Rediscovering the 3 R's: resonance, recursion and resemblance

MacLean, James (2008) Rediscovering the 3 R's: resonance, recursion and resemblance. Causation in Law and Philosophy, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. 10 pp .

Abstract

As a product of the Enlightenment, causality is an archetypically modernist concept: causal explanations reflect a perceived need to rationally re-connect, and re-integrate within an explanatory schema, otherwise apparently disparate ‘fragments’ of reality. Modern legal theory, in the analysis of events, circumstances and relationships within social situations, adopts almost uncritically, and deploys widely as an explanatory tool, this model of causality, attempting to link deterministically observed phenomena with underlying tendencies and generative mechanisms. However, while such understandings may help to reinforce notions of reality as objective, stable, orderly and predictable, ‘tightly coupled’ causal explanations sit uneasy alongside postmodern understandings of the world as consisting of creative processes. This paper argues the need for a more radical reconceptualising of the role of causation within law and legal theory, suggesting that postmodern ideas of ‘resonance’, ‘recursion’ and ‘resemblance’ offer a better approach for more accurately reflecting the nature of social phenomena and how they are coupled together to create semblances of regularity

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