Précis of Naturalizing Critical Realist Social Ontology

Comment on Naturalizing Critical Realist Social Ontology

This comment discusses Kaidesoja (2013) and raises the issue whether his analysis justifies stronger conclusions than he presents in the book. My comments focus on four issues. First, I argue that his naturalistic reconstruction of critical realist transcendental arguments shows that transcendental arguments should be treated as a rare curiosity rather than a general argumentative strategy. Sec...

A Critical Realist Commentary

The case for “analytical dualism” as a means of approaching sociotechnical action is presented as an alternative to accounts which tend to conflate agency, structure, and technology. This is based on the work of Margaret Archer, whose work is in turn located in the traditions of critical realism. Her commitment to analytical dualism, which stresses both the importance of time in analysis and th...

Critical Study Errors of Reasoning, Naturalizing the Logic of Inference

John Woods’s stated aim in this monograph is to investigate premise-conclusion reasoning “with a special emphasis of factors in play when it falls into error, when bad reasoning s mistaken for good” (1). Woods further states that he believes that logic has not done well in investigating these topics. To do better, logic needs some reconstruction to become “empirically sensitive,” taking account...

the influence of social and cultural capital on efl students critical thinking skills

the major aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between social and cultural capital and efl students’ critical thinking skills. this study takes this relationship in to account to see if people with different sociocultural status are different regarding their critical thinking skills. to this end, 160 university students majoring in english language and literature, english trans...

EMANCIPATION: Elements of a Critical Realist Approach