Critical Realism for Psychologists

David Pilgrim

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000739800
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Realism in Philosophy

This is the first dedicated text to explain and explore the utility of critical realism for psychologists, offering it as a helpful middle ground between positivism and postmodernism.

By introducing its basic concepts, Pilgrim explains critical realism to psychologists and shows how the interface between the natural and social worlds, and the internal and external, can be used to examine human life. This both/and aspect of human life is important in another sense: we are both determined and determining beings, making choices but within the material constraints of both our bodies and the social context of our unique existence. The book offers an exploration of academic and applied psychology with that inward and outward curiosity in mind, beginning with the premise that both inner and outer reality are the legitimate interest of psychologists. In doing so, it shows how critical realism endorses the remaining advantages of positivism and postmodernism, while discarding their philosophical errors.

A range of case studies are presented to show how psychologists can use critical realism when working with real life problems, as researchers or practitioners.

1

The utility of critical realism

Introduction

This first chapter introduces students, researchers and practitioners of psychology to the considerable advantages of the philosophy of critical realism. The reader can also consult the original work of its main founder, Roy Bhaskar (Bhaskar, 2016; 1997). There is a nearby literature in sociology also offering good introductions, which might help psychologists new to the philosophy (Archer, 2000; Sayer, 2000; Porpora, 2015).

Critical realism is not a dogma or a prescription for practice. However, it has implications for reflecting on good practice in two senses. First, it guides us in what is the best way to understand the natural and social worlds we enter, exist in and then depart. Second, it encourages our reflexivity about our presence in the world and our ethical obligations as professionals and human beings. My hope is that these points will become clearer as this chapter and subsequent ones are read.

The chapter proceeds with these early thoughts in mind. To make the best use of the potential of critical realism, psychologists need to familiarise themselves with its basic assumptions and broad recommendations to orientate good theory and practice. What follows below then are guidelines to aid that familiarisation. The chapter offers my version of those guidelines, with my colleagues in the discipline of psychology specifically in mind. Because it is my version, then a short reflexive statement might help to account for the style of the guidelines and the content of the chapters to come.

Short reflective statement

Having trained as a clinical psychologist and then embarked upon a PhD in psychology while practising, my interests became more and more sociological. I was working in the NHS in England and became interested in the daily politics of being a mental health practitioner working in the field. The PhD looked at the workings of NHS psychotherapy using personal accounts. At that time (during the 1980s) I became familiar with the work of Roy Bhaskar, and critical realism provided a framework to guide my stumbling efforts in research with a little more clarity.

Fortuitously, my PhD supervisor was John Shotter (who I discuss more in Chapter 3). His own approach, as a leading social psychologist and theoretician, was not aligned with critical realism but he kindly tolerated my callow efforts and the thesis was completed successfully. We agreed to differ philosophically but he understood, more than I at the time, the reasons why this was the case. What we disagreed about (ontology and epistemology) continued to preoccupy me. As time progressed I found myself as a psychological practitioner and researcher bouncing between the rock of implausible positivism and the hard place of implausible postmodernism.

With this discomfort I figured that maybe the answer was to escape permanently or temporarily from psychology and went on to complete a part-time Masters in sociology. Working at the boundary of psychology and sociology was useful. I found that those in the first had their feet on the ground and could think methodically about practical problems but they tended to lack confidence, or saw no point, in understanding their own historical and philosophical context (the positivists). By contrast at the time, the emerging postmodern psychologists, emboldened by French poststructuralism, were disappearing into a foggy cul-de-sac full of words, irony and cynicism.

But what I then found in sociology was no less encouraging or comforting. Less grounded and of less practical utility, sociologists too wobbled constantly between the claimed certainties of positivism (with its covering laws of social determinism for all occasions) and postmodern nihilism. They all agreed on the importance of social context (their shared point of disciplinary legitimacy) but were not of one voice about it. Without any obvious practical relevance, sociologists could either compensate for that inadequacy by shifting, often creatively, to interdisciplinary working, such as in health services research, or they could make grander claims to scarce sociological insights or become preoccupied with internal debates about postmodern social theory.

One common outcome of this ‘postmodern turn’ was the argument that ‘everything is socially constructed’. With that came the expectation of unique methodological expertise in discourse analysis and deconstruction. During discussions of practical matters, with a feigned weak smile and flicking their fingers in the air, postmodernists would put particular words like ‘reality’ and ‘truth’ in speech marks, in a weary signal of knowing intellectual scorn. Some isolated voices in the sociological literature judged this to be a collective form of madness (Craib, 1997), which may have been fair comment (see Chapter 3).

Every time that I saw postmodern sociologists or psychologists signal speech marks, I wondered what would be there in their absence. Was everything just words and, if not, then what was left of reality itself? But on the other side of the same coin, within psychological orthodoxy did the experimentalists and personality theorists have any insight, for example, into the false trail of closed system reasoning or the historical relationship between scientific psychology and eugenics? Was their preferred version of realism largely just ideology dressed up as science?

What I found in critical realism was a refreshing offer: we can enjoy philosophical clarity about both social and natural science. There are underlying philosophical premises that illuminate both of these academic currents, whilst recognising the differences between their limits of theory and practice. What was obvious to me was that the tension between a natural scientific and a social scientific approach to psychology was confusing at times. However, it was also a healthy tension to tolerate and encourage curious exploration. With these initial thoughts in mind, I now offer my version of some guidelines for the reader.

Guidelines about basic critical realism

These are now listed in a particular order for clarity. They introduce the assumptions and axioms of critical realism and also explain their implications for practice. As the name suggests, the philosophy is critical and so those implications are largely about types of critique that can be helpful in our work, as well as an invitation to think in a critical and reflective way about our theory and practice. The ordering of the guidelines is not a hierarchal checklist (i.e. with the least important points at the end). The exception to that principle is the first one on the list, because it is so axiomatic.

1) The ‘holy trinity’ of critical realism

We can think of the foundations of critical realism as three core axioms or premises. Like all philosophical arguments they are fundamental assumptions. In the case of critical realism these are ontological realism; epistemological relativism; and judgemental rationalism (or sometimes in critical realist texts ‘judgemental rationality’). For emphasis I re-visit here items in the glossary:

Ontological realism is the premise that the world exists independent of what we know or think about it. Our individual existence is part of the world temporarily but the world existed before we were born and will do so after we die. Reality in large part then is mind-independent. It does matter what we think about it though, while we are around. Those thoughts, descriptions, discourses or notions are themselves part of reality but their existence emerges from an external and independent material world. Mind- or language-related aspects of reality are products of real evolutionary processes that preceded, and so were independent of, them. But now language has evolved to afford us personal agency then we as well must consider the next important premise. The assumption about ontology is primary in critical realism. Without real material conditions, we would not have evolved as a species and the next two aspects of the ‘holy trinity’ could not have emerged.

Epistemological relativism is the premise that we construe the world we live within and reflect upon and talk about. Those construals might be fanciful and idiosyncratic tastes and assertions (e.g. the view that heavy metal exemplifies good music) or profound and serious (e.g. the passion for proving, with evidence, the reality of global warming and campaigning about its dire consequences for the survival of humanity). Heavy metal music exists but people hold different views about its merits and its definition and range of indicative bands. Global warming exists but people debate its sources, consequences and degree of threat. Some construals might be honest and persuasive (e.g. persistent inequalities in health mean the poor will be sicker and die younger than the rich on average) or dishonest and unfounded (e.g. there are no health inequalities only ‘health variations’ and being healthy is merely a matter of personal choice).

These examples point up that epistemological relativism is not the same as truth relativism. As Elder-Vass (2012) points out, knowledge is socially contingent but truth remains independent of ‘historical specificities in systems of belief’ (ibid.: 231). For example, ‘the world is round’ is a statement of truth. A flat earth claim is now a minority epistemological position but the world is, as it has always been, round. When and if our species becomes extinct, the world will still be round, unless evidence is brought forward to support the flat earth position, which at the time of writing has not occurred. (See my discussion of the ontic fallacy below.)

As we are socialised in a culture, construals will change over time and they will vary from place to place. They are mind-dependent and that mind-dependency can be reflected on within, or explored at the level of, the individual’s account of their biography or collectively (in our shared cultural assumptions, ideologies, cosmologies or discourses). In the academy, some forms of knowledge are deemed to be inherently superior to those of everyday wisdom, opinion or prejudice. However, even academic construals are socially-situated and they will always reflect the context of their production to some extent and in particular ways. Their emphasis on empirical evidence, theoretical coherence or methodological transparency and rigour might improve their claim to superior knowledge but the latter can still be addressed sceptically; a cue for the next premise.

Judgemental rationalism is the premise that in light of the first two above we are able to weigh up truths and likelihoods. Those judgements might be made cautiously because all knowledge is fallible; but they can, and sometimes must, be made. This can be distinguished from judgemental relativism, whereby we tolerate the merits of all construals and abandon adjudicating criteria. More will be said about this in Chapter 3 when querying the tendency of judgemental relativism within the theoretical traditions of metaphysical idealism in general, and postmodern psychology in particular.

A good example of judgemental rationalism is given by Porpora (2015). If we are faced with discerning the truth when faced with closely competing knowledge claims, as critical realists we would opt for the third of these statements as the best fit:

1. Six million Jews died in the Nazi holocaust.
2. Six million Jews were killed in the Nazi holocaust.
3. Six million Jews were murdered in the Nazi holocaust.

The first is true but is incomplete because it omits the reality of mass homicide. The second is true but killings might have accrued for a range of intentional or unintentional motives and so may mislead us about the context of the deaths. Only the third captures the full picture: mass murder planned and executed by the Nazi state in its ‘Final Solution’ for the ‘Jewish problem’. There was the deliberate industrial destruction of an ethnic group blamed by Hitler for undermining Germany and its vaunted master race.

When asked about these options, people may opt for the first or second statements, possibly in the belief that the last is emotive and others more neutral and considered. Positivism may help that slide in thinking (by claiming to remove values from facts). Postmodernism offers us only perspectives and so are all three statements of equal value? If not, then how is one account better than another, without recourse to a complex description of how the Holocaust came into being as a fact, not merely as a set of narratives? This would mean postmodernists taking reality seriously and not with a wan smile putting it in speech marks (see Chapter 3).

The above three core premises are aligned with common sense and critical realism has been described as its ‘enlightened’ version (Bhaskar, 2016). Professional philosophers have given common sense a mixed press. For example, Bertrand Russell called it ‘the metaphysics of the savage’ but Thomas Huxley called science ‘common sense at its best’. What common sense does do is provide us with the cognitive capacity for judgemental rationality, which is the basis for both dealing with everyday life and pursuing intelligent forms of academic activity. For this reason, the closeted academic has grounds for envying the street-wise teenager and vice versa.

Academic enquiry is predicated on a shared starting point and that entails us learning the difference between words and things, as well as being aware of our inner and outer reality. From a young age we recognise the reality of the world around us and within us. We learn that a flame hurts our hand but also that what we desire is not always achieved and our dreams are not the same as our waking thoughts. We might wake up to a bird singing or a bomb bursting. Cars on the road might injure or kill us. Our parents are usually more trustworthy than strangers. Adults have power over children. Food and drink are necessary and enjoyable. Rules apply to what is wise and permissible and what is not. We feel our way into this rule-bound world. Bit by bit we learn about the world, but also how to make good (or bad) judgements about it and what others expect of us.

Our capacity to use judgemental rationality in our lives can be directed at matters which are interpersonal and subjective (the centrality of attachments and relational expectations in our developing life) and others which seem to be about the natural world more generally (the dangers of flames and cars and the importance of eating and drinking for survival). Common sense tells us that this is a both/and not an either/or real world. Relationships are important but so is everything beyond people per se. Our primary preoccupation, understandably, may be with our personal attachments and support from others. But if we were lost alone in a forest we would take the reality of our immediate natural environment very seriously in order to survive. An unpeopled world with no conversations is still the world. None of us require a training in philosophy or science to come to these conclusions about our shared personal and impersonal contexts.

Also, as time progresses, we become aware that we do not know everything and life is often mysterious. We are in a state of constant ignorance but know enough to cope with the messy reality of our lives much of the time. We are thrown into a world not of our making but slowly make decisions about that world and how to act upon it (or not) in a state of partial knowledge. Life is sort of predictable (the seasons guide our clothing expectations) but exceptions constantly prove rules to be wrong (the mild day in mid-winter or the surprise of the ‘Indian summer’). Nothing is certain but some things seem to have stronger patterns that connect through time than others. These generalisations about the contingencies and flux of being human are the bread and butter of a critical realist approach and so it is aligned with everyday common sense and, as I have just argued, the latter provides us with judgemental rationality.

2) The transitive and intransitive dimensions to reality

Much of reality is not open to change by our thoughts and actions. A distinction can be made then for analytical purposes between that which we cannot change (the intransitive dimension of reality) and the way that we talk about and construe our world (the transitive dimension of reality). There is what exists in the world and there is what we think and say about it, with their prompts for action. To be clear, the intransitive does not necessarily mean stable and semi-permanent, though it can mean that in many instances. It refers to what we cannot change, such as everything in the past and the speed of light in the present.

Broadly, the intransitive reflects ontological realism and the transitive epistemological relativism but occasionally that linkage can be broken in human interactions because of action (praxis). Also, it is obvious that inner reality is more prone to rapid sense making and that might blur the line at times between the transitive and intransitive. For example, if I have a dream (a real inner event) I can describe its content and then revisit its meaning over and over again if I choose. The first part of this process has an intransitive character (the dream has been and gone and it had a particular content) but the second is about construal and re-construal (post hoc interpretations) and so has a transitive character. (For a wider discussion of the transitive and intransit...