In this Special Issue of Journal of Critical Realism on Normativity, Elder-Vass has provided a paper that in part responds to one that Chris Winship and I wrote together, which was presented at the Beyond Positivism conference in Montreal in 2017. What follows is my reply to Elder-Vass’ response. In my reply, I include an illustration of the methodological and explanatory consequences of Pragmatism’s practice-centric moral ontology through a contrast of two accounts of the end of chattel slavery. I also compare James’ and Dewey’s approaches to Pragmatism and suggest that Elder-Vass’s position is not unlike the ‘Pragmatism’ of Richard Rorty. American Pragmatism (AP) and critical realism (CR) share some intellectual territory: we both work with a similar diagnosis of the limitations of positivist social science; we too reject the fact/value distinction; we are weary of naïve poststructuralism; we also believe that an atheoretical research programme is impossible (and undesirable); and we also wish to navigate a way forward for sociological theory now that ‘grand theory’ has ‘run out of steam.’ Where we part ways, it seems to me, is on where exactly the ‘real’ resides. Elder-Vass (2019, 314–318) notes that a plurality of ‘reals’ are accepted by critical realists. My engagement with critical realism thus far has led me to conclude that it is a sufficiently complex body of work that the critical realist position is hard to identify. For my purposes here, I will stick to what I take to be Elder-Vass’s modified Habermasian position and his characterization of Bhaskar as a moral realist. In contrast to this ambiguity, AP has a clear understanding of where the real resides. William James famously defines Pragmatism as a method of settling metaphysical disputes by evaluating the ‘practical differences that must follow from one side or the other’s being right’ ([1906] 1977, 377). In this response, I will briefly exegete this position and argue that the American Pragmatist tradition is a firmer foundation for future sociological inquiry.

中文翻译：

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批判现实主义中的“真实”到底在哪里？另外，杜威·詹姆斯（Dewey-James）的替代者

在《关于规范性的批判现实主义杂志》的这一期特刊中，埃尔德·瓦斯（Elder-Vass）提供了一篇论文，部分回应了克里斯·温纳西和我一起写的一篇论文，该论文在2017年于蒙特利尔举行的超越现实主义会议上发表。回复长老的答复。在我的答复中，我通过对动产奴隶制终结的两种说法的对比，说明了实用主义以实践为中心的道德本体论的方法论和解释性后果。我还比较了詹姆斯和杜威的实用主义方法，并提出瓦斯长老的立场与理查德·罗蒂的“实用主义”并无二致。美国实用主义（AP）和批判现实主义（CR）共享一些知识领域：我们都对实证主义社会科学的局限性进行了类似的诊断。我们也拒绝事实/价值的区分；我们对幼稚的后结构主义感到厌倦；我们还认为，理论研究计划是不可能的（也是不希望的）；而且，由于“大理论”已经“枯竭”，我们也希望为社会学理论指明前进的道路。在我看来，分开的地方就是“真实”的确切位置。Elder-Vass（2019，314–318）指出，批判现实主义者接受了多个“现实”。到目前为止，我对批判现实主义的参与使我得出的结论是，这是一个非常复杂的工作，因此很难确定批判现实主义的立场。出于我在这里的目的，我将坚持我要成为上瓦斯修改后的哈贝马斯立场以及他对巴斯卡尔的道德现实主义者的刻画。与这种歧义相反，美联社对实际居住地有清晰的了解。威廉·詹姆斯（William James）将实用主义定义为解决形而上学争端的一种方法，即通过评估“必须从一方或另一方的正确立场出发遵循的实践差异”（[1906] 1977，377）。在此回应中，我将简要阐述这一立场，并指出美国实用主义者的传统是未来社会学探究的坚实基础。