A critical realist reply to Walters & Young

Abstract

In a contribution to this journal, Bernard Walters & David Young offer a brief sketch of critical realism and three objections to it. This reply starts with three points of clarification to their sketch before going on to tackle their objections.

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Clive Lawson for his comments on an earlier draft.

Notes

¹At the time of writing W&Y had no access to Fleetwood (1999) or (2001) which pre-empt some of their objections. They had no access either to Lawson (2004).

²Poststructuralists and postmodernists who accept a strong social constructionist ontology would, of course, fully accept the idea that the definition (or discourse), creates the activity. I see nothing in W&Y to suggest they accept this position.

³Such as: pointing to the inappropriateness of the quantification, and reduction to variables, of these hypothesised events; the presupposition of closed systems; the myriad of other false assumptions necessary to maintain systemic closure; and lack of explanatory power – mentioned again below.

⁴This critique is not avoided by retreating to stochastic regularities, or stochastic closed systems, but I cannot elaborate here. On stochastic closure, see Lawson (1999, 2004).

⁵None of my arguments imply that what mainstream economic theory (toy or otherwise) claims about the socio-economic world is correct.

⁶Investigating interpretations of Hume's account of causality is clearly beyond the scope of this paper. Although Dow has led the interpretation of Hume as a realist, critical realists have not really responded, although I raise the issue in Fleetwood (2001).

⁷Dow (2002) sensitises us to the fact that Hume was preoccupied with challenging the Cartesian claim that reality can be known merely from our ideas. This may have led him to play up the role of the empirical, and play down the role of powers when attempting to obtain knowledge of causes.

⁸The notion of causal powers lies at the heart of a critical realist interpretation of causality.

⁹For the sake of brevity the social structures, resources, mechanisms and networks that govern the demand for labour will not be examined here.

¹⁰On the role rtheories, see Boylan & O'Gorman (1995) and Fleetwood (2002).

¹¹The toy theory exemplified by Shapiro & Stiglitz (1990) is an example of theory invoking fictions, and so disqualifies itself from providing bone fide explanations. This does not mean their toy theory is devoid of events: clearly shirking/non-shirking are observable or hypothesised events. It does, however, mean that the deductive method, especially the requirements of theoretical closure, encourage Shapiro & Stiglitz to take the plausible claim that some workers might/might not shirk, and turn it into a total fiction by reducing these workers to rational economic persons, agents that cannot possibly exist. This is similar to the way in which the plausible idea that firms strive to make large and sustainable profits becomes fictionalised when the assumptions in which it gets embedded reduce it to the idea that firms maximise profits.