The Three Domains: Empirical, Actual, Real
Critical realism holds that reality is stratified into three domains that are ontologically continuous (part of one reality) but analytically distinct:
- The Empirical — everything we can observe, experience, or measure: the realm of direct perception and documented evidence.
- The Actual — everything that happens, whether or not anyone observes it: all events and processes, including those that leave no empirical trace.
- The Real — the underlying structures, mechanisms, and causal powers that generate actual events, including powers that exist even when they are not currently being exercised.
Causal power resides in the Real: it generates events in the Actual and makes observations in the Empirical possible. The causal arrow therefore runs Real → Actual → Empirical, which is why adequate explanation must move in the opposite direction — from observed patterns back through actual events to the mechanisms that produced them.
Developed in chapter-03 §II.ii.
Further reading: Critical realism (Wikipedia)