Critical Realism and Critical Theory: Toward a Non-Arbitrary Ethics

My paper has two parts. The first part suggests that certain principles based in Critical Theory provide a better basis for generating critical principles than either the arbitrary approach prevalent in sociology or the approach sketched in Critical Realism. But I think this approach is fully compatible with Critical Realism’s ontology and epistemology of science. The second part asks how Critical Theory can help us generate the principles that can guide scientific practice. CR already tells us what do to: Combine judgmental rationalism with what Bhaskar calls epistemic relativism—basically, a sociological history of science. The question is how these practices line up with the norms that emerge from examination of actual scientific practice. CT suggests that the model of the specific, autonomous intellectual may emerge from an empirical interpretive investigation of actual scientific practice. But CT also suggests that there will be a disjuncture between rational scientific norms, and dominant norms within science. Empirical research suggests that a field like sociology in the US exists within universities and other fields that generate additional normative orders, all of which complicate the question of figuring out the normative potentials within sociology.