Organisation, Emergence and Cambridge Social Ontology

Emergence is central to critical realism, but there has been little attempt to develop a systematic account of this concept within the tradition. Two notable exceptions are seen in the work of Dave Elder‐Vass and Tony Lawson. However, both face problems in responding to reductionist claims and accounting for downward causation. This paper proposes contextual emergence as a robust alternative that overcomes these issues and provides a better justification for critical realism's stratified worldview. Contextual emergence explains that while properties at a lower ‘level’ offer necessary conditions, for emergence to obtain, there must also be contingent conditions at a higher ‘level’. This approach maintains many of critical realism's intuitions about emergence, providing a robust account of ontological stratification and downward causation.

Section: Emergence In Critical Realismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Emergence In Critical Realismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Redefining emergence: Making the case for contextual emergence in critical realism

Navarrete,

Fryer

2024

“…The relational aspect then provides order, structure, and a kind of stability to these changing processual entities. “It is the organization of these elements that is key to social constitution” (Lawson, 2022a, b, p. 1; see also Slade‐Caffarel, 2020).…”

Section: Social Positioning Theory and The Nature Of Bank Moneymentioning

confidence: 99%

The nature of bank money, a case study of transformation in the Czech banking sector

Jonáš

2023

The article examines the nature of bank money on two complementary levels. The first level deals with theoretical considerations. Here, the departure point is Social Positioning Theory, which provides a framework to investigate the nature of money. Within the theory, the paper situates bank money in credit‐debt relations, that are themselves integral part of a wider productive‐consumptive nexus of the economy. In this perspective, bank money is the relation, accounting economic positions of participating members, resulting from their economic activities realized within the context of the overall society. The second level uses the methods of Oral History and Memory Studies and, through semi‐structured interviews, provides empirical material illustrating ideas about the nature of money in a specific historical form. The article thus explores the contrasting experiences of banking in the context of a centrally planned economy and banking in the transformation to a market economy. These two contrasting episodes are illustrative because of the significant change in the form of bank money, which brings to light various aspects of its nature. Moreover, the article utilizes interviews that present the lived experience of bankers with years of involvement in the sector, enriching the perspective on the issue under study.

“…25 25 See for example Cardinale, Ivano and Jochen Runde 2021, Faulkner, Philip, and Jochen Runde 2013, 2019, Lawson Clive, 2017, Lawson Tony, 2007, 2012, 2015a, 2015b, 2015c, 2016a,b, 2018a,b, 2019c,b,c, 2022, 2023, Lawson Tony and Jamie Morgan 2021a,b, Lewis, Paul 2021, Martins, Nuno 2013, 2015, 2017,2022, 2023, Mensik, Josef 2022, Morgan, 2020, Pratten, Stephen 2017, 2018, 2020, 2022, Slade‐Caffarel, Yannick 2020, 2022. …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Social positioning theory and quantum mechanics

Lawson

2023

Social positioning theory, or an account of the human individual that it grounds, qualifies as a quantum social theory. This is an assessment that I explain and defend in the paper. It is of interest in that, in a world where increasing numbers are seeking to construct quantum social theories, it serves to help demonstrate that this goal can be achieved without giving up on meeting criteria like explanatory intelligibility or power or discarding real‐world notions like human (and other) entities. As it turns out, a central feature of the account defended and a core element of the ‘standard’ interpretation of quantum mechanics are found to stand in an interesting, unanticipated and suggestive relation to each other.