The document discusses Dr. Tim Rogers' integration of critical realism and action science in emancipatory action research, arguing that this approach enhances the effectiveness of philosophy, theory, and practice in the context of social sciences. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the relationship between values and facts, exposing misleading surface appearances, and the role of depth-investigation in explaining and transforming social conditions. The text critiques positivism and underscores the need for a humane and empowering organizational ethic aligned with Lasallian values.

1. Dr Tim Rogers
Philosophy and
theory in practice
Critical realism and action
science for emancipatory
action research

2. The claim
That considering, and integrating, philosophy with theory
and practice makes for better philosophy, theory and
practice
and
Makes sense of the Enlightenment Project of universities,
especially De La Salle

3. Design for the session
❖ Background to critical realism and its implications for
the social sciences generally
❖ Background to the theory of action (aka ‘action science’)
and its implications for action research theory
❖ A case study of the above applied as method

4. De La Salle’s mission and ethics
❖ Code of ethics: “I will promote a humane and enabling work community
within my organization.”
❖ Liberating action is mutually empowering, enabling the individuals and
institutions engaged in such action to increasingly realize their own
worth as individuals and as a collective…Liberating action should be
capacitating and not a mere transfer of the endowments of a Lasallian
individual or institution to less privileged and impoverished groups. The
latter simply reproduces the conditions that perpetuate dependence…
(http://www.dlsu.edu.ph/inside/lasallian-guiding-principles/social-
development.asp)
❖ These pivot on a relationship between values and facts: where science meets
human emancipation

5. Compare with a ‘normal’ Uni mission
University X educates professionals and citizens to the
highest standards; creates and disseminates knowledge;
and engages with our communities to address the major
issues of our time.

6. Philosophy: Critical Realism
❖ Critical realism is a position within the philosophy of
science largely but not exclusively identified with the work
of Roy Bhaskar
❖ Surface appearances of the world may be, and often are,
misleading
❖ Science is fallible, as are layperson perceptions
❖ Exposing the difference between surface appearances and
perceptions of them, with real causes, is potentially
emancipatory

7. The critical realist argument in a nutshell
❖ The transcendental argument from experimentation
❖ Positivism presumes that science is successful, and that
conjunction, and so prediction, exhausts the scientific
enterprise
❖ But consider the experiment…

8. Bhaskar, R. (1975). A realist theory of science, p. 65. Brighton, Sussex: Harvester.
“In sum, granted that a causal law is confirmed in a
closed (experimental) system and that the degree of
correlation in the open system is likely to be very low
or non-existent, the empiricist must either admit that
laws are not given in a correlational relationship, or
that laws do not hold in open systems. ”

9. This all entails the CR concepts…
❖ Transitive and intransitive domains of science: the social
aspect of scientific endeavour and the real world
❖ Open and closed systems and the transfactuality of laws
❖ The stratified nature of reality: empirical, actual, and
real

10. Implications for social sciences
❖ The Transformational Model of Social Activity (TMSA): social structures
(think ‘society’) provides the conditions for and shape the possibilities for
action, but individual agents replicate, and occasionally transform, society
❖ The causal role of structures suggests that tacit and automatic processes are
fundamental…
❖ …so agents may not be in a position to cast light on the meaning, purpose
and outcomes of their practices even if they can be relied upon to correctly
identify them
❖ Causes may be intermittent (it’s an open system), so reasons, rules and
norms are legitimate objects of scientific study…
❖ …which entails the primacy of meaning as the causal arbiter of phenomena

11. Bhaskar, R. (1998b). The possibility of naturalism: A philosophical critique of
the contemporary human sciences (3rd ed.), p. 46. London: Routledge.
“... the conceptual aspect of the subject matter of the
social sciences circumscribes the possibility of
measurement.... For meanings cannot be measured, only
understood. Hypotheses about them must be expressed
in language, and confirmed in dialogue. Language here
stands to the conceptual aspect of social science as
geometry stands to physics. And precision in meaning
now assumes the place of accuracy in measurement as the
a posteriori arbiter of theory. It should be stressed that ...
theories may continue to be justified and validly used to
explain, even though significant measurement of the
phenomena of which they treat has become impossible.”

12. Depth-investigation
❖ Explanatory critique:
❖ Beliefs may be mistaken
❖ If beliefs are systematically mistaken then there is a ‘belief
structure’ that is generating those false beliefs
❖ Depth-investigation: Explanation is thus a precondition for
emancipation, conceptualised as the transformation of “sources
of determination from unwanted to wanted ones” (Bhaskar,
1982, p. 295 (full citation on next slide)).
❖ A depth-investigation may be defined generally as…

13. Bhaskar, R. (1982). Emergence, explanation and emancipation, p. 304. In P.
Secord (Ed.), Explaining Human Behaviour (pp. 275-310). Beverly Hills: Sage.
“...any cooperative inquiry, which includes the agent,
into the structure of some presumed set of
mechanisms, constituting for that agent an unwanted
source of determination (which, whether cognitive or
not, will always possess some cognitive manifestation),
with a view to initiating, preserving, or restoring that
agent’s ability to act and think rationally.”

14. Generic structure of a depth-investigation
❖ (1) Y is not capable of O; scientific realism suggests there
is a mechanism M preventing this.
❖ (2) General theory T investigates the structure of
blocking/compelling mechanisms, under the control of
empirical data and researches.
❖ (3) The application of T to Y depends upon the agent Y,
as well as co-investigator X, for it is Y’s interpretations,
actions, and determinations that are at issue. (Bhaskar,
1982, p. 304)

15. The contrast: Positivism
❖ The ‘epistemic fallacy’ and its consequences
❖ Deductive-nomological account
❖ The problems: scientist-practitioner divide, p-value
debates, replication ‘wars’

16. Greenwood, J. D. (1989). Explanation and experiment in social
psychological science: Realism and the social constitution of action, p.174.
New York: Springer-Verlag.
“The empiricist analysis of social psychological
science simply assumes that the goal of a science of
action is the prediction and control of human action
via the manipulation and control of its causal
antecedents, as a consequence of its commitment to
a stimulus variable conception of causality and its
consequent denial of human agency.”

17. Theory
❖ Theories aren’t given in CR: it is an underlabourer only:
“... although the concept of a depth-investigation has been
introduced as an idiographic, practically oriented application
of some or other determinate explanatory critique, the theory
at the heart of the critique itself depends crucially for its own
development and empirical confirmation on such
investigations (whether living or reconstructed, e.g.,
historical materials)” (Bhaskar, 1982, p. 304)

18. The realist outline: retroduction
“The process of scientific discovery according to the realist is:
1. an effect is identified and described.
2. a hypothetical mechanism is postulated which, if it existed, would
explain the effect.
3. the attempt is made to demonstrate the existence and operation of
the mechanism
(a) positively, by experimental activity, designed to isolate and in some
cases directly observe the mechanism.
(b) negatively, by the elimination of alternative explanations.”
Outhwaite, W. (1987). New philosophies of social science: Realism,
hermeneutics and critical theory, p. 33. New York: St. Martin's Press Inc.

19. Theory of action
❖ An exemplar: Chris Argyris and Donald Schön’s Theory
of Action
❖ (but another theory, say, object-relations theory in
organisational psychodynamics, could be used)
❖ Also a transcendental argument from an empirical
outcome to a hypothesis of what the world must be like

20. Key concepts
❖ 1) In situation X (conditions), 2) do Z (strategy), 3)
achieve Y (goal)
❖ Key distinction is between espoused theories and
theories-in-use
❖ Particularly interested in counteracting the anti-learning
theories-in-use

21. Friedman, V., & Rogers, T. (2009). There is nothing so theoretical as good action research. Action Research 7(1), 25-41.
In situation x, do z, achieve y

22. In situation x, do z, achieve y

23. In situation x, do z, achieve y

24. So how does that address the issues?
❖ Depth-investigation of norms and practices, and their
unintended effects and unconscious causes
❖ Begins to establish the ground for experimenting with
pro-learning theories-in-use

25. De La Salle vision revisited
❖ “I will promote a humane and enabling work community
within my organization.”
❖ Liberating action is mutually empowering, enabling the
individuals and institutions engaged in such action to
increasingly realize their own worth as individuals and as
a collective…Liberating action should be capacitating…
❖ These are in fact the conditions for a social science…
❖ …where philosophy underlabours for theory, whose
practice informs practical philosophy

26. Fin
Que?