Hi Rowland,
I agree with you that the meaning of ontology in social sciences has shifted
to a desire to develop our understanding of what the world is made of
(rather than a focus on understanding the world of god -which may be one
kind of ontology).
I see epistemology closely related to ontology in the sense that how I
perceive the world (what I think it is made of- e.g. with or without a god)
will shape my views on how I should go about generating knowledge about that
world (i.e. epistemology). For me, epistemology encompasses philosophical
debates on methodology. I can only have such debates within a frame of
reference, that is, I can only have such debates if I make explicit my
ontology.
I can see strong connections between two different disciplines, I can not
see how they could be collapsed into one another.
Any thoughts?
Hulya Oztel,
Leicester.
-----Original Message-----
From: Rowland Atkinson [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2000 4:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Ontology and Epistemology
I once heard a clver remark about economics which went something along the
lines of the fact that a crisis in economics has come about because the
discipline's epistemology has been collapsed into the ontology. In other
words what economists had previously taken to be context dependent and
socially constructed events/phenomena have been collapsed into essential
and universal categories which stand outside of any scrutiny and have
become 'givens'.
Ontology is no longer about the exitence of god in the same way that
hermeneutics are no longer about the search for meaning knowledge in
religious texts. The meaning has shifted to all debates concerning
existence and the fabric of the world.
However the collapse I mention is in the reverse of that used below which
seems to suggest that existence can be taken for granted and that attempts
to shift it to something which is about how knowledge is created and
assessed is wrong. Or maybe I misconstrued it?
cheers
RA
>I was, however, slightly confused by 'I am quite averse to allowing our
>ontology to be reduced to epistemology'. Unsure of your aversion I looked
up
>ontology and found the following summation in Warburton (1998):
>'Ontological Argument: an argument which pupports to prove God's existence
on
>the basis of the definition of God as a perfect being. A perfect being
which
>didn't exist wouldn't be totally perfect; so God must exist.'
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