%0 Journal Article
%T Reconstructing Bhaskar's Transcendental Analysis of Experimental Activity
%A Dustin McWherter
%J Cosmos and History : the Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy
%D 2012
%I Cosmos and History Publishing Co-op.
%X In this essay I attempt a thorough reconstruction and modification of Roy Bhaskar's "transcendental analysis of experimental activity" to show that this analysis contains a powerful critique of regularity theories of causal laws and a strong case for a transcendental realist, powers-based theory of causal laws. Despite the short and scattered places in which this analysis occurs in Bhaskar's texts, my reconstruction synthesizes these textual resources to formulate a unified analysis of experimentation that derives three distinct conclusions from four presuppositions and a complex of transcendental arguments. These conclusions are: 1) Extra-experimental reality is, to a significant extent, an open system, 2) Causal laws must be distinguished from constant conjunctions of events, and 3) Causal laws are the transcendentally real tendencies of generative mechanisms.
%K Ontology
%K Causality
%K Science
%K Experiment
%K Critical Realism
%K Bhaskar
%U http://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/223/461