Critical Theory

It seems each week we populate an entry with a multiplicity of questions, many of which don’t get answered. Thus, this week I am going to keep it simple, straight forward and to the point: is critical theory a continuation of the enlightenment (utopian) project and if so in what ways? Is this problematic? Can reason escape power?

I will give you my take and you can either respond to the above question or dissect my humble words to your hearts content.

Critical theory is utopian and envisions, especially in Habermas, an unrealizable end state that would require potentially horrific degrees of overt social engineering. This implied end state is best seen on page 53: “To acquire knowledge requires not just a minimal economic surplus, but an ability to experiment, to try out alternatives, a kind of freedom to experience and discuss the results of experience.” I question the possibility of creating ideal speech situations (transcendental) and necessary to experiencing such freedom. In fact, I think it could be argued that the extraction of surplus repression is an inherent byproduct of Aristotle’s political animal. We experience power and recreate it constantly. This is possibly the only consciousness as opposed to a false consciousness. Kant’s ‘reason’ can’t save man from the Hobbesian state of nature. Institutions (social ordering mechanisms) are required to balance our interactions and they require, by their very nature, the extraction of surplus repression. In fact, I would say most of the problems in politics begin in the fourth ‘initial stage’ of critical theory, the domain Geusse refers to as the ‘nightmare which haunts the Frankfurt School’: “….agents are actually content, but only because they have been prevented from developing certain desires which in the ‘normal’ course of things they would have developed, and which cannot be satisfied within the framework of the present social order,” (83).

Social Theory of International Politics

Alexander Wendt's Social Theory of International Politics is such an impressive and extensive undertaking that it's difficult to isolate points for discussion. As with last week's reading on scientific realism, I appreciated Wendt's acknowledgement of a material base for what is primarily a social (and socially constructed) reality. Rather than attempting to pose questions that address the major arguments of his theory, I will use this posting to isolate some of the areas I see as needing further development and/or discussion.
One of the most problematic aspects of Wendt's argument, for me, was his conception of the state as a unitary actor. While his conception of the state (p. 201) claims to combine elements of the organizational (Weberian), reductive (pluralist), and structural (Marxist) theories of the state, the pluralist conception of the state as comprised of interest groups and individuals is abandoned to allow Wendt to argue that the state is an actor. Last semester, and undoubtedly in our personal research, we were exposed to a number of theories that demonstrated how divisions within the state impact on international outcomes--consider, for example, Putnam's theory of two-level games. While Wendt makes allows for states of different types, he clings to the idea that states are unitary, arguing that systemic theories of international relations must leave the internal composition of states unexamined (p. 244). Putnam's theory indicates that these internal divisions have important effects at the level of interactions between states (Wendt's micro-structural level).

This oversight/omission seems to relate to the "multiple realizability" argument Wendt makes against reductionism (p. 152), asserting that many combinations of lower level properties/interactions will result in the same macro-level outcome. On the next page, he argues that attention to micro-foundations can lead to a failure to see or explain important things that are not reducible to the micro-level. I can accept this argument, and yet Wendt seems to take the argument too far with his states-as-unitary-actors approach--attention to the macro-level should not be used to discard all micro-foundational analyses, and these may help scholars explain and understand processes. It seems that valuable complexity is being lost through exclusive attention to the macro-structure. The need I see is for stronger bridges between the micro-structure and the macro-structure.

Finally, as more of a curiosity than a concern, I wondered if Wendt's three cultures of anarchy could be applied at other levels-of-analysis characterized by anarchy, such as failed states. I'm also playing with the idea that certain post-conflict societies are in a liminal period that mirrors conditions of anarchy. Could we see these societies as characterized by Hobbesian, Lockean or Kantian anarchic culture? My initial instinct is that concepts apply, but that further work is needed. I was also wondering to what extent we could say that different aspects of the international system have different cultures of anarchy--the global economy might be seen as Lockean, for example, while the security situation is mired in Hobbesian anarchy. Any thoughts?

Scientific Realism

This week, Searle and Bhaskar bridge the gap between the physical and the social worlds, grounding social facts in basic biological phenomenon (Searle) and arguing that the natural and social share the same structure of knowledge (Bhaskar). In doing so, both seek to combat theories of knowledge invoking social atomism, positivism and hermeneutics. The following questions primarily focus on Searle, and are meant to jump start discussion. Ben is also commenting this week and will probably shed light on some of the point I leave aside.:

1. What are the boundaries of a social fact? How clear must the “we intends” align with one another? How much room is there for dissention – or can dissention be flexibly inserted into facts? Are Searle’s examples of money, marriage, etc easy cases; in other words, is it more difficult to apply his concepts of collectivity and status function to contested facts (especially given the degrees he acknowledges between epistemologically objective facts and epistemologically subjective judgments?

2. Is individual intentionality purely derived from the collective intentionality when people are embedded within a social institution (24) or is it also meshed with with other “collective intentionality” or combined with sparks of individual consciousness shaping the character of being? How does individual intentionality interact with collective intentionality, and what does this mean, if anything, for the objectivity of social facts?

3. It seems that Searle’s basic hypothesis aimed at accounting for the creation and maintenance of social institutions (as articulated on pg. 111) does not adequately account for the differences between acceptance, acknowledgement, recognition and acts of "going along with". Is “going along with”, which can involve passivity, enough for “we intend”ness?

4. In the beginning of his account, Searle distinguishes between rules and conventions, arguing that for example the fact that the king is larger than a pawn is convention (which involves arbitrariness) rather than rule. Is this distinction exaggerated or even false? When should tradition or social norms be chalked up to the former or the later?

Falsification

This week’s readings certainly take us away from the positivist outlook of Hempel and others about the centrality of the inductive approach in scientific inquiry, which generates laws. For the logical positivists, facts and observations are entirely divorced from values. Instead, this week we see an emphasis on how theory can influence the facts/puzzles we select for study.

Here are some questions for thought, but feel free to write on whatever strikes your imagination about the readings.

1. Popper points out that experiences are not prior to theories (p. 8). In other words, experiences or observations can be subjective. Then how can the falsification of a hypothesis/theory be accepted since it is based on relating observed facts to the hypothesis/theory?

2. Is a “best testable” theory (Popper, p. 15) necessarily the best theory in the social sciences? Popper argues that the best testable theory will have the “greatest information content and the greatest explanatory power.” For example, as we discussed in the Social Theory class, Marx’s theory is not falsifiable. Does that necessarily make it useless?

3. Kuhn disagrees with Popper on the importance of the critical tradition, especially as represented by the Greek philosophers like Plato, arguing that in fact “it is precisely the abandonment of critical discourse that marks the transition to science.” (p. 6). Kuhn also remarks that social science has been characterized by this kind of critical discourse. Is he right that social science is involved in critical discussion rather than puzzle-solving? What implication does it have for the ‘scientific-ness’ of our field? – are we in Kuhn’s “pre-paradigm” state/ Popper’s metaphysics?

4. Popper, Kuhn and Lakatos are all concerned with how science has actually progressed, rather than how it should (which was the concern of the logical positivists). Are they correct in assuming that science has, in fact, progressed?