This chapter considers the ‘hosting question’ of how immanent universals, in contrast to transcendent universals, are ‘brought down to earth’ from ‘Plato’s heaven’. It explores the thesis that the hosting amounts to their being constituents of the states of affairs that result from their instantiations. These states of affairs are concrete complexes consisting of particulars and universals, and perhaps something that links them together. The traditional view that immanent universals are concrete is briefly defended against a recent prominent (...) objection. On relationalism, states of affairs are unified by a relation of some sort; on non-relationalism they are unified non-relationally. Roughly, these two conceptions of states of affairs are equivalent to Armstrong’s relational and non-relational versions of immanent realism, respectively. Armstrong mostly criticises the former and defends the latter. It is argued, however, that relationalism, at least potentially, answers the hosting question, whereas non-relationalism realism does not. (shrink)

This book guides the readers through Brentano's life and works, investigating into the inherent complexity of both his view of mental life and the related methodology.

Nell'alto medioevo vi erano tre possibilità per il filosofo che volesse difendere l'esistenza degli universali: in primo luogo ante rem, seguendo la linea platonico-agostiniana degli universali trascendenti e questa è la via teologica; in secondo luogo la via post rem, cioè la via del concettualismo, conosciuta oggi come astrattismo, per cui gli universali sono il prodotto dell'astrazione della mente e questa è una via logica; la terza via è quella in re e difende gli universali immanenti che esistono negli universali (...) ed è una risposta ontologica. La seconda via fu difesa da Boezio nel secondo commento a Porfirio. La prima teoria è stata generalmente accettata da tutti i filosofi dell'alto medioevo eccetto Abelardo, mentre la terza via, quella degli universali immanenti, che ha come fonti antiche l'Isagoge di Porfirio e le Categoriae di Aristotele, fu difesa principalmente da quattro autori: Giovanni Scoto Eriugena, Anselmo d'Aosta, Odone di Cambrai e Guglielmo di Champeaux. L'A. prende in esame e confronta le soluzioni di Anselmo di Canterbury e Odone di Cambrai. (shrink)

Smith maintains that Brentano conceives his own theory of substance as a refined and perfected version of the Aristotelian theory. According to Mulligan and Smith, Brentano argues that a range of different habits and training are necessary preconditions of noticing. McDonnell observes that, for Brentano, our consciousness contains a structural unity of its own. Zahavi emphasizes that, according to Brentano, all mental states are characterized by their intentional directedness, they are all conscious of objects. Albertazzi points out that Brentano’s doctrine (...) tries to conciliate the presence of an often irreducible transcendent foundation of perception with its immanent and equally irreducible categorization by the intentional acts. (shrink)

Objects which philosophers have traditionally categorized as abstract are standardly referred to by complex noun phrases of certain canonical forms, such as ‘the set of Fs’, ‘the number of Fs’, ‘the proposition that P’, and ‘the property of being F’. It is no accident that such noun phrases are well-suited to appear in ‘Fregean’ identity-criteria, or ‘abstraction’ principles, for which Frege’s criterion of identity for cardinal numbers provides the paradigm. Notoriously, such principlesare apt to create paradoxes, and the most intuitively (...) plausible ‘Fregean’ identity-criterion for properties is afflicted by this problem. In this case, it may be possible to overcome the difficulty by modifying the criterion in a way which requires an independent account of the existence-conditions of properties, but it appears that such a strategy demands acceptance of the doctrine of immanent realism—the view that a property exists only if it is exemplified by some object. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 20 Tugby and Yates have recently argued that immanent realism is incompatible with the existence of intrinsic but relationally constituted genuine dispositional properties. The success of Tugby’s and Yates’ arguments depends either on a strong or on a weak assumption about the interworld identity of dispositional properties. In this paper, the author evaluates the strength of the arguments in question under those two assumptions. He also offers an alternative metaphysical picture for the fundamental dispositional (...) properties which rejects these assumptions and, consequently, undermines the arguments themselves. (shrink)

Review of Albertazzi, L. (2006): 'ImmanentRealism.An Introduction to Brentano'. Springer, Netherlands. ISBN 1-402-04201-9 (Euro 139.-; hbk).

Often a division of concepts can help us better understand unknown or seldom charted philosophical terrain: historically, the distinctions and differences between idealism and materialism have proven helpful, but with Quentin Meillassoux‟s concept of correlationism, the divisions between realism and anti realismwhich once seemed clean-cut are now harder to understand. Graham Harman has gone a step further than Meillassoux‟s initial definition of correlationism, by which “we mean the idea according to which we only ever have access to the correlation (...) between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other,”2claiming in lectures that those who have pledged fidelity to the realism banner after Meillassoux aren‟t realist enough.Instead, says Harman, we should demand that any philosophy which claims to be realist must grant that no entity is more real than any other, whether they be atoms, quarks, institutions, regimes, human beings, bonobos, dreams or distant galaxies. A robust realism must maintain therefore that the universe is composed of objects of all shapes, sizes and types. It is here that I wish to stage something of an intervention; it seems to me that we could rather create a new division to help us understand the contemporary situation facing philosophy based on how various philosophies view objects. I propose that we contrast those philosophies which see objects only working through exterior means with those which grant some level of autonomy to objects; in other words, we should compare those philosophies which grant only an outer life to objects withthose which also grant them an inner life. A robust realism must not only count objects as means of our causal ends , or billiard balls in an extended chain of causation . Rather, a full-blown realism must look to the inner lives of objectsto understand the cosmos and not simply satisfy itself with studying their effects.By making this distinction, we can see more clearly the relevance of a number offigures who have yet to be regarded with any seriousness by the emerging speculative realism movement, creating another metaphysical option besidesweak and strong correlationism, eliminative materialism or idealism, speculative materialism and object-oriented philosophy, as well as better understand thefuture of speculative metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper critically analyses realist evaluation, focussing on its primary analytical concepts: mechanisms, contexts, and outcomes. Noting that nursing investigators have had difficulty in operationalizing the concepts of mechanism and context, it is argued that their confusion is at least partially the result of ambiguities, inconsistencies, and contradictions in the realist evaluation model. Problematic issues include the adoption of empiricist and idealist positions, oscillation between determinism and voluntarism, subsumption of agency under structure, and categorical confusion between context and mechanism. In (...) relation to outcomes, it is argued that realist evaluation's adoption of the fact/value distinction prevents it from taking into account the concerns of those affected by interventions. The aim of the paper is to use these immanent critiques of realist evaluation to construct an internally consistent realist approach to evaluation that is more amenable to being operationalized by nursing researchers. (shrink)

especially Aristotle, and contented that philosophy proceeds in cycles of advance and decline. He is best known for reintroducing the scholastic concept of intentionality into philosophy and proclaiming it as the characteristic mark of the mental. His teachings, especially those on what he called descriptive psychology, influenced the phenomenological movement in the twentieth century, but because of his concern for precise statement and his sensitivity to the dangers of the undisciplined use of philosophical language, his work also bears affinities to (...) analytic philosophy.". (shrink)

Realism versus Realism defends the metaphysics of 'Internal Realism,' a view authored by Hilary Putnam, and seeks to build on its basis an immanent realistic position to resolve two conflicts: the conflict between realism and some forms of anti-realism, especially relativism which involves constructivism and subjectivism; and also between two forms of realism itself, namely transcendent and immanent.

This article aims to study the intersection between critical realism and complexity theories through the existing literature on complex systems via an engagement with Luhmann’s autopoiesis. With reference to the philosophies of substance and persistence, I build on previous critical realist scholarship and provide an explanation for what the literature has only noted as the limitations and potentials of autopoiesis for complex systems thinking and its compatibility with Critical Realism. By highlighting how Luhmann’s autopoiesis is not a trans- (...) class='Hi'>immanent/ perdurantist-exdurantist system, I show first how a trans immanent system through the method of calibration entails a complex causation involving objects in the environment of systems and not just within their boundaries. Second, I explain how a trans-immanent system fits with CR via the Morphogenetic Régulation framework by exploring the theme of crisis in terms of the movement from inadequate to adequate understanding of objects. (shrink)

Starting from the famous statement by Deleuze and Guattari in What Is Philosophy? that ‘[i]mmanence can be said to be the burning issue of all philosophy’, this article explores their claim of an ontology of immanence and/as relational ontology in quantum terms. The theme of this special issue allows for a rereading of the terminology of different/ciation, which Deleuze developed in ‘The Method of Dramatization’ and Difference and Repetition, and I here relate it to the question of consistency of the (...) plane of immanence, such as it is emphasised in the later work of Deleuze and Guattari. The article exemplifies the significance that the early issue of ‘dramatization’ as different/ciating passage has on an adequate understanding of both ‘immanence’ and ‘becoming’, and it shows their in/seperability for a relational ontology as onto-ethology. By making the Deleuze-Guattarian immanence resonate with Barad's agential realism, the article zooms in on the specific quality of the ‘passage’ in order to do justice to the claim of a ‘mature’ philosophy that thinks immanence as immanent only to itself. (shrink)

Objects partially resemble when they are alike in some way but not entirely alike. Partial resemblance, then, involves similarity in a respect. It has been observed that talk of “respects” appears to be thinly‐veiled talk of properties. So some theorists take similarity in a respect to require property realism. I will go a step further and argue that similarity in intrinsic respects (partial intrinsic resemblance) requires properties to be immanent in objects. For a property to be immanent (...) in an object is roughly for it to be wholly present in that object. (So understood, immanence does not imply repeatability, and thus tropes count as immanent.) If two objects are intrinsically similar in one way but not another, there must be a difference between the two ways. And if the similarity is between the objects as they are in themselves, then this difference, too, must be within the objects. Partial intrinsic resemblance thus requires internal structure. Without it, there can be no distinctions between ways in which things are intrinsically alike and ways in which they aren't. I will argue, further, that distinctions between properties that transcend objects fail to account for the possibility of partial intrinsic resemblance. (shrink)

(a chapter in Laruelle and Non-Philosophy, ed. John Mullarkey and Anthony Paul Smith) Orthodox reverence of transcendental constructs such as 'dialectical materialism' and the inability to reduce them to chôra - mere transcendental material instead of finished conceptual wholes - is what disables the completion of the project of stepping out of philosophy which Marxism initially set for itself (in the Theses on Feuerbach). In order to radicalise its position, argues Laruelle, and place itself outside philosophy, Marxism has to take (...) a step outside itself by virtue of admitting its own transcendental, i.e., philosophical character. It has to adopt the stance of the 'non-' that is situated in the Real that clones itself through concepts. In order to preserve its grain of 'thinking affected by immanence', 18 Marxism ought to become non-Marxism, argues Laruelle. (shrink)

Humanist thought has long considered the nature of creativity in workers but the dominant framework for conceptualising creativity, rooted in psychological theory, has provided inadvertent limits on who might be considered creative at work. This is because creativity is commonly defined through the recognition of produced and valued novelty. This definition obscures all that is unrecognised, unrealised, unexercised, and currently in potential from being considered as creativity. Given that creativity can sometimes exist in potential, and that some workers have their (...) creativity actively prevented from being recognised, researching and understanding the unrecognised creative person can be seen as an important goal for humanist scholars. The goal of this paper then is to unpick the contradiction between unrecognised creativity and dominant definitions of creativity in order to enable a deeper understanding of creativity at work. The paper proceeds with an immanent critique of the dominant framework and its definition of creativity, before proposing a critical realist inspired ontology of creativity, including an augmented definition of creativity. The consequences of this research for understanding creativity in organisations are briefly reflected upon. (shrink)

Bertolt Brecht and Theodor W. Adorno stand for opposing modes and stances within an artistic modernism oriented toward radical social transformation. In his 1962 essay ‘Commitment’, Adorno advanced a biting critique of Brecht’s work and artistic position. Adorno’s arguments have often been dismissed but, surprisingly, are seldom closely engaged with. This paper assesses these two approaches that have been so central to twentieth-century debates in aesthetics: Brecht’s dialectical realism and Adorno’s sublime or dissonant modernism. It provides what still has (...) been missing: a close reading and immanent critique of Adorno’s case against Brecht. And it clarifies one methodological blind spot of Adorno’s formalist conceptualisation of autonomy: he fails to provide the detailed analysis of context that his own dialectical method immanently calls for. The paper shows how and why Brecht’s dialectical realism holds up under Adorno’s attack, and draws conclusions for contemporary artistic practice. (shrink)

Famously, Kant is a transcendental idealist. Yet he also endorses empirical realism, and even boasts that only the transcendental idealist can be an empirical realist. The difficulty of making sense of those commitments together leads many interpreters to begin by attributing to Kant some variant of conventional, subjective idealism. That in turn requires that Kant's empirical realism be at best a merely ersatz or quasi-realism. But that drains Kant's boast of its significance. For any idealist can be (...) a realist if the 'realism' in question is defined in terms of a prior commitment to idealism. Thus I argue, on the contrary, that we must begin the interpretation of Kant's Critical philosophy by taking his empirical realism to be a genuine, common-sense realism about empirical things. That approach yields a consistent, satisfying, and novel reading of the Critical enterprise, including transcendental idealism, as explaining how empirical realism is possible. Along the way I show, among other things, (1) how to make systematic sense of Kant's controversial theory of meaning, which is standardly either downplayed or regarded as grossly inconsistent with his other core commitments; (2) how to dispense with the centuries-old Neglected Alternative objection; and (3) how to account for the syntheticity of the moral law and its role in conferring experience-immanent meaning on the practical postulates (e.g., of the existence of God). (shrink)

In this article I offer possibilities for conversations between a feminist, post-realist thealogy and an exploration of the posthuman as presented by Rosi Braidotti. Braidotti draws on the influence of Baruch Spinoza to argue for an awareness of the ‘radical immanence’ which allows a challenge to the hierarchically dualistic assumptions of an anthropocentric paradigm. I maintain that the role of ‘Goddess-talk’ can contribute to this exploration with its figurations of a transgressive sacrality which can embrace ambiguity and plurality and which (...) is immanent in a connection and interdependence with all forms of life. Such a thealogy can have points of contact with Braidotti’s call for an interrogation of what is meant by ‘being human’, a consideration of the implications of a ‘post-anthropocentric’ world and a challenge to the ways in which a global capitalist economy is undertaking the commodification of life itself. (shrink)

Although the opposition between realism and idealism is exhibited in their different assumptions on objectivity, in the field of social theory, John Anderson's social realism and Jürgen Habermas's social idealism are united in their rejection of positivism's separation of theory from praxis. Social realism's agreement with social idealism's critique of Popper's ?positivism?, on logical, methodological, ethical and ontological grounds, does not mean, however, a dissolution of the conflict between these two traditions. Indeed, social idealism's and social (...) class='Hi'>realism's rejection of the fact/value dichotomy and synthesis of theory and praxis take different forms. Accordingly, social idealism advances a prescriptive ethic and rejects objectivity whilst social realism advances a descriptive ethic, and accepts objectivity. The strength of social realism, as an objective basis upon which positivist sociology might be reconstructed, lies in its refutation of social idealism. Through immanent critique, social idealism is shown to rest on an ontological mistake, a mistake of synthesis, a subjective mistake, and a substantive mistake. (shrink)

Composition, persistence, vagueness, and more constitute an interconnected network of problems. My criticism of Hud Hudson's provocative claims made in a recent paper (Hudson 2002) was focused almost exclusively on the issue of diachronic composition (Balashov 2003). Hudson's response (2003) has highlighted the dangers of such isolationism. But I want to hold to my strategy to the end. Part of the reason is to evade the appalling responsibility of presenting a full-blown theory of all the above phenomena; I must confess (...) that I do not have such a theory. At the same time, I contend that diachronic composition can be profitably carved out from the medley of the surrounding issues more or less at the joints provided by nature itself. And I do subscribe to some sort of realism about the joints of nature. (shrink)

Key representatives of the dialectical tradition, Hegel and Adorno conceived philosophy as a critical tool, directed both at the naive realism of ordinary reason and the more sophisticated realism of modern scientific discourse. For the two authors, philosophy’s main task is to question received ideas and practices and to expose their underlying contradictions, thereby enabling meaningful forms of cultural and political change. But while for Hegel this procedure takes the form of a systematic enquiry, leading from a spurious (...) to a true account of reality, Adorno rejects the idea that reason and reality can be reconciled. On the one hand, he praises Hegel for having developed a truly dialectical form of criticism, set into motion by the immanent unfolding of reality’s intrinsic contradictions. On the other hand, he views Hegel’s emphasis on systematic integration as a form of dogmatism, which must itself be criticized. Instead of a ‘positive’ or ‘closed’ dialectic, fuelled by the expectation of a final overarching synthesis, Adorno calls for a ‘negative’ or ‘open’ dialectic, radically averse to all forms of unification. In doing so, however, he is led to question the very limits of conceptual reason, leaving criticism vulnerable to new forms of attack. (shrink)

François Laruelle's system of non-standard philosophy and its univocal radical immanence is highly indebted to Henry's non-representationalism. Admittedly, in contrast to Laruelle's "heretical" Christology, Henry's theological-realist determination is astricted by the idealist paralogisms of a cogitativist Ego, which transpires most markedly in Henry's account of Faith-after all, Henry is a Jesuit phenomenologist following in the tradition of Jean-Luc Marion and Jean-Louis Chretien. Nonetheless, Henry's work on immanence, deanthropocentrized and universalized as generic, takes us much further than both Spinoza's speculative immanence, (...) which is diluted by the necessitarian world of negative determination, and Deleuzian immanence, which is characterized by multiplicitous difference. In The Michel Henry Reader, editors Scott Davidson and Frédéric Seyler weave together a comprehensive anthology of essays that survey Henry's phenomenology of life, stitching together an oeuvre than spans Marxist political philosophy, phenomenology of language, subjectivity and aesthetics, and ethics qua religion. Rather than analyzing specific objects and phenomena, phenomenology is tasked with disclosing the structural manifestation and conditioned appearance of objects. Drawing primarily from Husserl and, consequently, Heidegger, Henry examines a kind of "pure phenomenology" that, contra intentionality and the inert world of visible objects, examines affectivity's "radical invisibility". Whereas Husserl and Heidegger's analyses emphasize the self-transcending nature of appearances, for Henry appearance is never independent or self-reliant but, instead, genitive and denotative. (shrink)

My focus in this work is on giving an analysis of Peirce's post-1895 remarks about realism and the realism/nominalism debate. I argue that there is a consistent position to be found in these writings, yet in order to understand his position we must look not only at Peirce's remarks on realism, but also to the various themes connected with his realism, viz. to his discussion of the categories, pragmatism, and opposing views. ;From Peirce's direct remarks on (...) realism we learn that there are two kinds of universals, viz., laws and possibilities , both of which are independent of mind. Peirce's claim that Firsts are real as possibilities, and Thirds are real as that to which Seconds conform, constitutes his universal-realism . Thirds, however, are laws, that which science seeks to discover. The subjunctive conditionals which express scientific theories are either true or false, and the entities to which they refer are real or figments. In this consists Peirce's scientific realism, or "scholastic realism". ;From Peirce's discussions of the categories and of nominalism, we learn that there are two kinds of qualities: embodied and unembodied. The latter are uninstantiated universals, the former are dispositions. Peirce's doctrine of pragmaticism is an analysis of embodied qualities, i.e., what it means to say that "an object possesses a character." I suggest that Peirce insists that uninstantiables as necessary for realism about laws because they ground the counterfactuals which law-statements support. ;Because Peirce has both uninstantiated universals, and because he also believes that there is a sense in which universals really are "in" things as parts, he is neither Transcendental nor Immanent Realist exclusively. (shrink)

Philosophical theories of the nature of concrete particulars come in two basic kinds, those according to which a concrete particular consists of properties and a bearer of those properties (a substratum), and those according to which a concrete particular consists only of its properties, in a relation of compresence or concurrence. Substrata are theoretical entities defined by their explanatory functions. As such, there is not much disagreement about their nature: they are propertyless, unobservable constituents of concrete particulars that are the (...) bearers of properties 1 and the individuators of distinct particulars. The situation is different with respect to properties. Among realists, some think properties are universals, either transcendent (Platonists) or immanent (Aristotelians), and some 2 think they are particulars (“tropes” ). Of the resultant possible positions on the nature of concrete particulars, six have been the focus of recent philosophical attention. These theories variously identify concrete particulars with (i) material substrata bearing transcendent universals, (ii) material substrata bearing immanent universals, (iii) material substrata bearing abstract particulars, (iv) bundles of transcendent universals, (v) bundles of immanent universals, and (vi) bundles of abstract particulars. (shrink)

Bryant’s paper, "A Logic of Multiplicities: Deleuze, Immanence, and Onticology," is useful for showing how the historical legacy of hierarchy in its many philosophical forms is still present, important, and, in fact, required even by those such as Bryant who would seek to deconstruct or ignore it. The following response will discuss Bryant’s presentation of his alternative position and throughout point out: a) the straw-man versions of hierarchy that Bryant employs; b) why what Bryant claims to be inherent negatively in (...) hierarchy is not the case; c) how Bryant’s position actually relies upon hierarchy for its own explication, and finally; d) the various principles of hierarchical metaphysics that are required in order to make sense of experience and reality. These latter include the notions that i) there are many kinds of hierarchy; ii) Being and Unity are prior to Multiplicity; iii) relation without substance is incoherent; iv) hierarchy is not inherently tyrannical; v) the distinction between essentially and accidentally ordered causal series is a real and useful one; and vi) the existence of hierarchy is more self evident than is flat ontology. (shrink)

This paper is my best attempt to confute (Kantian) Modern Philosophy at its very core. This implies, of course, that in my view the principles of Critical Realism are Kantian. The basic arguments supporting Critical Realism are powerful: I have tried to show clearly their power, but also to expose clearly their putrid root. Section 3 on the principle of immanence offers the most important contribution in this undertaking. The arguments of critical realism studied in this paper (...) are the following: 1. The Notion of Experience 2. The Nature of Knowledge: Question and Inquiry 3. The Principle of Immanence 4. The Notion of Relation 5. Judgment as the Position of the Real. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:LONERGAN'S "CRITICAL REALISM" AND RELIGIOUS PLURALISM TIMOTHY R. STINNETT University of Detroit Mercy Detroit, Michigan THE PHENOMENON of religious pluralism is raising ome basic questions for philosophical thought that must e faced not only by philosophies not linked to any particular religious tradition but also by the theologies or philosophies of specific religious traditions. Christian theologians seem first to have discovered the range of questions raised by religious (...) pluralism in the face of apparently conflicting truth claims. No less important, however, are certain moral questions: how the advocates of the various religious traditions should bear witness to their respective traditions, and how they should go about identifying and correcting the ideological biases that seem inevitably to occur as the result of the historical and cultural conditions in which their respective witnesses emerge and develop. Thus, a philosophical treatment of religious pluralism will need to make explicit the relevant conditions of truth by which religious claims must be assessed. It will also need to clarify how apparently conflicting truth claims may be examined to see whether they are genuinely conflicting and then how genuinely conflicting truth claims may be adjudicated. Bernard Lonergan's philosophy of critical realism may be considered a valuable resource for addressing such questions insofar as he undertakes to answer such fundamental questions as " What am I doing when I am knowing? Why is doing that knowing? What do I know when I do it? " 1 Attention to these questions 1 Bernard Lonergan, Method vn Theology (New York: The Seabury Press, 1979), p. 25. See also Bernard Lonergan, A Third Collection: Papers by Bernard I. F. Lonergan, S.J., edited by Frederick E. Crowe, S.J. (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), p. 210. 97 98 TIMOTHY R. STINNETT promises clarification about how religious truth claims may be shown to be true (and thus to count as " knowledge ") and how genuinely conflicting truth claims may be adjudicated. It also promises to clarify how one may recognize ideological bias and correct for it in a fully reflective understanding of a particular religious witness. For Lonergan, answers to the three questions cited above provide respectively a cognitional theory, an epistemology, and a metaphysics, all three of which together constitute his philosophy of critical realism.2 In this essay I will explore the relevance of his critical realism for philosophical treatment of questions raised by religious pluralism. After an analysis of the salient features of Lonergan's philosophy, I will consider the disadvantages and advantages it affords a philosophy of religious pluralism. By attending to the disadvantages I will register an immanent criticism of Lonergan's critical realism, and I will atexplain how it must be revised in order to become a useful resource for treating philosophical questions raised by religious pluralism. Lonergan's "Critical Realism" The human capacity to know is for Lonergan what constitutes human being as spirit. " Let us say," he writes, that intelligibility that is not intelligent is material, and that intelligibility that is intelligent is spiritual.... But inasmuch as we are spiritual, we are orientated towards the universe of being, know ourselves as parts within that universe, and guide our living by that knowledge.8 Knowing, then, is a process with distinguishable moments, and it is completed in action consistent with what is known. Moreover, what can be known by a human subject determines the parameters of "proportionate being." The coordination of all of the departments of human knowledge is the object of metaphysics, 2 Method in Theology, pp. 25, 83, 261, 316. See also Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, revised ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), pp. 322ff., p. 350. a Insight, p. 516. LONERGAN ON RELIGIOUS PLURALISM 99 which Lonergan defines as " the integral heuristic structure of proportionate being." 4 Proportionate being is not, however, a comprehensive term for everything that exists ; there is also "transcendent being." Transcendent being is revealed as mystery, and knowledge of it is obtained through the operation of grace in religious conversion.5 But I will postpone discussion of this knowledge of transcendent being for the moment. The orientation of the human spirit toward " the universe of being" manifests itself in "the primordial drive" to know. "It... (shrink)

The tone of this paper is largely critical. Therefore, I would like to begin by praising Donald McCloskey and Arjo Klamer for their exciting and provocative initiative in the metatheory of economics. They have done us a great favor by opening our eyes to some hidden aspects in the intellectual practices of economists. They have shown that economics is rhetoric; it is persuasion, discourse, conversation, and negotiation, to use their favorite phrases. They have provided plausible arguments and illuminating examples to (...) convince us of the literary character of economic reasoning, notwithstanding the formal languages used by economists and the positivist pretensions typical of the self-image of the discipline. However, McCloskey and Klamer have been less successful in trying to convince us of what economics is not. In particular, it concerns me that they have opened up a gap between rhetoric and realism. They seem to think that because economics has a rhetorical character, it cannot be understood in realist terms. I will argue that this view is mistaken: rhetoric and realism do not exclude each other, but rather they are capable of being combined in a coherent methodology of economics. It is a valuable contribution to import the insights of the newly rehabilitated rhetoric to the metatheory of economics; but it is unnecessary to marry them with enthusiasm about the fashionable anti-realism of Richard Rorty and others. While this is my overall thesis, it is clear that only initial steps towards its substantiation can be taken in this paper. I intend to proceed as follows. I will first make an attempt to locate the problem at hand in the history of the metatheory of economics. Then I will point out those elements in rhetorical metatheory as practiced and defended by Klamer and McCloskey that apparently have anti-realist or non-realist assumptions or implications, either directly or via considerations of scientific rationality. Next I will formulate a few concepts of realism, the differences between which have been ignored in the methodology of economics to this day. Then I will make preliminary attempts to inquire into the mutual compatibility of the rhetorical insights provided by McCloskey and Klamer and realism in this context. I will show that, in principle, there should be no insurmountable obstacles to combining the two; in some of its senses, realism will even turn out to be presupposed by the rhetorical approach. I do not primarily intend to argue for realism as such in this paper. Instead, I will argue for the compatibility of realism and rhetoric. The argument is based on Klamer's and McCloskey's own commitments; in this sense, the argument is immanent to their rhetorical approach. As a final point, I will argue that one should not be indifferent about realism: it does make a difference in economics and in the methodology of economics whether rhetoric is accepted with or without realism. (shrink)

Proponents of the view that social structures are ontologically distinct from the people in whose actions they are immanent have assumed that structures can stand in causal relations to individual practices. Were causality to be no more than Humean concomitance correlations between structure and practices would be unproblematic. But two prominent advocates of the ontological account of structures, Bhaskar and Giddens, have also espoused a powers theory of causality. According to that theory causation is brought about by the activity (...) of particulars, in the social psychological case, individuals of some sort. Consistence would demand that structure be those individuals. But neither Giddens nor Bhaskar wish to reify structure to the extent that would fit it for a role as a powerful particular. If only human beings can be powerful particulars in these contexts, the only way that structures can be real must be as properties of conversational interactions. Human action is social just in so far as people direct themselves to engage well in joint activities with others. (shrink)

Literature reviews have traditionally been a simple exercise in reporting the current relevant research, both to provide an overview of the current status of the field, and perhaps to draw attention to controversies. From the perspective of positivist research traditions, it was important to neutrally report all the relevant research, which was assumed to be foundational. In this article, written for the Applied Critical Realism special issue of Journal of Critical Realism, I use my own research to illustrate (...) how a literature review might look if it were non-foundational and guided by the principles of immanent critique. Immanent critique is central to Bhaskar’s philosophical methodology but has not been much applied in critical realist empirical research. Following a brief introduction to immanent critique, its history and relation to other ways of grounding knowledge, an excerpt from a literature review is used as backdrop for an extended discussion about various potential applications, and impl... (shrink)

Distinguishing between ‘analytical’ or ‘orthodox’ and ‘dialectical’ readings of first-wave critical realism, this review essay engages critically with the former as exemplified in Critical Realism and the Social Sciences: Heterodox Elaborations, edited by Jon Frauley and Frank Pearce. It argues that the ‘orthodox’ reading is fixist and endist and that this is conducive to an ill-informed and unconstructive attitude of hostility to dialectical critical realism and the philosophy of meta-Reality that is at odds with the critical realist (...) embrace and that in turn helps to reproduce the stasis of the reading. If the dynamism that goes hand in hand with the method of immanent critique is embraced, however, the possibility of flourishing two-way constructive critical engagements among the moments of the system is opened up, leading to the invigoration of each and the whole. Notwithstanding limitations - indeed, partly in virtue of them -, Critical Realism and the Social Sciences provides a promising basis for the unfolding of that possibility. (shrink)

This review essay attempts to present a coherent and reasonably unitary picture of the contemporary ‘speculative turn’ in continental philosophy as charted in Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman, eds, The Speculative Turn: Continental Realism and Materialism (2011). Avoiding a more objective yet more anodyne chapter by chapter summary, I paint an intentionally synoptic view by selecting some common concerns of the authors involved, and group them under five ‘core themes’. Throughout, I try to keep open the comparative (...) channel with the realist tenets of critical realism, and conclude vouching for the necessity for more bridge-building works to appear in the future. (shrink)

Despite Jacques Lacan's somewhat deserved reputation as an adamant antinaturalist, his teachings, when read carefully to the letter, should not be construed as categorically hostile to any and every possible interfacing of psychoanalysis and biology. In recent years, several authors, including myself, have begun exploring the implications of reinterpreting Lacan's corpus on the basis of questions concerning naturalism, materialism, realism, and the position of analysis with respect to the sciences of today. Herein, I focus primarily on the efforts of (...) analyst François Ansermet and neuroscientist Pierre Magistretti to forge a specifically Lacanian variant of neuropsychoanalysis (as distinct from Anglo-American variants). Taking up Ansermet and Magistretti's interlinked theories of drive (Trieb) and autonomous subjectivity, I develop an immanent critique of their project. Doing so in a manner that is intended to acknowledge and preserve this neuropsychoanalytic duo's significant insights and contributions, I seek to bring into sharper relief the exact set of necessary, as well as sufficient, conditions for what Ansermet, Magistretti, and I all are commonly pursuing: an account of the genesis of denaturalized subjects out of embodied libidinal economies, itself situated within the framework of a nonreductive, quasi-naturalist materialism synthesizing resources drawn from psychoanalysis, neurobiology, and philosophy. (shrink)

Talk of truth plays a major role in formulating realism, to the point that realist theories are often criticized by attacking the correspondence theory of truth that they are presumed to defend. In this chapter, I claim that there is an alternative theory of truth, which is both non‐epistemic and not based on correspondence relation that suffices to support mathematical realism. I describe the theory as a logical conception of truth because the truth predicate will turn out to (...) be simply a logical operator. The theory has two main features: it is disquotational, and immanent, in that it specifies the extension of the term ‘true’ only for the language in which it applies. (shrink)

In this article, we offer a critical realist conception of curriculum that aims to cultivate critical thinking (CT) and liberate students from egocentric rationality. We first examine egocentric rationality as a problem emerging from the technicist paradigm of cultivating CT in higher education, exemplified by issues arising from the pedagogical activity of debate. We then examine existing approaches to cultivating CT, focusing on the extent to which their goals and conceptions of CT could liberate students from egocentric rationality. Drawing on (...) Roy Bhaskar’s stratified conception of being and principle of immanent critique, we offer a critical realist conception of curriculum, explaining its definition of CT as the capacity for self-critique. We shall illustrate, in the context of an undergraduate debate course, how such capacity can be developed in order to liberate students from egocentric rationality. Curriculum is thus a critical praxis, a created space where student’s CT develops in a way that is intrinsically entwined with their being and becoming. This article extends the philosophical basis for integrating CT with curriculum and offers pedagogical implications. (shrink)

Building on its origins at a seminar in Oslo organized by two of the editors, this book combines classic texts of Nordic ecophilosophy and the original contributions of those influenced by this tradition to present the view that critical realism is indeed a worthy intellectual tradition to carry forward and further develop the work of the founders of Nordic ecophilosophy. It was clear at the seminar that there was a promising convergence of interests and themes in the two approaches; (...) while at the same time, within the Nordic ecophilosophical tradition, there was appreciation of the capacity of critical realism, with its provision of a robust philosophical ontology and generation of totalizing immanent critiques of Western philosophy, to provide an expansive and secure home for the development of ecophilosophical work generally. If there is a single overarching theme of critical realist philosophy, it surely must be that of the unity of theory and practice, which Bhaskar, following Hegel, has also called "seriousness". This makes the applicability, relevance and actionability of critical realism key considerations for critical realists. There can be no doubt that this concern was shared fully by the Nordic ecophilosophers; and this quality of "seriousness" is a striking feature of the Nordic contributions presented in this book. (shrink)

The ongoing duel between realist and anti-realist tendencies in film theory usually positions the ideas of André Bazin unambiguously on the realist side. Whatever else we expect to find in his writing – and the current resurgence is finding more and more – we should find this: realism, cinematic realism. But what type of realism? Is it ontological, and, if so, is it based on a claim for the primacy of photography's “analogical” relation to the world, even (...) to the point of a “direct contact” with the physical existence of nature? Is it aesthetic, celebrating depth of field? Unaffected mise-en-scène? The documentary impulse in preference to fantasy or artifice? In this article, however, I want to argue that we must expand the definition of Bazinian realism through its sensitivity to the non-human. The terrain of the cinematic “Real” is inhabited by a singular complex, one that includes physical space, animality, and material objects, as well as persons and events. To shift our attention to these elements and their effects – intimate as well as alienating, familiar as well as jarring and unexpected – offers another way to glimpse the Real. Which is not to say that the socially constituted world drops out. Of course, language, gender and culture are inescapable mediations. Yet they are, in a certain sense, all wrought by a transcendent human hand. Bazin's conception of realism provides access to a space that is less anthropocentric and testifies to an immanence of the Real, such that non-human, objective realism is not about capturing reality in toto but registering the fact that the human is only a part of reality. There are realities beyond human subjectivity – in space, in objects, in animality – realities that we are put in contact with by cinema. Ideally, what cinema makes possible is an equality, a democratic freedom, not merely for the human spectator – to view and explore film worlds – but for the viewed “object” too: a democracy of the viewer-viewed that installs intersubjectivity in the Real. (shrink)

Quine's attitude toward external world skepticism remains, to this day, less than completely clear. As one might except, Quine seems to dismiss such concerns in most of his work as beneath refutation. But, occasionally Quine seems to adopt an alternative stance, a stance from which he aims to address the issue, not simply ignore it. This is particularly true of Quine's brief but pithy “Response to Stroud,” wherein he seeks to defend the adequacy of epistemology naturalized qua knowledge theory against (...) Stroud's complaint that epistemology, so reconstituted, ignores perfectly intelligible reason for skeptical disquiet. Herein, I expand upon an interpretive suggestion of Dirk Koppelberg's upon which the skeptic's challenge is undermined by the incoherence of the notion of “transcendent” objectivity required for its formulation. After some motivational remarks I try to reconstruct a Quinean antiskeptical critique making use of Koppelberg's strategic suggestion. In then argue that this argument is fatally compromised by tensions internal to Quine's own system, tensions arising from the essential nature of Quine's realism. I close with some morals and conclusions. (shrink)

This essay calls attention to robust synergies between Roy Bhaskar’s philosophy of dialectical critical realism and Terrence W. Deacon’s recent investigation of the geo-historical emergence of ententional or teleological phenomena, as well as important differences. Deacon has independently arrived at an understanding of absence as causally efficacious in the emergence of life and consciousness, and deploys a range of other concepts that resonate with DCR. He develops a critique both of eliminativist and monovalent approaches to ententionality, on the one (...) hand, and their panpsychist foil, on the other, and elaborates a polyvalent scientific alternative – the theory of emergent dynamics. Though this theory is not without problems, as its immanent critique reveals – and indeed in part because of these – it opens up the prospect of a mutually illuminating dialogue between DCR and metaRealism, on the one hand, and the life sciences, on the other, in which DCR/mr underlabours for these sciences, which in turn feed back into DCR/mr philosophy and social theory, thereby helping to actualize the possibility of non-positivist naturalism. (shrink)

In his work on the foundations of mathematics, Frege placed the problem in a wider context, namely that of science; the ontological status of thought as the carrier of truthfulness became for him the most important issue. The objectivity of truth and thought seems to require the existence of other people, which consequently requires the existence of the world. Thus, the polemics with epistemological idealism became a key issue for Frege; the topic appears in such works as The Basic Laws (...) of Arithmetic, The Logic, and The Thought. What seems to be most interesting in Frege’s work is his stress on weaknesses of both epistemological realism and immanent idealism. Reflecting upon the examples of the physiological psychology and physiology of the senses he demonstrated the process of entrapment in idealism. It is also interesting that he stressed the realistic character of language as well as the constant possibility of committing a mistake by assuming the existence of reference, and dangers of falling into traps of fiction resulting there from. Key words FREGE, SCIENCE, LANGUAGE. (shrink)

This essay calls for an independent theory of features in object-oriented philosophy. Theories of features are in general motivated by at least two interconnected demands: 1) to explain why objects have the characteristics they have, 2) to explain how regular divisions in those characteristics can be intuited. While a theory of universal properties may be the most internally consistent means of addressing these demands, an object-oriented metaphysics needs to address them without a concept of shared features. This means that regular (...) divisions of invariant features and our intuitions of them cannot be explained by the repetition of self-same characteristics or natural laws. They can instead be explained by the immanent repetition of similar features. However, this requires a new, radically aesthetic understanding of what it means to be similar in the first place, one in which similarity is an emergent process rather than a state of affairs existing between resembling particulars. (shrink)

How to theorise religion in International Relations (IR)? Does the concept of post-secularity advance the debate on religion beyond the ‘return of religion’ and the crisis of secular reason? This article argues that the post-secular remains trapped in the logic of secularism. First, a new account is provided of the ‘secularist bias’ that characterises mainstream IR theory: (a) defining religion in either essentialist or epiphenomenal terms; (b) positing a series of ‘antagonistic binary opposites’ such as the secular versus the religious; (...) (c) de-sacralising and re-sacralising the public square. The article then analyses post-secularity, showing that it subordinates faith under secular reason and sacralises the ‘other’ by elevating difference into the sole transcendental term. Theorists of the post-secular such as Jürgen Habermas or William Connolly also equate secular modernity with metaphysical universalism, which they seek to replace with post-metaphysical pluralism. In contrast, the alternative that this article outlines is an international theory that develops the Christian realism of the English School in the direction of a metaphysical-political realism. Such a realism binds together reason with faith and envisions a ‘corporate’ association of peoples and nations beyond the secularist settlement of Westphalia that is centred on national states and transnational markets. By linking immanent values to transcendent principles, this approach can rethink religion in international affairs and help revive grand theory in IR. (shrink)

Philosophers of science seek to discover theessential features of science. Having donethis, these features are then proffered as a`benchmark' against which any putative sciencecan be assessed for its scientificity. Socialscientists, in particular, are much concernedwith achieving the status of genuine science.When considering the status of the socialsciences, philosophers of science also seek todiscern the essential, and differentiating,characteristics of the object of study, namely,social phenomena as such. This paper provides acritical examination of two apparentlydiametrically opposed approaches to philosophyof science, namely, (...) class='Hi'>realism and pragmatism. Thestance of `immanent critique' is adopted. Thisstance seeks to evaluate the success of aphilosophical programme entirely by thestandards that are internal to that programme.The conclusion reached, from this point ofview, is that realism is unrealistic, andpragmatism lacks practical utility. (shrink)

In this paper we explain how the intentional objects of our mental states can be represented by the intensional objects of conceptual realism. We first briefly examine and show how Brentano’s actualist theory of judgment and his notion of an immanent object have a clear and natural representation in our conceptualist logic of names. We then briefly critically examine Meinong’s theory of objects before turning finally to our own representation of intentional objects in terms of the intensional objects (...) of conceptual realism. We conclude by explaining why existence-entailing concepts are so basic to our commonsense framework and how these concepts and their intensions can be used to model Meinong’s ontology. (shrink)

This paper attempts to motivate skepticism about the reality of mathematical objects. The aim of the paper is not to provide a general critique of mathematical realism, but to demonstrate the insufficiency of the arguments advanced by Michael Resnik. I argue that Resnik's use of the concept of immanent truth is inconsistent with the treatment of mathematical objects as ontologically and epistemically continuous with the objects posited by the natural sciences. In addition, Resnik's structuralist program, and his denial (...) of relational properties, is incompatible with a realist metaphysics about mathematical objects. (shrink)

Indigenous critiques of postcolonialism are as diverse as First Nations or Original Peoples communities themselves. Yet, within that diversity, there is often claimed to be a set of core universal teachings. My article engages this field in a three-step process that begins with examining the incorporation of two Indigenous critiques into a Handbook of Qualitative Research edited by Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln. Focusing on justice through their lens of an ethics and politics of interpretation, Denzin and Lincoln simultaneously reject (...) much of what they claim critical realism advocates. They then deny any significant emancipatory potential to critical realism. This article immanently critiques their denial. In doing so it argues a case, on the one hand, for the explanatory potential of dialectical critical realism and the philosophy of meta-Reality both generally and in the case of postcolonialism as decolonizing praxis. On the other hand, viewing Indigenous critiques within an interpretive paradigm risks ensnaring them within modernist dualist categories, postmodernist unconstrained deconstruction or poststructuralist formless flux. Such a reading thus restricts their capacity to contribute to depth-totalizing praxis. I introduce a critical realist reading of Indigenous critiques and conclude that the political programme of emancipation is strengthened through an interweaving of critical realism and Indigenous political philosophy. (shrink)