I cannot help but notice the increasing tendency of late to ambiguate the term “critical,” ostensibly in the service of rhetorical ends.
My concern here is with the sense of that term in the concept of “critical realism.” Is it the traditional sense of the term, such as expressing or involving an analysis or evaluation of a phenomena, in this case “realism?” As in the term “critical thinking:”
“[T]he analysis of facts to form a judgment. The subject is complex, and several different definitions exist, which generally include the rational, skeptical, unbiased analysis, or evaluation of factual evidence. Critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. It presupposes assent to rigorous standards of excellence and mindful command of their use. It entails effective communication and problem-solving abilities as well as a commitment to overcome native egocentrism and sociocentrism”
As is suggested here:
“One of the most common forms of post-positivism is a philosophy called critical realism. A critical realist believes that there is a reality independent of our thinking about it that science can study. (This is in contrast with a subjectivist who would hold that there is no external reality – we’re each making this all up!). Positivists were also realists. The difference is that the post-positivist critical realist recognizes that all observation is fallible and has error and that all theory is revisable. In other words, the critical realist is critical of our ability to know reality with certainty. Where the positivist believed that the goal of science was to uncover the truth, the post-positivist critical realist believes that the goal of science is to hold steadfastly to the goal of getting it right about reality, even though we can never achieve that goal! Because all measurement is fallible, the post-positivist emphasizes the importance of multiple measures and observations, each of which may possess different types of error, and the need to use triangulation across these multiple errorful sources to try to get a better bead on what’s happening in reality. The post-positivist also believes that all observations are theory-laden and that scientists (and everyone else, for that matter) are inherently biased by their cultural experiences, world views, and so on. This is not cause to give up in despair, however. Just because I have my world view based on my experiences and you have yours doesn’t mean that we can’t hope to translate from each other’s experiences or understand each other. That is, post-positivism rejects the relativist idea of the incommensurability of different perspectives, the idea that we can never understand each other because we come from different experiences and cultures. Most post-positivists are constructivists who believe that we each construct our view of the world based on our perceptions of it. Because perception and observation is fallible, our constructions must be imperfect.”
[Let’s call this critical1.]
Or, on the other hand, is the sense of the term “critical” that of big “CT” “Critical [social/literary etc.] Theory,” which presupposes the metaphysical existence of abstract entities, such as systems, structures, etc., with causal powers. [See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/.] For instance, as in:
Critical theory is a social theory oriented toward critiquing and changing society as a whole. ... Critical theories aim to dig beneath the surface of social life and uncover the assumptions that keep human beings from a full and true understanding of how the world works. [and/or]…an approach to social philosophy that focuses on reflective assessment and critique of society and culture in order to reveal and challenge power structures.
And which has
…a distinctive aim: to unmask the ideology falsely justifying some form of social or economic oppression—to reveal it as ideology—and, in so doing, to contribute to the task of ending that oppression. Drawing particularly on the thought of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, critical theorists maintain that a primary goal of philosophy is to understand and to help overcome the social structures through which people are dominated and oppressed. Etc.
[We can call this critical2.]
So when the term “critical realism” is used in 2021, are we to think “critical1 realism” or “critical2 realism?” Or are there actually two senses of the [properly used] term, coincident with two corresponding language games, perhaps corresponding to disparate domains.
