What is Critical Realism?

[@wedas67]

Consistency is secret to success, you Guys have great content... you should keep going

[@Michal2Mimo]

I wish I could understand you :D

[@marlinbebawy6015]

for real

[@sos1474]

Me too!! This is gibberish to me.

[@marycarter8602]

Very helpful - thank you so much!

[@rosefiles22]

This was an excellent explanation. Thank you!

[@sammiller2232]

I understand critical realism stems in part from interpretivism, but where/why would one utilise CR over interpretivism in a mixed methodology (semi-structured interview) study?

[@DaveElderVass]

Interpretivism is only concerned with meanings. Most mixed methodology studies are also concerned with other issues, in particular they reach towards causal explanations, which are anathema to strict interpretivism. Once you employ arguments about meaning in an explanatory framework and not just an interpretive one, you need a philosophy of social science that accommodates both.

When your research is based on Interpretivism, you are concerned with the subject's subjective interpretation of the phenomena. When it comes to CR, you are concerned with the underlying mechanisms and entities that occur at deep dimensions of reality to generate the phenomena under study. Interpretative research, thus, is built upon a bundle of idiosyncratic ideas. And you only stop at the surface of what can be observed, whereas in CR, you move beneath the surface to uncover the underlying mechanisms and entities that generate these idiosyncracies between A's view and B's view. In my PhD thesis, I also use semi-structured interviews. I pass three stages of analysis and interpretation (flexible deductive analysis, abduction and retroduction) to identify the psychological processes underlying the dependence of entrepreneurs on investors. If you need some helps, I am glad to hear from you ([e-mail])

[@educationresearch5990]

@@DaveElderVass How is CR different from pragmatism then?

[@DaveElderVass]

@@educationresearch5990 There is some overlap, but critical realists see social structures as having a causal impact whereas pragmatists in the social sciences tend to be hostile to this idea, and indeed any talk of ontology.

[@AjeAccounting]

Well explained the basis.... Thank you...

[@clairehack1038]

Thank you for creating this :-]

[@mariahmckay]

Yay, that actually made sense! 🎉

[@umwha]

Hi, can the ‘grounded theory ‘ approach go along with crit realism?

[@CriticalRealism]

There's some debate about that, but a number of researchers have tried to combine them. Just google 'grounded theory and critical realism' to get a flavour of the discussion!

[@Amquacktador]

Thanks! I hope this helps with my thesis.

[@ZomnY449]

same for me here ^^ i just wrote my "Philosiphical World View" chapter in my thesis proposal and the professor asked me to look into critical realism. Turns out this is more or less exactly where my world view ended up after 8 1/2 years of study. :D

[@adama.johnson7667]

Brilliantly done!

[@SkyLeach]

I don't see how anyone could call social science an empirical discipline as it's practiced right now. The reason it doesn't qualify is that the methodology for linear statical prediction and intersection are ... well... linear. Why is that a problem? Simply put, because the factors are a matrices of intersecting influences that would be NP-HARD (impossible to compute linearly) without being selected by the philosophy of the APA to reduce the problem computationally. There is a massive human philosophical bias that goes into that selection chriterion both for mesurement and for inference from measurement.

[@DaveElderVass]

A lot of social science doesn't use quantitative methods, and the better quantitative work doesn't treat the output of regression models as causal explanations. That doesn't mean it's not an empirical discipline. As critical realism argues, we need different methods for different types of objects of study. Thematic analysis of interview data, for example, can be appropriate in some circumstances for learning about mechanisms that depend on human cultural interpretations, as many social mechanisms do.

[@SkyLeach]

@@DaveElderVass yes, I am aware of the "quantitative" vs. "qualitative" sophistry. It's pointless gaslighting IMHO. It's not about math (quantitative) it's about objective reproducible determinism and specificity as the objective definition of quality (qualitative). I mean the terms didn't even enter the lexicon until they were invented to explain why it was ok to use them in re-interpreted science. Trouble is those exact same qualitative methods were shown to be subjective and unreliable by multiple experiments. So, unreliable, subjective, unverifiable and not necessary = bad science. As just one massive glaring problem qualitative research can't root to baseline. You can't build a linked matrix of findings in order to build a deterministic (or even cross-verifiable) model. That essentially guarantees faulty bias when a qualitative psychologist attempts to diagnose a patient or document a case study. There is no way to find failures in correlation except essentially by accident.

[@literaryparacosm779]

would have really appreciated for the theory to be included in the description but otherwise really appreciated

[@majid7925]

amazing video thanks a lot!

[@stephenwalker9213]

excellent

[@galliard1981]

What a great video! Thank you!

[@chanmaran5107]

Needs concrete examples

[@timv4342]

Can you help me understand how the social world is so truly separated from the realm of scientific study? Aren’t all social behaviors originating from groups and a long history of evolution? The social part of our brains is really old, the limbic system, cerebral cortex, and hypothalamus are all ancient and shared with many other species. Can’t we study how these are manipulated? The stimulus that affects them? Or the ways in which social groups are shaped by the ancient hardware we run on? I’m genuinely curious, as I would consider myself a positivist but I understand that there are things that science can’t really touch. Not due to any theoretical reason but that it would literally be impossible for the scientific method to be applied to them. Like some of theoretical physics, astronomy, or microbiology. CR seems to not have a way of answering the questions it proposes. To me it seems to call out the bias every person has about the nature of things due to varied experiences and presuppositions, but has no way to counterattack those biases other than imposing hypothetical stronger ones. As there are certain biases that derail science that can’t be answered one way or the other (like if we exist the way we think we do). At least in hard science there’s a countermeasure for bias and that’s the “testable/repeatable” part of the scientific method. I’m just a guy trying to learn if anyone can help out

[@DaveElderVass]

Hi Tim, critical realism understands social events as part of the same world as any other events, rather than as being separated from a separate realm of scientific study. It sees all events, social or not, as the outcome of multiple interacting causes. So, yes, the structure of our brains matters to social explanation. But human brains are very plastic, and social forces contribute to shaping them, as well as social groups being shaped by the actions of human individuals. We seek to explain events by identifying the mix of mechanisms that causes them. That can only be done by testing our understanding against empirical facts, but the opportunities to devise repeatable tests in the social world are very limited.

[@timv4342]

@@DaveElderVass Thanks for the reply! So is the need for CR justified by the fact that we literally can't use the scientific method on extensive varied social groups due to the complexity and reciprocal nature of individual influence to society/culture/groups which in turn influence the individual level? We aren't solitary choosers in any situation so looking at people as individuals exclusively will always be flawed (which is epidemic in certain areas of science and economics), but I fail to see how CR addresses this issue among others. Science can absolutely tackle things like human behavior amid social environments, it's just really really difficult to do properly and in a neutral way. And it becomes near impossible at the micro-level as there are just so much variability at the local level, but trends and generalities can be empirically determined. Is it not OK to say that certain systems just can't be studied empirically? It seems like looking at the outcomes/effects of something without using the scientific method on those outcomes is guaranteed to have way more bias than not. Any findings found this way would seem to be unfalsifiable and would just come down to opinion and comfort. Again, thanks for engaging. I'm probably missing something obvious so I appreciate any patience.

[@DaveElderVass]

@@timv4342 CR is not anti-science, it just understands science differently than positivists do. For a start, there is no such thing as 'the' scientific method - the method we use depends on the kind of problem being addressed. Biologists don't use the same methods as geologists or chemists, etc etc. Empirical study is always an important part of science, but it is rare for it to uncover strict quantitative relations of the kind that positivism seems to be looking for, even in the 'hard' sciences. Events of all kinds, social or not, are determined by many interacting factors, and although scientists can sometimes uncover mechanisms that tend to produce quantitative regularities, no single mechanism ever entirely determines any particular outcome. Even in the laboratory, when regularities are produced they are usually caused partly by the interventions of the scientists themselves in an effort to exclude the influence of mechanisms that would otherwise 'interfere with' the outcomes. So critical realists would argue that: 1) the complexity you talk about exists everywhere, not just in the social world; and 2) we can be equally scientific in the study of social and non-social events; but 3) science doesn't work the way you seem to think that it does!

[@timv4342]

@@DaveElderVass This is actually really helpful, I do appreciate it. When I talk about the scientific method I don’t mean the “literal methods” of study, I mean the attempt at reproducibility, the peer review (though often not nearly thorough enough), and the emphasis placed on being unbiased (I agree it’s near impossible to completely remove human bias, but I still think it’s an important aspect to stress). Correct me where I’m wrong, but CR really seems to be comfortable with bias, accepting it as inevitable. CR also seems to believe that the best bet to understand extremely complex and “un-studyable” systems both social and not, is to understand their effects. This is the part I disagree with, I think we’d be better off continuing to study the causes and contributors and how they intersect. At least then we can have tangible answers that may mean nothing individually but together and melding can provide great insight. If this can’t be done for whatever reason, then I still think outcomes aren’t the way to understand. Would it not be better to accept that we won’t fully understand the whole more than the parts, but the parts contribute to better understanding of the whole- it’s just not great. Of course there is still the huge issue of unfalsifiable claims that have the potential to arise from seeking understanding without staying in the limits of what we can study.

[@DaveElderVass]

@@timv4342 Hi tim, maybe you should read a bit about critical realism. CR does not advocate bias in any sense that would conflict with scientific practice. And its approach to explanation is very much focused on identifying causes. One easy place to start is the blog post 'What is critical realism?' on the ASA Theory section web site.

[@jenemar1234]

Well explained. Wow. We expect another video how critical realism can affect the research design.

[@CriticalRealism]

Have a look at some of the other videos on our channel!

[@quintoncarroll4828]

Is critical realism postpositivism?

[@CriticalRealism]

Yes, it was founded by Roy Bhaskar as an explicitly post-positivist philosophy of science, in his book 'A Realist Theory of Science'. However it attacks positivism from a different angle than some other more radically relativist critiques.

[@abifischer7657]

this is hilarious

[@haltonarp8566]

She is surprisingly good. You should make a bit more effort to understand. You might even read Bhaskar.

[@marlinbebawy6015]

مش فاهمة حاجة يخربيتك هسقط