What about ontology?

In the research literature there is frequent mention of ontology and you might be wondering why ontology does not figure in the schema developed to this point.

Ontology is the study of being. It is concerned with ‘what is’, with the nature of existence, with the structure of reality as such. Were we to introduce it into our framework, it would sit alongside epistemology informing the theoretical perspective, for each theoretical perspective embodies a certain way of understanding what is (ontology) as well as a certain way of understanding what it means to know (epistemology).

Ontological issues and epistemological issues tend to emerge together. As our terminology has already indicated, to talk of the construction of meaning is to talk of the construction of meaningful reality. Because of this confluence, writers in the research literature have trouble keeping ontology and epistemology apart conceptually. Realism (an ontological notion asserting that realities exist outside the mind) is often taken to imply objectivism (an epistemological notion asserting that meaning exists in objects independently of any consciousness). In some cases we even find realism identified with objectivism. Guba and Lincoln (1994, p. 108) certainly posit a necessary link between the two when they claim that ‘if, for example, a “real” reality is assumed, the posture of the knower must be one of objective detachment or value freedom in order to be able to discover “how things really are” and “how things really work’”. In the chapters that follow, you and I will be listening to a large number of scholars who disagree with this position. Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, for instance, frequendy invoke a ‘world always already there’, but they are far from being objectivists.

True enough, the world is there regardless of whether human beings are conscious of it. As Macquarrie tells us (1973, p. 57): ‘If there were no human beings, there might still be galaxies, trees, rocks, and so on— and doubdess there were, in those long stretches of time before the evolution of Homo sapiens or any other human species that may have existed on earth’. But what kind of a world is there before conscious beings engage with it? Not an intelligible world, many would want to say. Not a world of meaning. It becomes a world of meaning only when meaning-making beings make sense of it.

From this point of view, accepting a world, and things in the world, existing independendy of our consciousness of them does not imply that meanings exist independently of consciousness, as Guba and Lincoln seem to be saying. The existence of a world without a mind is conceivable. Meaning without a mind is not. Realism in ontology and constructionism in epistemology turn out to be quite compatible. This is itself an example of how ontological issues and epistemological issues arise together. Given that state of affairs, it would seem that we can deal with the ontological issues as they emerge without expanding our schema to include ontology.

This is borne out when we look at literature that plays up the importance of the ontological dimension in research. In many instances the authors are not talking about ontology at all. Blaikie (1993, p. 6), for example, acknowledges that the ‘root definition of ontology is the “science or study of being’”. However, ‘for the purposes of the present discussion’, he takes ontology to mean ‘the claims or assumptions that a particular approach to social enquiry makes about the nature of social reality’ (p. 6). This, in itself, is unexceptionable. We need to recognise, however, that this is no longer ontology in its philosophical sense. Blaikie’s use of the term roughly corresponds to what you and I are calling ‘theoretical perspective’. It refers to how one views the world.
Blaikie tells us that positivism ‘entails an ontology of an ordered universe made up of atomistic, discrete and observable events’ (p. 94). He tells us that, in the ontology of critical rationalism (the approach launched by Karl Popper), nature and social life ‘are regarded as consisting of essential uniformities’ (p. 95). He tells us that interpretivism ‘entails an ontology in which social reality is regarded as the product of processes by which social actors together negotiate the meanings for actions and situations’ (p. 96). This is stretching the meaning of ontology well and truly beyond its boundaries.

It would seem preferable to retain the usage of ‘theoretical perspective’ and reserve the term ‘ontology’ for those occasions when we do need to talk about ‘being’. This is something you and I cannot avoid doing when we come to grapple with, say, the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, for that is a radical ontology and needs to be dealt with in stricdy ontological terms. Happy days ahead!

In the Middle Ages, the great ontological debate was between realists and nominalists and concerned the extramental reality, or irreality, of ‘universals’. Are there, for example, just individual human beings or does ‘humankind’ have real existence too? Does humankind as such denote a reality in the world or is it just something that exists only in the mind? In more recent centuries, the major ontological debate has been between realists and idealists and concerns the extramental reality, or irreality, of anything whatsoever. While neither debate is without relevance to an analysis of the research process, it still seems the case that ontological issues can be dealt with adequately without complicating our four-column schema further by expressly introducing ontology.

Source: Michael J Crotty (1998), The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process, SAGE Publications Ltd; First edition.