent’s ability to act and think rationally.”

Generic structure of a depth-investigation

❖ (1) Y is not capable of O; scientific realism suggests there is a mechanism M preventing this.

❖ (2) General theory T investigates the structure of blocking/compelling mechanisms, under the control of empirical data and researches.

❖ (3) The application of T to Y depends upon the agent Y, as well as co-investigator X, for it is Y’s interpretations, actions, and determinations that are at issue. (Bhaskar, 1982, p. 304)

The contrast: Positivism

❖ The ‘epistemic fallacy’ and its consequences

❖ Deductive-nomological account

❖ The problems: scientist-practitioner divide, p-value debates, replication ‘wars’

Greenwood, J. D. (1989). Explanation and experiment in social psychological science: Realism and the social constitution of action, p.174.

New York: Springer-Verlag.

“The empiricist analysis of social psychological science simply assumes that the goal of a science of action is the prediction and control of human action

via the manipulation and control of its causal antecedents, as a consequence of its commitment to a stimulus variable conception of causality and its

consequent denial of human agency.”

Theory

❖ Theories aren’t given in CR: it is an underlabourer only:

“... although the concept of a depth-investigation has been introduced as an idiographic, practically oriented application of some or other determinate explanatory critique, the theory at the heart of the critique itself depends crucially for its own development and empirical confirmation on such investigations (whether living or reconstructed, e.g., historical materials)” (Bhaskar, 1982, p. 304)

The realist outline: retroduction

“The process of scientific discovery according to the realist is: 1. an effect is identified and described. 2. a hypothetical mechanism is postulated which, if it existed, would explain the effect. 3. the attempt is made to demonstrate the existence and operation of the mechanism(a) positively, by experimental activity, designed to isolate and in some cases directly observe the mechanism. (b) negatively, by the elimination of alternative explanations.”

Outhwaite, W. (1987). New philosophies of social science: Realism, hermeneutics and critical theory, p. 33. New York: St. Martin's Press Inc.

Theory of action

❖ An exemplar: Chris Argyris and Donald Schön’s Theory of Action

❖ (but another theory, say, object-relations theory in organisational psychodynamics, could be used)

❖ Also a transcendental argument from an empirical outcome to a hypothesis of what the world must be like

Key concepts

❖ 1) In situation X (conditions), 2) do Z (strategy), 3) achieve Y (goal)

❖ Key distinction is between espoused theories and theories-in-use

❖ Particularly interested in counteracting the anti-learning theories-in-use

Friedman, V., & Rogers, T. (2009). There is nothing so theoretical as good action research. Action Research 7(1), 25-41.

In situation x, do z, achieve y

In situation x, do z, achieve y

In situation x, do z, achieve y

So how does that address the issues?

❖ Depth-investigation of norms and practices, and their unintended effects and unconscious causes

❖ Begins to establish the ground for experimenting with pro-learning theories-in-use

De La Salle vision revisited❖ “I will promote a humane and enabling work community

within my organization.”

❖ Liberating action is mutually empowering, enabling the individuals and institutions engaged in such action to increasingly realize their own worth as individuals and as a collective…Liberating action should be capacitating…

❖ These are in fact the conditions for a social science…

❖ …where philosophy underlabours for theory, whose practice informs practical philosophy

Fin Que?