The article discusses the relevance of ontology, the metaphysical study
of being, in social sciences through a comparison of three distinct
outlooks: Roy Bhaskar's version of critical realism, a pragmatic realist
approach the most renowned representatives of which are Rom Harré and
Hilary Putnam, and the authors’ own synthesis of the pragmatist John
Dewey's and the neopragmatist Richard Rorty's ideas, here called
methodological relationalism. The Bhaskarian critical realism is
committed to the heavy ontological furniture of metaphysical
transcendentalism, resting on essentialist presumptions of causality and
social structures, tacitly creating a dualism between individuals and
society. Pragmatic realists, for their part, carry much lighter
metaphysical baggage than critical realists and, much in a pragmatist
vein, accept the idea that social scientists should study society by
studying social life—the interwoven activities of individuals.
Nevertheless, pragmatic realists only reluctantly, if at all, renounce
the subject–object dualism and its ontological implications. Drawing on
the ideas of Donald Davidson and Richard Rorty, the writers outline
their own antirepresentationalist, antiessentialist approach to social
sciences. The proposed methodological relationalism is a pragmatist
approach of Deweyan origin. Based on a Darwinian understanding of human
beings as organisms trying to cope with their environment, it emphasises
the insight that one can neither step outside one's own action, nor
withdraw from the actor's point of view, just as one cannot cognitively
step outside language.