Philosophical framework
2.3 Basic Critical Realism
2.3.2 Ontological realism
Bhaskar (1975) has developed a three-tiered ontology that depicts a stratified reality and reflects scientific processes better than the assumptions of traditional research approaches such as empiricism and transcendental idealism (Mingers 2011). It consists of three tiers, namely the empirical, the actual and the real, where:
• The empirical, the first tier, is only a small part of reality and exists for humans at the level of the senses. It is the level of reality experienced directly, provides data based on observation and has been the focus of empiricist research (Danermark et al. 2002). As this level is at the surface appearance of things, data can be misleading as underlying causalities may not be apparent and correlations may be attributed incorrectly.
• The actual is the second ontological tier and comprises events and experiences whether they’ve been observed or not: “what happens in the world is not the same as that which is observed” (Danermark et al. 2002: 20). These events have a causal effect (Mingers 2011) and will partially express themselves in empirical data that can be collected.
• The real is the third and most fundamental tier. It encompasses both the actual and empirical, and is thus total reality whether perceived or not. It consists of enduring social and natural structures and generative mechanisms (often unobservable) that we can experience indirectly through their causal effect
referred to them as generative mechanisms, which operate independently of the events and empirical data that they generate. He explained: “through their interactions, mechanisms generate the actual occurrences and events of the world, only some of which are observed or noted empirically” (1979: 170).
I have represented this ontology in figure 2.1. Scientists have the highest degree of confidence in knowledge gained from the empirical level that is dependent on direct observation and data collection. However, as figure 2.1 depicts, this is only a small part of reality. There is an increasing reliance on abstract theories based on metaphor and allegory, as scientific explanations are drawn from historical events, at the level of the actual, and even more so when probing unseen generative mechanisms and structures at the level of the real.
Figure 2.1: The three tiers of ontological realism: the empirical, actual and real. The empirical is a small part of reality, namely what can be observed, the actual lies at the level of events and encompasses the empirical while the real is all of reality, including unseen structures and generative mechanisms and encompasses both the actual and the empirical.
Bhaskar (1975) developed ontological realism based on the approach and success of the natural sciences that used experiments as a method for revealing and understanding
“ever deeper and more basic strata of a reality” that was often not empirically manifest (Plant 2011). As Bhaskar (1975: 13) stated:
Real structures exist independently of and are often out of phase with the actual patterns of events. Indeed it is only because of the latter that we need to perform experiments and only because of the former that we can make sense of our performance of them.
Similarly it can be shown to be a condition of the intelligibility of perception that events occur independently of experiences.
Empirical Actual
Real
A constant conjunction of events where the particular generative mechanism aligns with the actual and empirical levels in a linear fashion is therefore rare (Benton &
Craib 2001; Harvey 2002). Experimentation creates a ‘closed’ system that operates under the specific variable/s being explored. A constant conjunction of events is produced where the empirical, actual and real levels align, making the generative mechanism much more transparent (Mingers 2011). For example, scientists examine gravity by creating a ‘closed’ system where an object is dropped in a vacuum. By preventing the actualisation of other mechanisms, such as air friction, the empirical effects of gravity can be clearly seen.
In naturally occurring open systems, many generative mechanisms operate. Some of these mechanisms may counteract or reinforce each other’s effects so that a generative mechanism, although real, may be unexpressed in a specific instance (Collier 1994;
Danermark et al. 2002). In critical realist understanding, this means that the particular generative mechanism is actually present, but other factors have caused it to be absent.
Bhaskar (1975) thus refers to generative mechanisms as tendencies rather than laws.
Mingers (2011) summarised the important characteristics of generative mechanisms as defined by Critical Realism: they can be social, physical or conceptual; they exist independently from how they are known or described; they can be either observable or unobservable; their existence is judged by their causal rather than perceptible properties; these causal powers may not always be triggered; they are relatively enduring, but with highly varied timescales; social structures and mechanisms have different properties from natural ones, and they have emergent properties.
Emergence is an important concept used in Critical Realism. It is a process that happens when two entities with certain properties and powers interact to form a whole with properties and powers (generative mechanisms) not present in the individual entities (Goodenough & Deacon 2006; Elder-Vass 2005). Bhaskar (2010) identified three essential properties of emergence:
1. The emergent level is unilaterally dependent on the lower one;
2. The emergent level has new and different properties that cannot be predicted from the lower level;
3. The emergent level is causally irreducible to it, i.e. it can affect back on the lower level but in unpredictable and complex ways.
The concept of emergence helps one understand how layers of increasingly complex reality have evolved; mechanisms existing at higher emergent levels have causal
level of emergence, the more open, complex and unpredictable the system, as more mechanisms are in effect (Danermark et al. 2002). This challenges the reductionist position, which argues that all of reality can be described by the base level, namely physics, thus reducing complex reality to a few quantifiable basic elements (Swilling &
Annecke 2012).
Polkinghorn (1986: 86) distinguished between structural and conceptual reductionism.
Structural reductionism understands that the elementary particles studied by physics make up the physical world. This Polkinghorn accepted, while denying conceptual reductionism, which has had two main influences:
1. It has attempted to understand the whole exclusively by studying the properties that make it up (Polkinghorn 1986).
2. It has encouraged denial of the reality of higher levels, which are often highly complex and immeasurable (Polkinghorn 1986; Collier 1994). If these higher levels are recognised, it is assumed that they can be understood from theories and concepts appropriate to lower levels. For example, that one can explain psychological effects in terms of neurophysiology.
Peacocke (1983) encouraged disciplines, which explore reality at different levels of emergence, to develop concepts appropriate to the behaviours, relationships and properties that have emerged at their specific level. He also stated that a non- reductionist scientific approach makes it untenable to discriminate between levels of reality: one cannot say that an atom is “graded as more real” than a bacterial cell or human person or values.
The concept of a laminated system, coined by Bhaskar and Danermark (2006), provides a non-reductionist conceptual framework to better understand the complexity of reality. While doing research on disabilities they were struck by how previous researchers predominantly focused on one aspect (e.g. it is a physical condition), while ignoring others (such as the social-economic and cultural factors that affect the experience of being disabled). They identified seven applicable levels of reality that emerged from each other. Each level had its own generative mechanisms that could not be explained by examining lower levels. These were (i) physical, (ii) biological, iii) psychological iv) psycho-social, v) socio-economic, vi) cultural and vii) normative.
These levels of reality can usefully be transferred to understand levels of reality in social-ecological systems and will be adapted when grappling with the complexity of the Boksburg Lake social-ecological system in the concluding discussion, chapter 8.
In the critical realist philosophy, the multiplicity of operating mechanisms and structures are located at different levels of the laminated totality. These mechanisms could lie, for example, in the material, social and/or conceptual domains. Reality is therefore stratified according to these generative mechanisms where the higher mechanism is rooted in but emergent from the mechanism/s below (Collier 1994;
Mingers 2006). The laminated system has been further developed to map out the relationships between different academic disciplines. Bhaskar and Danermark (2006) explained that disciplines understand reality at different scales and have been ordered to identify generative mechanisms that operate at these emergent strata.
This points to the value of interdisciplinary research, which draws on a range of methodological and conceptual frameworks (Collier 1994; Mingers 2006). This moves us onto the second important characteristic of Basic Critical Realism, namely epistemological relativism, which provides a particular theory on the nature of knowledge.