Federal appellate judges cite cases by sister circuits. Why is that? Common wisdom holds that judges look to out-of-circuit cases for credible legal arguments -as persuasive precedent. But hard-core adherents of the attitudinal model (Segal and Spaeth 2002) – and certain cynical realists and critical legal studies scholars – might argue that judges decide in accordance with their policy or poli...

Superficially, Actor Network Theory (ANT) and critical realism (CR) are radically opposed research traditions. Written from a realist perspective, this paper asks whether there might be a basis for finding common ground between these two traditions. It looks in turn at the questions of realism, structure, and agency, analysing the differences between the two perspectives and seeking to identify...

But it is beyond the power of human capacity to frame and retain distinct ideas of all the particular things we meet with: every bird and beast men saw; every tree and plant that affected the senses, could not find a place in the most capacious understanding. During the Middle Ages, much of the debate about universals concerned the question whether or not they could be considered to " exist ". ...

Introduction In this paper, I defend the importance of narrative to moral philosophy, in particular to moral realism. Moral realism, for the purposes of this essay, is the claim that there are moral truths independent of human beliefs, attitudes, desires and feelings.i Contemporary philosophers typically focus on discursive arguments and exclude narrative. But narrative is considerably more pow...

Committed critical realist commentators on the economics discipline have not discussed, as far as I am aware, the regulation approach as an exemplar of critical realism (e.g., Baert 1996; Lawson 1989, 1995, 1997; Pratten 1997; Fleetwood 1999; Nielsen 2000). In some cases this neglect is due to a concern to develop a meta-theoretical critique of orthodox economics and/or to uncover critical real...

In this paper I discuss how the need for defining truth in a political context retains its importance even light of insistence from realists that such attempts will necessarily fail.1 mention two debates philosophy intersect at issue. The first is dispute between those who, like Rawls, adhere to epistemic agnosticism and deny we can have an operational definition politics following Habermas, ar...

Debunking skeptics claim that our moral beliefs are formed by processes unsuited to identifying objective facts, such as emotions inculcated by our genes and culture; therefore, they say, even if there are objective moral facts, we probably don’t know them. I argue that the debunking skeptics cannot explain the pervasive trend toward liberalization of values over human history, and that the bes...

Abstract This paper makes the case for a revision of contemporary forms political realism in theory. I argue that realists have gone awry increasingly centring their approach around metaethical claim: theory should be rooted form normativity is distinct from moral normativity. Several critics argued this claim unconvincing. But suggest it also counterintuitive starting point realism, and one un...