Dictionary of Critical Realism

Mervyn Hartwig

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9780415260992
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317420705
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Epistemology in Philosophy

Dictionary of Critical Realism fulfils a vital gap in the literature, Critical Realism is often criticised for being too opaque and deploying too much jargon, thereby making the concepts inaccessible for a wider audience. However, as Hartwig puts it 'Just as the tools of the various skilled trades need to be precision-engineered for specific, interrelated functions, so meta-theory requires concepts honed for specific interrelated tasks: it is impossible to think creatively at that level without them.'

This Dictionary seeks to redress this problem; to throw open the important contribution of Critical Realism to a wider audience for the first time, by thoroughly explaining all the key concepts and key developments. It includes 500 entries on these themes, and has contributions from major players in field. However this text does not stop there, it goes further than simply elucidating the concepts and includes a number of essays which use the notions in important areas, thereby demonstrating the appropriate use of the concepts in action to encourage their wider use.

This book will become a requisite reference tool for Critical Realist scholars and Philosophers and Social scientists alike will enjoy this vital introduction and explanatory text of the indispensable ideas contained within the dynamic and vibrant school of Critical Realism.

A

abduction. See INFERENCE.

aboutness. See REFERENCE; REFERENTIAL DETACHMENT; TRUTH.

absence or real negation. At once the major blind spot in the ANALYTICAL tradition, screened by the doctrine of ONTOLOGICAL MONOVALENCE, and the pivotal category of dialectic – whether construed as argument, the onto-logic of change or the process of freedom – absence or real negation structures and unifies the ontological–axiological chain (see MELD). Negation and negativity are central to all dialectics, but it is Bhaskar’s claim that CR ‘uniquely sustains an adequate account’ thereof, hence of dialectic itself (D: 300). (The two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, but negativity is the more general concept, capturing better than negation simpliciter the dual senses of [evaluatively neutral] absence and [pejorative] ill-being. When absence – ‘the simplest and most elemental concept of all’ (D: 239) – is given an ethical inflection as ill-being, it is synonymous with negativity.) If Bhaskar’s earlier work revindicates ontology, Dialectic revindicates negativity, thereby foregrounding questions concerning the contingency of being, not least of human social being, which the monovalent tradition sidelines, and ‘emancipat{ing…} dialectic for (the dialectic of) emancipation’ (D: 40).

(Real) negation or absence has a product/PROCESS (being/becoming) BIPOLARITY or HOMONYMY, issuing in a fourfold meaning or POLYSEMY corresponding to 1M–4D and the moments of the CONCRETE UNIVERSAL, as illustrated in Table 1: (1) product (simple absence); (2) process (simple absenting); (3) process-in-product; and (4) product-in-process. (1) constitutes its primary meaning as ‘real DETERMINATE absence or non-being (i.e., including non-existence)’ – the outcome of a process. It may refer either to the absence of any entity or feature from consciousness (e.g., the unconscious) or from a space–time region (resulting from ‘DISTANCIATION or MEDIATION, death or demise’, e.g., the gaps between these marks) or to simple non-existence anywhere anywhen (e.g., a yellow logarithm or Hamlet, Prince of Denmark) (D: 5). But it also connotes (2), the process of absenting, distanciating or mediating. If at (1) absence is ‘the heart of existence’, at (2) absenting is ‘the hub of SPACE, TIME and CAUSALITY’ (P: 56), with positive bipolars in EMERGENCE and CREATIVITY. Combining these two basic connotations, we have absence as (3) process-in-product (e.g., an absence of fertile land, or, desert existentially constituted by its geo-history and context) and (4) product-in-process (e.g., the desertified region in process, i.e. exercising its causal powers).

It is important to distinguish the following forms of negation, which Hegelian dialectic conflates as ‘determinate negation’: real negation ³ transformative negation ³ radical negation ³ linear negation. The bases for these distinctions are displayed in Figure 1.

Table 1 Polysemy and modes of absence

Causal–Axiological Chain	1M Non-Identity	2E Negativity	3L Totality	4D Transformative Agency
Concrete universal ↔ singular	universality	processuality (rhythmicity)	(particular) mediations	(concrete) singularity (not just human)
Polysemy of absence	product	process	process-in-product	process-in-process
Causal modes of absence	transfactual causality	rhythmic causality	holistic causality	intentional causality
Concepts of negation	real negating process (substantial & non-substantial)	transformative negating process (substantial)	radical self-negating process	linear (dialectical reason) self-conscicously negating process
Modes of radical negation	auto-subversion	self-transformation	self-realisation	self-overcoming

Figure 1 Concepts of negation

Source: P: 56.

Besides process/product polysemy, all forms of negation display real/actual, determinate/indeterminate and ontological/epistemological AMBIVALENCE, and may themselves be present in a negative (the memory of your dead mother) or a positive (her absence simpliciter) mode. Real determinate negation in its simplest definition is determinate non-being (the presence of an absence of an entity) in some determinate locale (e.g., the hole in the ozone layer), which is existentially intransitive ‘relative to any possible indexicalised observer on any possible WORLD-LINE’, whether or not identified or even identifiable (D: 38). Real determinate negation or non-being is thus not equivalent to Hegelian or Sartrean (indeterminate) nothingness (it is structured by a specific process and context), nor to logical negation (see CONTRADICTION), and ‘contra Sartre {…} is no more {…} anthropic than the physical concept of force’ (D: 239). As already indicated, however, real negation may be indeterminate to a varying degree, e.g., ‘fuzzy’; and it always possesses a moment of indeterminacy (indeterminate negation) prior to the determinate result, as for example in the TRANSITION from the absence to the presence of rain, where ‘not raining’ is the indeterminate negation of ‘raining’: it leaves open whether there is still full sunshine, an imminent gale, etc. It is thus ‘a moment of genuine contingency, openness, multi-possibility (and doubt)’ (D: 31). Real negation embraces, in addition to the other forms of negation, spatio-temporal DISTANCIATION without significant change, and action-at-a-distance (including intra-action) and across voids, which is in effect non-substantial process or change. It is these features that make it more basic than transformative negation. It is thus ‘the most all-encompassing concept, extending from non-existence to metacritique’, and includes the main kind of absence CR is concerned with: determinate lacks and needs (e.g., lack of food in a belly or of truth in a politician, or an aporia in a theory). Transformative negation refers to the transformation or demise of a pre-existing entity or state of affairs, i.e., substantial process. It is consistent with exogenous sources of alteration. It is the key (but is not confined) to socio-historical dialectics, and its schema is, indeed, given by the TMSA. Radical negation refers to self-transformation resulting from multiple determination within an entity (subject-or developmental negation, see CONSISTENCY; FIXISM/FLUXISM). Not only is it ‘obviously the pivotal concept in self-emancipation’, which ‘connects with “radical” in a more familiar sense’, but also, in an increasingly interdependent world, all change (transformative negation) must tend towards radical (totalising) negation (D: 6). In addition to participating in the fourfold process/product tetrapolity, it has a corresponding ‘fourfold polysemy of its own’: auto-subversion, self-transformation (see also SELF-REFERENTIALITY), self-realisation and self-overcoming. Its negative forms include split and split-off or detotalisation (see ALIENATION; FISSION/FUSION). Linear negation is self-transformation in a unilinear sequence or line of transition. This, however, does not make it AUTOGENETIC, as in Hegel. In an open world most results are multiply and contingently determined.

The MELD meshwork again underpins and is implicated in these distinctions. Most obviously, transformative negation corresponds to 2E, and radical negation to 3L, where the concept of a healthy functioning whole links it to negativity qua ill. The differentia specifica of real negation, synchronic difference mediated by spatial distance without real change, corresponds to 1M non-identity (see ALTERITY), where absence informing desire also powers REFERENTIAL DETACHMENT. Finally, the achievement of DIALECTICAL REASON at 4D would tendentially approximate linear negation. The importance of thus distinguishing ‘negating processes from self-negating processes {…} from self-consciously negating processes’ (D: 6) should be apparent in the human world.

There are many finer meanings and figures of negation and negativity, which are conveniently listed at D: 238. It should now be apparent why CR dialectics focus mainly on the major forms indicated. All four forms in their polysemy also exemplify the DUALITY of absence (and of presence): ‘what is absent or void at or from one level, region or PERSPECTIVE may be present at another’ (D: 5), e.g., use-value in market society is absent at the level of exchange and present at the level of consumption.

Contrary to what is sometimes implied, the argument in Dialectic for the category of real negation/absence and its centrality is complex and multi-pronged. In bare outline it goes as follows. (1) We concede the reality of negative existences or real non-beings (de-onts by contrast with ONTS or real beings) every time we insist that ‘Pierre really is absent from the café’, etc., for this is to make a negative ontological claim. Not to admit de-onts to our ontology is to commit performative contradiction. (2) We can refer to, or REFERENTIALLY DETACH, de-onts as well as onts. This establishes (though it does not constitute) their existential intransitivity. We can, indeed, refer to anything imaginable, e.g., animals that speak a human language, and, when we do, the imaginary or fictional may be inscribed within the real (the agent’s or society’s register of the imagined) as a distinct class of non-being capable of causally affecting us. (3) Some de-onts (e.g., Pierre’s absence from the café when I was expecting to meet him) straightforwardly satisfy both CR criteria for ascribing reality: perceptual and causal. It is not the case, contrary to Kant, that one can always analyse negative into purely positive predicates: ‘Pierre’s absence from the café doesn’t mean the same as his presence at home (although the latter entails the former – which is equally entailed by his death) any more than it means the same as Jean’s occupying his customary place’ (D: 7). (4) Any world which is changing – as is ours – must incorporate absence, for change is a mode of absence/absenting. (5) Likewise, any world incorporating intentional causality must incorporate absence. (6) Argument and critique, and more broadly any LEARNING PROCESS, themselves depend upon the identification and elimination of mistakes. Mistakes depend upon absences (e.g., lacunae in a theory), which their correction absents. The possibility of remedying inconsistency and incompleteness in an ongoing dialectic is a transcendentally necessary condition for science, as is the use of metaphors and analogies, drawn from the past and outside, in retroductive modelling. Specifically transcendental arguments also presuppose the category of absence in that they turn on human agency. ‘Even more simply, a sentence without absences, pauses or spaces, would be unintelligible. Thus absence is a condition of any intelligibility at all’ (D: 240). (7) Indeed, ‘both conceptually and causally, all the decisive moments in social life are negative’ (D: 160). Social structure is the acervative result of past praxis, and living praxis is absentive agency which may issue in the transformative negation of social structures. The axiology of freedom (see EMANCIPATORY AXIOLOGY) entails absence and absenting. Desire is propelled by absence or lack, and informed desire drives praxis on to absent constraints and ills, which, as blocks on well...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Routledge Studies in Critical Realism
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Contributors and Contributions
• Preface
• How to use this book
• Dictionary of Critical Realism
• Works by Roy Bhaskar
• Other Works Referred to in the Text