The paper aims to present the philosophical background and justification of the theory of social realism. Social realism is a representative example of a literary period in which the autonomy of literature in terms of, for example, the aesthetic value of a literary work, was brought to a negligible level given the radical demands of regime poetics of writing in accordance with politics and ideology. Socialist-realism, poetics in which party writing and educating people in (...) the form of socialist progress and without any concern about literary creation are paramount, finds its postulates in theories of the Union of Russian Proletarian Writers (RAPP) and proletarian cultural and educational organization (Proletkult). Theorists of socialist realism poetics claim that their postulates find philosophical justification in Marx’s and Engels’ texts about art. The primary subject of analysis in the article will, therefore, be the connection between the theory of social realism and the classical Marxist conception of art. Based on the analysis, it can be concluded that the theory of social realism is justified by classical Marxist aesthetics regarding historical materialism which determines art, but not in the sense of denying the autonomy of the art. (shrink)

The view that social kinds (e.g., money, migrant, marriage) are mind-dependent is a prominent one in the social ontology literature. However, in addition to the claim that social kinds are mind-dependent, it is often asserted that social kinds are not real because they are mind-dependent. Call this view social kind anti-realism. To defend their view, social kind anti-realists must accomplish two tasks. First, they must identify a dependence relation that obtains between (...) class='Hi'>social kinds and our mental states. Call this the Dependence Task. Second, they must show that social kinds are not real because they are mind-dependent. Call this the Anti-Realist Task. In this paper, I consider several different ways of defining the relation that is supposed to obtain between social kinds and our mental states. With respect to each relation, I argue that either it fails to accomplish the Dependence Task, or it fails to accomplish the Anti-Realist Task. As such, anyone who wishes to defend social kind anti-realism must provide an alternative explanation of how social kinds depend on our mental states in a way that impugns their reality. In the absence of such an explanation, there is no reason to endorse social kind anti-realism. (shrink)

This is a book that deserves wide attention."—June Howard, American Literature.

Groff defends 'realism about causality' through close discussions of Kant, Hilary Putnam, Brian Ellis and Charles Taylor, among others. In so doing she affirms critical realism, but with several important qualifications. In particular, she rejects the theory of truth advanced by Roy Bhaskar. She also attempts to both clarify and correct earlier critical realist attempts to apply realism about causality to the social sciences. By connecting issues in metaphysics and philosophy of science to the problem of (...) relativism, Groff bridges the gap between the philosophical literature and broader debates surrounding socio-political theory and poststructuralist thought. This unique approach will make the book of interest to philosophers and socio-political theorists alike. (shrink)

Drawing on philosophical pragmatism, Tamanaha formulates a framework for a realistic approach to socio-legal theory. The strengths of this approach are contrasted with that of the major schools of socio-legal theory by application to core issues in this area. Thus Tamanaha explores the problematic state of socio-legal studies, the relationship between behaviour and meaning, the notion of legal ideology, the problem of indeterminacy in rule following and application, and the structure of judicial decision making. These issues are tackled in a (...) clear and concise fashion while articulating a social theory of law that draws equally from legal theory and socio-legal theory. `This book provides a useful, and at times provocative, review of recent developments in legal theory. Because it covers considerable territory, it should be a good addition to one's professional library... there is much to commend in this book. It is well written, ably argued, and generally knowledgeable. It treats controversial topics forthrightly...an excellent review of the legal theory literature.... It should provide a worthwhile venture into familiar debates rendered from a perspective that owes allegiance to no side.' Law and Politics Book Review `by any criterion and excellent book...Tamanaha has produced a work which should feature as a core text in jurisprudence courses' Oxford Journal of Legal Studies `This is the most significant piece of work for anybody in Jurisprudence, Socio-Legal Studies, or Legal Theory' Neil MacCormick `a rich insight into almost every question legal theory has vexed itself over the past twenty-five years' Stanley Fish. (shrink)

Older single women in Australia are increasingly experiencing homelessness. Age and gender seem inherently related to single older women’s housing crises, but no attempt has been made to account for the causes of their homelessness through an intersectional lens. This article develops a complex and contingent causal explanation of the structures and mechanisms implicated in growing homelessness for this group. We demonstrate an original use of critical realist-informed intersectional analysis which is characterized by stratified social ontology and emergence. We (...) theoretically reframe existing literature to demonstrate how the intersectional causal powers of gender and age (‘gender*age’) discrimination and conventional life course experiences intersect to generate financial precarity for older women. Our causal model explains how economic insecurity, structural and individual contexts, and crisis events interact, challenging older women’s housing security and precipitating first-time homelessness later in life. (shrink)

Dictionary of Critical Realism fills a vital gap in the literature. The dictionary seeks to redress the problem of accessibility by explaining all the main concepts and key developments. It has more than 500 entires on these themes, with contributions from many leading critical realists, and is thoroughly cross-referenced. However, this text does not stop at the elucidation of concepts. It incorporates surveys of critical realist work and prospects in more than fifty areas of study across the humanities (...) and social sciences, thereby demonstrating the appropriate use and possibilities of the concepts in action."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

Realism and Russia? Realism is a notion with multiple meanings, so options abound as to how the two might connect with one another. An old Russian proverb conveys a realist message about social properties: "An individual in Rssia was composed of three parts: a body, a soul, and a passport." (Ruben 1985, 83) Having a passport signals the possession of a complex set of social properties, and if these are taken to be real in some appropriate (...) sense, one is inplying a realist view in social ontology. In another sense of the word, realism is a live issues in the study of international relations. Political realism considers the behaviour of states by emphasizing the importance of national interests and the drive for power on the one hand, and the suppression of moral concerns on the other (e.g. Donnelly 2000). Russian realists hold diverse views about the newly emerged unipolar global power structure and Russia's proper strategy for adjusting to this structure (e.g. Shakleyina and Bogaturov 2004). Realism is a family of viewpoints also in the arts (including painting, music and literature) and their study. Socialist realism is a version that used to be an official doctrine in Russia, gently requesting artists to optimistically represent society's march towards communism, glorifying the heroic role of the proletariat in driving the process. Socialist realism was also well known elsewhere. So much so that in the 1970s, a philosophy professor at the University of Helsinki announced to give a lecture course on "scientific realism" but on its way to the university catalogue through the university administration, the title of the course was transformed into "socialist realism". In the spirit of rectifying that old administrative mistake, the remards to follow deal with scientifit realism as a philosophy of science. The general issue to be addressed is how the social sciences relate to the social world, in both directions. (shrink)

Despite the rapidly growing literature on realism, there’s little discussion of the ideology critique of John Rawls offered by one of its leading lights, Raymond Geuss. There is little understanding of what (most of) this critique consists in and few discussions of how Rawls’ approach to political theorising may be defended against it. To remedy this situation, this article reconstructs the realist ideology critique of Rawls advanced by Raymond Geuss, which has three prongs: (1) Rawls’ political theory offers (...) insufficient tools to uncover and address distortions of our political values, beliefs, and intuitions; (2) it unacceptably reinforces these distortions by unduly legitimating them; and (3) it diverts attention from important features of real politics. With this done, I finish by considering how Rawlsians can respond, chiefly by employing a kind of reflective equilibrium, or reflective endorsement, broad enough to encompass different forms of genealogy and ideology critique. (shrink)

We introduce the notion of complexity, first at an intuitive level and then in relatively more concrete terms, explaining the various characteristic features of complex systems with examples. There exists a vast literature on complexity, and our exposition is intended to be an elementary introduction, meant for a broad audience. -/- Briefly, a complex system is one whose description involves a hierarchy of levels, where each level is made of a large number of components interacting among themselves. The time (...) evolution of such a system is of a complex nature, depending on the interactions among subsystems in the next level below the one under consideration and, at the same time, conditioned by the level above, where the latter sets the context for the evolution. Generally speaking, the interactions among the constituents of the various levels lead to a dynamics characterized by numerous characteristic scales, each level having its own set of scales. What is more, a level commonly exhibits ‘emergent properties’ that cannot be derived from considerations relating to its component systems taken in isolation or to those in a different contextual setting. In the dynamic evolution of some particular level, there occurs a self-organized emergence of a higher level and the process is repeated at still higher levels. -/- The interaction and self-organization of the components of a complex system follow the principle commonly expressed by saying that the ‘whole is different from the sum of the parts’. In the case of systems whose behavior can be expressed mathematically in terms of differential equations this means that the interactions are nonlinear in nature. -/- While all of the above features are not universally exhibited by complex systems, these are nevertheless indicative of a broad commonness relative to which individual systems can be described and analyzed. There exist measures of complexity which, once again, are not of universal applicability, being more heuristic than exact. The present state of knowledge and understanding of complex systems is itself an emerging one. Still, a large number of results on various systems can be related to their complex character, making complexity an immensely fertile concept in the study of natural, biological, and social phenomena. -/- All this puts a very definite limitation on the complete description of a complex system as a whole since such a system can be precisely described only contextually, relative to some particular level, where emergent properties rule out an exact description of more than one levels within a common framework. -/- We discuss the implications of these observations in the context of our conception of the so-called noumenal reality that has a mind-independent existence and is perceived by us in the form of the phenomenal reality. The latter is derived from the former by means of our perceptions and interpretations, and our efforts at sorting out and making sense of the bewildering complexity of reality takes the form of incessant processes of inference that lead to theories. Strictly speaking, theories apply to models that are constructed as idealized versions of parts of reality, within which inferences and abstractions can be carried out meaningfully, enabling us to construct the theories. -/- There exists a correspondence between the phenomenal and the noumenal realities in terms of events and their correlations, where these are experienced as the complex behavior of systems or entities of various descriptions. The infinite diversity of behavior of systems in the phenomenal world are explained within specified contexts by theories. The latter are constructs generated in our ceaseless attempts at interpreting the world, and the question arises as to whether these are reflections of `laws of nature' residing in the noumenal world. This is a fundamental concern of scientific realism, within the fold of which there exists a trend towards the assumption that theories express truths about the noumenal reality. We examine this assumption (referred to as a ‘point of view’ in the present essay) closely and indicate that an alternative point of view is also consistent within the broad framework of scientific realism. This is the view that theories are domain-specific and contextual, and that these are arrived at by independent processes of inference and abstractions in the various domains of experience. Theories in contiguous domains of experience dovetail and interpenetrate with one another, and bear the responsibility of correctly explaining our observations within these domains. -/- With accumulating experience, theories get revised and the network of our theories of the world acquires a complex structure, exhibiting a complex evolution. There exists a tendency within the fold of scientific realism of interpreting this complex evolution in rather simple terms, where one assumes (this, again, is a point of view) that theories tend more and more closely to truths about Nature and, what is more, progress towards an all-embracing ‘ultimate theory’ -- a foundational one in respect of all our inquiries into nature. We examine this point of view closely and outline the alternative view -- one broadly consistent with scientific realism -- that there is no ‘ultimate’ law of nature, that theories do not correspond to truths inherent in reality, and that successive revisions in theory do not lead monotonically to some ultimate truth. Instead, the theories generated in succession are incommensurate with each other, testifying to the fact that a theory gives us a perspective view of some part of reality, arrived at contextually. Instead of resembling a monotonically converging series successive theories are analogous to asymptotic series. -/- Before we summarize all the above considerations, we briefly address the issue of the complexity of the {\it human mind} -- one as pervasive as the complexity of Nature at large. The complexity of the mind is related to the complexity of the underlying neuronal organization in the brain, which operates within a larger biological context, its activities being modulated by other physiological systems, notably the one involving a host of chemical messengers. The mind, with no materiality of its own, is nevertheless emergent from the activity of interacting neuronal assemblies in the brain. As in the case of reality at large, there can be no ultimate theory of the mind, from which one can explain and predict the entire spectrum of human behavior, which is an infinitely rich and diverse one. (shrink)

Many formulations of scientific realism (SR) include some commitment to metaphysical realism (MR). On the other hand, authors like Schlick, Carnap and Putnam held forms of scientific realism coupled with metaphysical antirealism (and this has analogies in Kant). So we might ask: do scientific realists really need MR? or is MR already implied by SR, so that SR is actually incompatible with metaphysical antirealism? And if MR must really be added to SR, why is that so? And (...) which additional arguments scientific realists need to support it? After reviewing and classifying a number of different kinds of realisms, metaphysical and not, I answer that SR and MR are logically independent of each other, so that there is no logical inconsistency in holding SR while rejecting MR. However, I argue that the “no miracle” argument (NMA) not only is the “ultimate” argument for SR, but by the same token it also supports MR. Therefore one cannot effectively defend SR without also subscribing to MR, but this can be done at no additional argumentative cost. I show this by discussing not only the standard version of the NMA, but also three more versions which are not usually considered as such in the literature. (shrink)

This article demonstrates how critical realism can resolve persistent theoretical debates in the human rights literature. Critical realism is a philosophy of science that proposes a complex ontological framework to study causal relations. Methodological and theoretical decisions in research are always premised on some ontological presumption whether they are explicitly stated or not. However, much of the social sciences follow the discipline’s empiricist orthodoxy which often dismisses ontological inquiry. As a consequence, theoretical and methodological debates persist (...) without scholars recognizing how they reflect deeper ontological differences. I argue that this is the case with human rights research and demonstrate how critical realism can resolve tensions between universalism and relativism. Critical realism proposes that social relations resolve across multiple ontological levels. This ontological framework can illustrate how universal structures on one level can generate diverse human rights standards on another level relative to the cultural conditions that bring them about. (shrink)

I focus on the metaphysical underpinnings of the censure theory of punishment, according to which punishment is justified if and because it expresses disapproval of injustice. Specifically, I seek to answer the question of what makes claims about proportionate censure true or false. In virtue of what is it the case that one form of censure is stronger than another, or that punishment is the censure fitting injustice? Are these propositions true merely because of social conventions, as per the (...) dominant view of philosophers such as Jean Hampton and Joel Feinberg, or is there an objective fact of the matter to which these propositions correspond? Such questions have been scarcely addressed in the analytic literature, but it is urgent to do so in a systematic way. As I make clear, what is probably the primary motivation for holding the censure theory of punishment depends on the truth of certain controversial theses about normative realism. -/- . (shrink)

Contrary to what is claimed in the literature, a social theory of meaning is committed neither to a social relativism, nor does it have any sort of an idealistic implication. Such a theory of meaning can be seen as being about our epistemic access to a world that is causally and ontologically independent of the social practices which determine meaning. If these social practices are conceived in terms of open-ended I-thou relations between individuals, we avoid (...) any reduction of what is correct in our thoughts about the world to social facts. We are committed to a sort of response-dependence of our concepts, but one which does not infringe upon realism. The upshot is a pragmatic realism: pragmatic, because the meaning of our thoughts is determined by social practices; a realism, because whether or not our thoughts about the world are true supervenes on the way the world is. (shrink)

With particular reference to nineteenth-century French culture, the contributors explore the role realism has played in the social construction of gender and sexuality. Among their subjects are nineteenth-century physiologies, photographs, caricatures, and Balzac's Comedie humaine; the ethnographic claims of the Goncourts' naturalism and the historical claims of Zola's; and the allure of exotica displayed at new museums and international expositions.

Tuukka Kaidesoja’s new book is a welcome addition to the literature on critical realism. He shows good judgement in defending Roy Bhaskar’s argument for causal powers while criticising its framing as a transcendental argument. In criticising Bhaskar’s concept of a real-but-not-actual ontological domain, however, he discards an essential element of a realist ontology, even a naturalised one: a recognition of the transfactual aspect of causal power.

Some self-declared defenders of democracy maintain that a suspension of the ‘cosmopolitan agenda’ is necessary to blunt the appeal of insurgent right wing populism. I argue that cosmopolitans should support this ‘inward turn’ when doing so helps to preserve the long-term viability of that agenda. Cosmopolitans must certainly motivate citizens of different countries to support it. However, they must also encourage those citizens to support democracy and inclusion at home, for support for the cosmopolitan agenda becomes less likely in its (...) absence. Therefore, cosmopolitans should support the inward turn when doing so makes it harder for right wing populists to erode popular support for democracy, inclusion, and the cosmopolitan agenda. Practically speaking, then, cosmopolitanism should not look that different from liberal nationalism in the short-term. Unlike liberal nationalists, though, cosmopolitans should only prioritize the defense of democracy and inclusion at home for practical reasons – not normative reasons. Accordingly, cosmopolitanism should look different from liberal nationalism in the long run, but not radically so. I engage with the empirical literature on public opinion and pay special attention to Lea Ypi’s argument for ‘statist cosmopolitanism.’. (shrink)

A new book by Manuel DeLanda and Graham Harman, The Rise of Realism, is reviewed. The Rise of Realism is an introductory text that aims to clarify the difficulties that surround the philosophical concepts of realism and materialism (as well as their antitheses). This primer intended to introduce students and interested scholars to the concepts and literature on realism and its place in the continental tradition of philosophy and related social theory. The book’s core (...) methodology is to outline the various appropriations of the terms realism and materialism currently discussed in different sub-disciplines of philosophy as well as provide the reader with the authors’ own unique positions on realism. The book dialogue prose is stylistically engaging, lucid and academically current, providing both novice readers and seasoned scholars with an easy-to-read exploration of current continental thought that also has far-reaching implications for other disciplines such as critical theory, social theory and science and technology studies. (shrink)

Recent political theory has seen a wave of interest in the topic of compromise. Its conceptualizations tend to be unstable, however, resulting in varying and shifting appreciations of compromise, not least in debates between political realists and liberal moralists. This article presents a new and integrated theoretical framework of compromise to facilitate theoretical and empirical enquiry. In this framework, every compromise has two underlying dimensions (inter-actor and intra-actor), four necessary and sufficient elements (conflict, consensus, concessions, and consent), and four corresponding (...) conceptual boundaries (stalemate, synthesis, surrender, and shift-of-position). The framework is used to show how compromise can clarify and mitigate the Rawlsian contrast between modus vivendi and overlapping consensus and thus between realism and moralism. Ultimately, the framework not only serves to transcend established distinctions in the theoretical literature, but also to develop counterintuitive hypotheses for empirical research and stimulate the phenomenological enquiry of political compromise making. (shrink)

We are moral apes, a difference between humans and our relatives that has received significant recent attention in the evolutionary literature. Evolutionary accounts of morality have often been recruited in support of error theory: moral language is truth-apt, but substantive moral claims are never true. In this article, we: locate evolutionary error theory within the broader framework of the relationship between folk conceptions of a domain and our best scientific conception of that same domain; within that broader framework, argue (...) that error theory and vindication are two ends of a continuum, and that in the light of our best science, many folk conceptual structures are neither hopelessly wrong nor fully vindicated; and argue that while there is no full vindication of morality, no seamless reduction of normative facts to natural facts, nevertheless one important strand in the evolutionary history of moral thinking does support reductive naturalism—moral facts are facts about cooperation, and the conditions and practices that support or undermine it. In making our case for, we first respond to the important error theoretic argument that the appeal to moral facts is explanatorily redundant, and second, we make a positive case that true moral beliefs are a ‘fuel for success’, a map by which we steer, flexibly, in a variety of social interactions. The vindication, we stress, is at most partial: moral cognition is a complex mosaic, with a complex genealogy, and selection for truth-tracking is only one thread in that genealogy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BELSEY ON LANGUAGE AND REALISM by Noel Carroll Like much contemporary literary theory, Catherine Belsey's influential Critical Practice1 is antirealist, where "antirealism" refers both to the rejection of a putative literary style and to the espousal of an epistemological stance, the latter ostensibly grounded in a theory of language, adapted from Ferdinand Saussure. Moreover, these two antirealisms are connected in that stylistic antirealism is, in part, advanced as (...) a consequence of epistemological —or perhaps more aptly "linguistic"— antirealism. Belsey's theory is avowedly political, designed to challenge the operation of ideology in literature, particularly realist literature. That is, though Belsey discusses literature of several different periods and of different genres, her primary preoccupation is with something she calls expressive realism, a tendency perhaps best exemplified by the nineteenth-century novel and still pursued by our less experimental writers. Purportedly, expressive realism is underwritten by at least two tenets: (1) realism insofar as it presumes that literature can accurately represent reality, and (2) a variant of expressionism insofar as it presumes we have access to the thoughts and intentions of authors {CP, p. 7). In this note, I shall concentrate exclusively on the linguistic arguments— which Belsey calls "Post Saussurean" — that are mobilized to discredit the first presumption of literary realism, its claim to represent reality. For Belsey, a major problem with expressive realism is that this sort of literature presents itself or is taken as an accurate reflection of reality. Belsey sometimes makes this point by saying that such literature purports to be an accurate representation of reality. At other moments, that which such literature claims to reflect accurately is said to be experiences of reality. But these alternative claims are also segued by 124 Noel Carroll125 saying that what is reflected are experiences of reality which are recognized to be true. Given the text, the variant of the reflection theory that appears to occupy Belsey most is the notion that literature reflects reality — that is, holds a mirror up to nature, as Hamlet might have it. This raises Belsey's political hackles because she believes that a commitment to the plausibility of the goal of reflecting life accurately invests realist literature with the aura of a socially unmediated, transhistorical, "natural" account of human life rather than an ideologically constructed one. In order to forestall this supposedly political repercussion, Belsey, taking advantage of her expanded version of Saussurean linguistics, charges that realism misconstrues the relationship between literature and the world. Indeed, ana this is the crux of her postSaussurean argument, the error here can be traced to something deeper, viz., a misconstrual of the relation between language and the world, of which the pretensions of literary realism are merely but an instance. Stated baldly, Belsey aspires to debunk literature's claims to realism by denying language's claims to realism. This may seem rather like killing a fly by using a cannon. And, in any case, one would have thought that questions about the representational efficacy of language were logically independent of the issue of the ideological operation of literary realism. However, Belsey, like many contemporary literary theorists, mistakenly believes that one contests literary realism by propounding epistemological reservations about language. Belsey claims that her linguistic antirealism derives from Saussure's putative discovery that "far from providing a set of labels for entities which exist independently in the world, language precedes the existence of independent entities, making the world intelligible by differentiating between concepts" {CP, p. 38). That language always precedes the existence of that to which it refers is a truly astounding discovery. And we should wish to know how Saussure, according to Belsey's interpretation, came upon it. For Saussure, language is a system of signs. Signs are composed of two elements: a material element— a sound-image or graphic image— called a signifier, and a conceptual element, what in different jargons is referred to as a meaning, an intension, or a connotation, and which in Saussure's terminology is called a signified. At this point it pays to notice what is missing in this account, viz., what other theorists sometimes call the reference, extension, or denotation of a term, that is, the set of 126Philosophy and... (shrink)

Older single women in Australia are increasingly experiencing homelessness. Age and gender seem inherently related to single older women’s housing crises, but no attempt has been made to account for the causes of their homelessness through an intersectional lens. This article develops a complex and contingent causal explanation of the structures and mechanisms implicated in growing homelessness for this group. We demonstrate an original use of critical realist-informed intersectional analysis which is characterized by stratified social ontology and emergence. We (...) theoretically reframe existing literature to demonstrate how the intersectional causal powers of gender and age (‘gender*age’) discrimination and conventional life course experiences intersect to generate financial precarity for older women. Our causal model explains how economic insecurity, structural and individual contexts, and crisis events interact, challenging older women’s housing security and precipitating first-time homelessness later in life. (shrink)

Although the issue of innovation is widely recognized in many scientific disciplines, innovators themselves have received scant attention in research literature. The aim of this study is to explore the experience of innovators from the perspective of the social agency paradigm developed by Margaret Archer, which suggests that structural and cultural properties affect individual reflexivity through the accessibility of resources and the beliefs that agents endorse. Data was collected through individual in-depth interviews with Polish innovators, revealing that they (...) function in an entrepreneurial culture with ease in establishing networking relations. However, institutions in the national innovation system continue to reflect post-Soviet hierarchies, creating a division between those who have access to resources and those who do not. The study supports the hypothesis that post-Soviet culture is a factor in determining the low innovation level in Poland. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:131. THE HUME LITERATURE FOR 1978 The Hume Literature from 1925 to 1976 has been thoroughly covered in my book Fifty Years of Hume Scholarship : A Bibliographical Guide (Edinburgh University Press, 1978; J¿ 5.50), which also lists the main earlier writings on Hume. Publications of the year 1977 were listed in Hume Studies last November. What follows here will bring the record up to the end (...) of 1978. Readers are invited to inform me of any omissions, and to send me offprints of their own articles. The intention is to maintain a complete bibliographical record of critical work on Hume, by the regular publication in Hume Studies of an annual bibliography covering the previous year, with addenda consisting of items omitted through ignorance in previous years. References to recently-appearing reviews (of books from earlier lists) are given at the end. The following abbreviations of journal titles are used here: APQAmerican Philosophical Quarterly JHIJournal of the History of Ideas JHPJournal of the History of Philosophy JPJournal of Philosophy PASProceedings of the Aristotelian Society PBPhilosophical Books PQPhilosophical Quarterly PRPhilosophical Review RIPRevue Internationale de Philosophie RMReview of Metaphysics TLSTimes Literary Supplement Other abbreviations should be obvious enough, and mainly follow the British Standard (no. 4148). ANSCOMBE, G. E. M. 'Rules, Rights, and Promises', Midwest Studies in Phil. 3, 318-23. ARMSTRONG, D. M. Universals and Scientific Realism, vol. 2: A Theory of Universals, 85-90. Cambridge. ATTFIELD, R. God and the Secular, esp. chs. 5-6. Cardiff. 132. BAIER, A. 'Hume's Analysis of Pride', JP 75, 27-40. (on Davidson 1976) BALDI, M. 'Le edizioni italiane dei Saggi economici di David Hume', Riv. crit. Stor. FiI. 33, 275-96. BARNOUW, D. 'Skepticism as a Literary Mode - Hume, David and Musil, Robert', Mod. Lang. Notes 93, 852-70. BASU, D. K. 'Who is the Real Hume in the Dialogues?', Indian Phil. Q. 6, 21-8. BEAUCHAMP. see ROBINSON. BECK, L. W. Essays on Kant and Hume. New Haven & London, (includes reprints of his 1967a and b, and 1974, and the first Eng. tr. of his 1969; also a new paper,? Prussian Hume and a Scottish Kant', on pp. Ill ff) BLACKMAN, L. L. 'The Logical Impossibility of Miracles in Hume', Int. J. Phil. Relig. 9, 179-87. BOSS, G. "1I Promise": Les fonctions du langage chez Hume et Austin', Revue Théol. et Phil. 110, 29-48. BRACKEN, H. M. 'Bayle, Berkeley, and Hume', EighteenthCentury Studies 11, 227-45. BROWNSEY, P. F. 'Hume and the Social Contract', PQ 28, 132-48. BURKE, J. J. 'Hume's History of England: Waking the English from a Dogmatic Slumber', Studies in 18th-century Culture 7, 235-50. CAPALDI, N. 'Hume as Social Scientist', RM 32, 99-123. CARNIE, R. H. 'The Hume-Hailes Relationship', Forum for Mod. Lang. Studies 14, 289-303. CARTWRIGHT, N. 'Comments on Wesley Salmon's "Science and Religion..."', Phil. Studies 33, 177-83. COHEN, Benjamin. 'Contrariety and Causality in Hume', Hume Studies 4, 29-39. CONNIFF, J. 'Hume on Political Parties: The Case for Hume as a Whig', Eighteenth-Century Studies 12, 150-73. CUMMINS, R. 'The Missing Shade of Blue', PR 87, 548-65. DOUBLE, R. 'Hume's Empirical Argument for Empiricism', Sth J. Phil. 16, 329-38. 133. ERDE, E. L. 'Founding Morality: "Hume v. Plato" or "Hume & Plato"?', S. -west. J. Phil. 9, 19-25. FARR, J. 'Hume, Hermeneutics, and History: A "Sympathetic" Account', Hist. & Theory 17, 285-310. FLEW, A. 'Inconsistency within a Reconciling Project', Hume Studies 4, 1-6. GASKIN, J. C. A. Hume's Philosophy of Religion, (xi, 188 pp.* London. [Times Higher Ed. Suppl. 21 July (1978), 17; TLS 28 July (1978), 863; RB 20 (1979), 68-71] GINSBERG, R. 'Hume and the Social Contract', EighteenthCentury Life 4, 91-4. GUPTA, G. 'Another Look at the Buddha-Hume "Connection"', Indian Phil. Q. 5, 371-86. GUPTA, R. 'Certain Aspects of the Causal Theories of the Buddhist, Hume and Mill', Indian Phil. Q. 5, 319-35. HAAKONSSEN, K. 'Hume's Obligations', Hume Studies 4, 7-17. HACKING, I. 'Hume's Species of Probability', Phil. Studies 33, 21-37. HALL, R. Fifty Years of Hume Scholarship: A bibliographical guide. (x, 150 pp.) Edinburgh. [British Book News... (shrink)

ABSTRACT As doctoral students from New Zealand and Australia, advised by supervision teams with a diversity of critical realist experience from limited to none, we came independently to the 2018 Critical Realism conference – primed to seek increased understanding, confidence, motivation, and reassurance. We certainly found these things from the pre-conference, presentations, and individuals within the critical realist community. We also found each other, and a virtual writing group was born. This article is a description of what we did, (...) why, and the outcomes we experienced over the final two years completing our theses. It identifies the structures, contexts, motivations, and mechanisms from which our emotional, critical realist and writing-related outcomes emerged. We outline the roles of serendipitous timing, culture, different disciplinary approaches, administrative structures, and types of interactions on the social learning we developed. We anchor our discussion in recent theoretical literature about the role of writing groups in doctoral education. (shrink)

A brilliant collection of short essays on literary subjects--e.g. Beckett, Balzac, Proust, Thomas Mann, Dickens, Goethe, Heine, the lyric, realism, the essay, and the contemporary novel--by the great social theorist (1903-1969), originally published in 1958 as Noten zur literature (Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main), and here translated by Adorno's former student, Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

In recent years a general consensus has been developing in the philosophy of science to the effect that strong social constructivist accounts are unable to adequately account for scientific practice. Recently, however, a number of commentators have formulated an attenuated version of constructivism that purports to avoid the difficulties that plague the stronger claims of its predecessors. Interestingly this attenuated form of constructivism finds philosophical support from a relatively recent turn in the literature concerning scientific realism. Arthur (...) Fine and a number of other commentators have argued that the realism debate ought to be abandoned. The rationale for this argument is that the debate is sterile for it has, it is claimed, no consequence for actual scientific practice, and therefore does not advance our understanding of science or its practice. Recent “softer” accounts of social constructivism also hold a similar agnostic stance to the realism question. I provide a survey of these various agnostic stances and show how they form a general position that I shall refer to as “the anti-philosophical stance”. I then demonstrate that the anti-philosophical stance fails by identifying difficulties that attend its proposal to ban philosophical interpretation. I also provide examples of instances where philosophical stances to the realism question affect scientific practice. (shrink)

In Culture, Genre, and Literary Vocation, Michael Davitt Bell charts the important and often overlooked connection between literary culture and authors' careers. Bell's influential essays on nineteenth-century American writers—originally written for such landmark projects as The Columbia Literary History of the United States and The Cambridge History of American Literature—are gathered here with a major new essay on Richard Wright. Throughout, Bell revisits issues of genre with an eye toward the unexpected details of authors' lives, and invites us to (...) reconsider the hidden functions that terms such as "romanticism" and "realism" served for authors and their critics. Whether tracing the demands of the market or the expectations of readers, Bell examines the intimate relationship between literary production and culture; each essay closely links the milieu in which American writers worked with the trajectory of their storied careers. (shrink)

This article argues that Sartre’s “What Is Literature?” had a profound and direct influence on David Foster Wallace’s conception of literature. At the very least, a number of factors oblige scholars to take this interpretation seriously. We know that Sartre’s existentialism pervades Wallace’s fiction, that Wallace repeatedly mentioned the Existentialists throughout his work, that he’d learned French to read them in the original, and that Sartre was one of his favorites, as testified by Zadie Smith. Most importantly, a (...) comparative analysis of Sartre’s text and Wallace’s nonfiction shows not only striking parallels but also almost exact repetitions in the writers’ fundamental ideals. In this sense, Sartre’s direct influence on Wallace appears so major as to invest multiple specific details of Wallace’s conception of literature both in its content and in the logical structuring of that content. In this article, we explore the extent of this influence through a structured investigation of its multiple features, showing that many of Wallace’s tenets – the rejection of Realism, the affirmation of meaning-as-use and of literature as a means to human communion and individual and social engagement, and many many more – follow from Sartre’s discourse. (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 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)

Hayden White and Jacques Rancière both drew on the account of the history of European literature offered by Erich Auerbach to construct their own theoretical treatments of historical and literary writing: White conceptualized the figure-fulfillment model, modernist realism, and figural realism, while Rancière critically commented on the undemocratic character of the writings of the Annales school and sought egalitarian moments in Western literature. I will examine White’s and Rancière’s readings of Auerbach and partially compare the two (...) theoretical endeavors. The purpose of this analysis will be, first, to critically compare some of the two authors’ proposals and, second, to include Rancière’s work into the English-language debate on historical theory. In bringing them together, I will primarily ask how White and Rancière have articulated the relationship between politics and historical and literary writing in their commentaries on Auerbach’s work. (shrink)

Resumen: En la era del cientificismo, no es sorprendente revivir la visión realista de Lukács de la literatura. Aunque algunos estudiosos han criticado su visión holística, a juzgar por la preocupación por la realidad de la vida humana y la crítica de la realidad social, su visión realista de la literatura es exactamente lo que los tiempos necesitan. En el contexto del postmodernismo, cuando se critica su visión universal e ideológica del pueblo, se ignora la utilidad de esta visión (...) universal para lograr los efectos realistas de la crítica literaria basada en la visión universal irracional. Su "realismo" no es lo mismo que la "imitación" del realismo clásico, ni la "reproducción" del realismo crítico. La creación artística, incluida la literatura, no es solo una simple adhesión a la realidad social, sino un reflejo de la realidad social histórica general a través de prototipos. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate the function of the aesthetic paradigm of German idealism within Adorno’s thought. In order to do so, I have chosen to focus on the issue of the social significance of the work of art and the role played by the concept of literary material. Adorno’s aesthetics, in fact, can be read as a reinterpretation of the idealist aesthetic model based precisely on a non-idealist notion such as that of aesthetic material.If one (...) is to allow a seemingly brutal simplification, there are two ways to think about the social meaning of literature. One identifies somehow the subject of the text, assesses whether or not this challenges the society from which the literary work stems, and on this ground establishes its social character. According to this perspective, Brecht’s Threepenny Opera and Sciascia’s The Day of the Owl can be seen as socially engaged literature, while Proust’s Recherche cannot, or can only to a lesser extent. The other approach argues instead that any literary work, and in any of its instances, says something about the society in which it takes shape. In this contribution I would like to focus on this latter approach. In particular, I am interested in understanding how literature is connected to society, that is, through which identifiable elements literary works express certain aspects of society. The Hegelian idealistic idea according to which Greek tragedy expresses the constitutive features of Athenian society, and which is found again and again in the authors who in various ways have taken up Hegel’s legacy, is generally accepted as such and valued for the explanatory opportunities it offers. It is my opinion, however, that one notion in particular can be retrieved within the whole inherited baggage of that aesthetic tradition, which may be able to further clarify the relationship between literature and society. This concept is that of material and the author who has most thoroughly investigated it is Adorno. In this paper I will try to outline the main features of a counterintuitive notion such as that of “literary material” and thereby explain why it plays such an important role in Adorno’s rework of the aesthetic paradigm of German idealism. The concept of material, in fact, is key to the definition of another aesthetic category around which, according to Adorno, most of the problems connected to works of art gravitate, that is to say, the notion of form. From Adorno’s aesthetics, in fact, one of his most insightful readers, Peter Szondi, draws the main principle for his study of the historical form of modern drama, namely the idea that form is essentially a precipitation, a sedimentation of contents. The work of art, then, at least according to this definition, is essentially identified by its form. Or, better said, the artwork must be interpreted as the way in which a certain (historical) content sediments in a certain external form. That the form of the work of art is precipitated content means, in simple terms, that no effective disjunction can be assumed between form and content. This is how Adorno reinterprets the concept of “identity of form and content” stressed by classical aesthetics. The content is such only insofar as it is precipitated into a certain form. This amounts to saying that no objective distinction can be established between one and the other. Now, if one were to ask how the form is made, Adorno’s answer is quite straightforward: the form is made by means of organization and, precisely, by means of the organization of the material. As one reads in Aesthetic Theory, in fact, “the substantial element of genres and forms has its locus in the historical needs of their materials,” and the particular form of an artwork is defined as the “organization” of its “materials” (Adorno 1970, transl. 1997: 201). The concept of material, therefore, is key to the definition of the very notion of work of art in its constituent components, namely the relationship between form and content. In this paper I will first of all clarify the notion of artistic material in general and subsequently I will turn to strictly literary material. Finally, and this is the main goal of this essay, I will show to what extent this definition of the material possibly contributes to a better understanding of a widely and variedly debated literary phenomenon of our time, namely the form of the so-called postmodern novel. (shrink)

The third section considers the relevance of Levinas's work for reassessments of the realist novel through essays on Austen, Dickens, and George Eliot.

This paper starts from a premise relating to the act of fictional writing about eugenics and the way it may be understood as the embodiment and enactment of social imaginaries. It proposes that literature frequently, if not habitually, expresses the underside of what is expressed in public discourse. That is, far from being the implement of state policy or intervention, it acts in counterpoint to the state, constituting a type of social fantasy in that it explores through (...) the realm of the imagination what might happen. It becomes the arena for contestation, exploration, and nuancing as it essays how ideas from public, ‘real’ life, might transform when acted out. The paper considers two sorts of literary case. First it looks at that of ‘naïve’ literature, harnessed unashamedly to a specific sociological discourse of eugenics. Then, using primarily Ibsen, it considers a subset, the case of literature that does not set out to be explicitly in the service of the cause of eugenics, but is appropriated and disseminated from a platform of eugenics. Lastly, taking the example of Unamuno’s Amor y pedagogía the paper considers literature that exists in a quite different sphere of public awareness. It shows awareness of the arguments and precepts of eugenics and related beliefs and practices, but acts as a transitional space to enable such ideas to be entertained and thought about, without a requirement of acceptance or belief. (shrink)

Critical realism has a reputation for requiring substantial intellectual commitment and time to gain understanding, and being difficult to operationalize as an empirical research methodology. Our paper employs the theoretical framework of ‘threshold concepts’ to explore these issues. We illustrate the five qualities of ‘threshold concepts’ using existing literature by scholars describing their journey of engagement with critical realism. We then apply the framework from three viewpoints. First, we offer the perspective of a budding critical realist scholar (...) who transforms their understanding through reflexivity. Second, we consider the role of critical realist communities of practice, peer-to-peer and social learning. Finally, we look from the standpoint of a more experienced critical realist academic advisor or supervisor working with a student. The paper concludes by asking: what kind of learning and teaching frameworks of engagement can the critical realist community build to better support apprentice critical realists? (shrink)

Some arguments against David Lewis’s modal realism seek to exploit apparent inconsistencies between it and anthropic reasoning. A recent argument, in particular, seeks to exploit an inconsistency between modal realism and typicality anthropic premises, premises common in the literature on physical multiverses, to the effect that observers who are like human observers in certain respects must be typical in the relevant multiverse. Here I argue that typicality premises are not applicable to the description of Lewis’s metaphysical multiverse, (...) where the proportions of metaphysically possible observers possessing the pertinent properties can be independently established by metaphysical reasoning. However, other kinds of reasonable anthropic premises can be seen to be consistent with and usable within modal realism. (shrink)

Because corporate social responsibility can be beneficial to both companies and its stakeholders, interest in factors that support CSR performance has grown in recent years. A thorough integration of CSR in core business processes is particularly important for achieving effective long-term CSR practices. Here, we explored the individual CSR-related competencies that support CSR implementation in a corporate context. First, a systematic literature review was performed in which relevant scientific articles were identified and analyzed. Next, 28 CSR directors and (...) managers were interviewed. The literature review complemented with interview data resulted in the following eight distinct CSR-related competencies: Anticipating CSR challenges; Understanding CSR-relevant systems and subsystems; Understanding CSR-relevant standards; CSR management competencies, including Leading CSR programs, Managing CSR programs, and Identifying and realizing CSR-related business opportunities; Realizing CSR-supportive interpersonal processes; Employing CSR-supportive personal characteristics and attitudes; Personal value-driven competencies, including Ethical normative competencies, Balancing personal ethical values and business objectives, and Realizing self-regulated CSR-related behaviors and active involvement; and Reflecting on personal CSR views and experiences. Based on these results, implications for further research on this topic, as well as implications for practitioners, are discussed. (shrink)

Derek Parfit defended Non-Realist Cognitivism. It is an open secret that this metaethical theory is often thought at best puzzling and at worst objectionably unclear. Employing truthmaker theory, I provide an account of Non-Realist Cognitivism that dispels charges of objectionable unclarity, clarifies how to assess it, and explains why, if plausible, it would be an attractive theory. I develop concerns that the theory involves cheating into an objection that ultimately reveals Non-Realist Cognitivism faces a dilemma. Whether it can escape demands (...) further attention. In bridging metaethics and the truthmaking literature, I illustrate the importance of greater meta-metaphysical reflection in metaethics. (shrink)

This article argues that, as applied to education, the Capabilities Approach pioneered by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum shares a range of philosophical commitments with the work of social realist scholars on the concept of ‘powerful knowledge’. I first trace the history of the concept of powerful knowledge and present critiques put forward by social justice scholars. I then outline the Capabilities Approach, arguing it provides a response to some of these concerns. From here I develop the connection (...) between the two educational paradigms focusing on four areas of affinity. The first is the conceptual similarity between the ‘power’ of powerful knowledge and Nussbaum’s account of a capability. The second is their concern with the reduction of education to technical-instrumentalism, human capital, and other economically driven imperatives. The third is a shared focus on the link between knowledge, human agency, and freedom. The fourth, is a mutual rejection of relativism and embrace of a nuanced universalism. Ultimately, by drawing together these two conceptually rich approaches to the aims and purposes of education, I hope to open a space for theorizing about both capabilities and powerful knowledge that can resolve some of the problems in both. For powerful knowledge, the Capabilities Approach allows a more concrete explication of why access to disciplinary bodies of knowledge is of value to both individuals and society. On the side of the Capabilities Approach, engaging with the concept of powerful knowledge can help give a rationale for how educational knowledge fosters certain centrally important capabilities. (shrink)

One of the more debated topics in the recent realist literature concerns the compatibility of realism and utopianism. Perhaps the greatest challenge to utopian political thought comes from Bernard Williams' realism, which argues, among other things, that political values should be subject to what he calls the ‘realism constraint’, which rules out utopian arguments based on values which cannot be offered by the state as unrealistic and therefore inadmissible. This article challenges that conclusion in two ways. (...) First, it argues that the rationale for accepting Williams' original argument for the ‘realism constraint’ fails. Secondly, it argues that there is at least one genuinely political value of liberty available which is both compatible with realism and something that cannot be offered by the state, namely that of the political anarchist. This opens the way for far more ambitious and utopian forms of realist political thought and implies that the arguments of what we call political anarchists must be met by political argumentation, not simply ruled out by methodological stipulation. (shrink)

Based on the concept of shareholder primacy, many scholars have argued that it is more important for businesses to earn profits for their shareholders than to provide benefits to society at large. Corporate social responsibility is often regarded as an investment that comes at the expense of shareholders. In contrast, research analyzing the connections between the equity ownership structure of a company and its level of CSR engagement suggests that CSR offers benefits to shareholders that go beyond direct financial (...) returns from investments. This study provides a comprehensive review and systematic assessment of theoretical considerations and approaches regarding different forms of equity ownership and their relationships to CSR, and it discusses the relevant benefits and motivations of shareholders. The perceived value of these CSR benefits varies among different types of shareholders, as they assign unequal values to short-term financial or to rather long-term CSR benefits. Based on a literature sample of 146 publications, this review demonstrates central problems inherent in previous analyses. Given the ambiguous and partially contradictory findings of prior research, this study identifies potential moderating influences that help clarify empirical evidence. A contingency approach is suggested in future research, as this can help resolve the problem of contradictory empirical findings and theoretical arguments. (shrink)

In this paper we introduce the view that realism about a social kind K entails that the grounding conditions of K are difficult (or impossible) to manipulate. In other words, we define social kind realism in terms of relative frame manipulability (RFM). In articulating our view, we utilize theoretical resources from Epstein’s (Epstein, The ant trap: Rebuilding the foundations of the Social Sciences. Oxford University Press, 2015) grounding/anchoring model and causal interventionism. After comparing our view (...) with causal and principle-based (Tahko, Synthese 200(2):1–23, 2022) proposals, we motivate RFM by showing that it accommodates important desiderata about the social landscape (such as recognizing the context-relativity of social properties and the emancipatory dimension of social practice). Finally, we consider three objections. First, we tackle frame-necessitarianism (FN), the view that social kind frames are metaphysically necessary (and thus unmanipulable). Secondly, we engage with what Epstein (Epstein, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 99(3):768–781 2019a) calls UNIVERSALITY (the view that social kinds can hold in the absence of anchors) and we argue that it should also be resisted. Finally, we tackle a recent objection from Mason’s (Mason, Philosophical Studies, 178(12):3975–3994) essentialism about social kinds. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging interview Andrew Sayer discusses how he became a realist and then the development of his work over the subsequent decades. He comments on his postdisciplinary approach, his early work on economy and its influences, how he came to write Method in Social Science and the transition in Realism and Social Science to normative critical social science and moral economy. The interview concludes with discussion of his three most recent books and the themes that (...) connect them, not least the ongoing problem of a ‘diabolical double crisis’ of capitalism: extreme inequality and climate change. (shrink)

This paper argues the case for taking a critical realist (CR) approach to social work research. The normativity in social work is often under-communicated in the social sciences, resulting in research that has an unclear value base as its starting point. Social work practice promotes social change and people's development, empowerment, and liberation. By taking a CR of view as a starting point for researching social problems, the focus shifts towards explaining phenomena by revealing (...) and discussing the mechanisms through which they are produced and maintained. Child welfare issues are argued to be “wicked problems”, on top of which the practice of social work itself is a complex field. Two studies from the field of child and family welfare are presented here to illustrate how CR has been fruitfully applied in research on such complex phenomena. These two studies comprise research on child protection assessment and parental high conflict. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging interview, Dave Elder-Vass discusses his main contributions to critical realist theory over two decades. In the first half, he explains his early work on emergence, agency, str...

Among scientific realists and anti-realists, there is a well-known, perennial dispute about the reality and knowability of unobservable objects. This dispute is also present among structural realists, who all agree that science gives us genuine knowledge of structure at the unobservable level (however that structure may be understood). Ontic structural realists reduce or eliminate the ontological role of objects, while epistemic structural realists argue that objects do or might exist but are unknowable. In part because ontic structural realism has (...) some evidence from quantum mechanics and the consequent underdetermination of the metaphysics of objects in its favor, the majority of contemporary structural realists adopt that view. In contrast, I argue that epistemic structural realism is a highly compelling view, particularly in the form that remains agnostic about unobservable objects. This view can remain consistent with the empirical data from quantum mechanics, can give a satisfactory account of the metaphysics of structure, and can distinguish itself from other extant versions of realism. I provide two arguments in favor of agnosticism about objects, the first of which argues that suspending belief is consistent with the impetus of naturalized metaphysics, and the second of which argues that agnosticism about objects is a rational response to reflection on the limits and aims of science. Thus, I show that agnostic epistemic structural realism is a defensible and compelling view in the philosophy of science that demands more attention in the literature. (shrink)

There is a widespread sentiment that social objects such as nation-states, borders, and pieces of money are just figments of our collective imagination and not really ‘out there’ in the world. Call this the ‘antirealist intuition’. Eliminativist, reductive materialist, and immaterialist views of social objects can all make sense of the antirealist intuition, in one way or another. But these views face serious difficulties. A promising alternative view is nonreductive materialism. Yet it is unclear whether and how nonreductive (...) materialists can make sense of the antirealist intuition. I develop a version of nonreductive materialism that is able to meet this explanatory demand. The central idea is that social objects are materially constituted, response-dependent objects. I go on to offer an independent argument in favor of this response-dependent view of social objects. I then suggest that a proponent of this view can appeal to the response-dependent nature of social objects to explain, or explain away, the antirealist intuition. (shrink)