Reconstructing Bhaskar's Transcendental Analysis of Experimental Activity
Keywords:
Ontology, Causality, Science, Experiment, Critical Realism, BhaskarAbstract
In this essay I attempt a thorough reconstruction and modification of Roy Bhaskar's "transcendental analysis of experimental activity" to show that this analysis contains a powerful critique of regularity theories of causal laws and a strong case for a transcendental realist, powers-based theory of causal laws. Despite the short and scattered places in which this analysis occurs in Bhaskar's texts, my reconstruction synthesizes these textual resources to formulate a unified analysis of experimentation that derives three distinct conclusions from four presuppositions and a complex of transcendental arguments. These conclusions are: 1) Extra-experimental reality is, to a significant extent, an open system, 2) Causal laws must be distinguished from constant conjunctions of events, and 3) Causal laws are the transcendentally real tendencies of generative mechanisms.Downloads
Published
23-04-2012
How to Cite
McWherter, D. (2012). Reconstructing Bhaskar’s Transcendental Analysis of Experimental Activity. Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 8(1), 199–226. Retrieved from https://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/223
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