Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Assistant Professor of Political Sciences Department, University of Tabriz
2 Assistant Professor of Philosophy Department, Payam Noor University.
Abstract
Both the positivist and negativist frameworks of explanation share in this naturalist proposition that against the metaphysical philosophy, reality is embedded only in experimental level and therefore the scientific explanation of natural and social phenomenon should refer to this experimental level in order to be called meaningful, verifiable and scientific. But, the problem was always that the principle of causality as a necessary condition for every kind of scientific explanation is not logically deductable from induction in experimental level and remains as a metaphysical principle. On the other hand, the principle of experimental objectivity as a condition for the verifiability clause of scientific explanations, could not be defended, because the experimentation was always embedded in subjectivity and theory. The Kantian idealist, in contrast, see the scientific explanation as a mere representation of reality in subjective categories, could not justify the experimental knowledge of reality and the rationality for comparison among theories and paradigms. Critical Realism as an important approach in philosophy of science that relates to works and thoughts of Roy Bhaskar, is to solve this problems by resorting to its principles of ontological realism, epistemological relativism and judgmental rationality. The aim of this article is to study the Critical Realist position on scientific explanation and analyze that who in the Critical Realist interpretation of scientific explanation, experimental phenomenon, subjective construction and ontological reality all reach to a logical coherence with each other.
Key Words: Explanation, Positivism, Negativism, Kantian Idealism, Critical Realism.
Keywords
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