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Abstract
The purpose of this dialogue between an ‘empirical realist’ and a ‘traditional ontologist’ is to clarify and evaluate the presuppositions of the kind of anti-ontological position exemplified by empirical realism. After ontology is defined and the empirical realist's position explained, the traditional ontologist pursues a series of dialectical developments and criticisms of the empirical realist's claim to have a coherently non-ontological position. The eventual conclusion is that the empirical realist's opposition to ontology just arbitrarily assumes ontology to be associated with infallibilism (by way of logically necessary truth) and incompatible with fallibilism instead of conveying the illegitimacy of ontology itself or convincingly explaining the non-ontological standing of their position. The significance of this dialogue for critical realism is that it extends the case against anti-ontological epistemologies in general and empirical realism in particular by demonstrating the problems that result from the attempt to evade the charge of an implicit ontology.
Notes
1 ‘[E]mpirical realism is the doctrine that the world is constituted by the objects of actual (and, sometimes, possible) experiences’ (CitationBhaskar [1994] 2010, 6). Cf. Hartwig Citation2007; McWherter Citation2013, 21–34; Morgan Citation2007a and Citation2007b.
2 E.g. CitationBhaskar [1975] 1978, 43. Though apparently unaware of Bhaskar's work here, this point is exemplified in part of analytic metaphysician E. J. Lowe's response to Kant's critique of metaphysics. Lowe disputes Kant's demand that metaphysical claims be epistemically certain and suggests instead that they be vulnerable to refutation (Lowe Citation1998, 24, 26–7; Lowe Citation2002, 9).
3 McWherter Citation2013, 45–66. I should clarify that my critical engagement with non-ontological interpretations of Kant and empirical realism more generally in previous work and in this article is not so much intended to take an interpretive position in historical scholarship as it is to address those interpretations as potential resources for problematizing Bhaskar's contention regarding the inexorability of ontology.
4 I am indebted to Chris Johns for pressing me on this point in my previous work, which made me consider it again.
5 Here and in the dialogue I use the term ‘ontic’ and its related expressions to refer to things or beings, while ‘ontological’ and its related expressions pertain to the discourse on things or beings (ontology).
6 E.g. CitationBhaskar [1975] 1978, 16.
7 Heidegger Citation1962.
8 Heidegger Citation1962.
9 Sartre 1956.
10 Badiou Citation2006.
11 Quine Citation2004; van Inwagen Citation2009.
12 See CitationHume [1902] 1975, 151; Hume Citation1985, 239; Kant Citation1998, A247/B303 and A366–80 (where the term ‘empirical realism’ is first used); Kant Citation2004, 93 for representative passages from the ‘founders’ of empirical realism. Also see Norris Citation2007 for a concise summary of the philosophical context that motivates empirical realism and critical realism's response to it.
13 For this distinction in Kant see CitationAllison [1983] 2004, 120; Caygill Citation1995, 306; McWherter Citation2013, 46–9.
14 Which Hume's sceptical empiricism and Kant's transcendental idealism respectively allow. See the passages cited in note 12 above.
15 Jacobi Citation2000; Kant Citation1998, Bxx; Kant Citation2004, 40–1.
16 See the difference between discourse and its object implied by referential detachment in, e.g., CitationBhaskar [1993] 2008, 212.
17 See the claim about the fallibility of philosophy at CitationBhaskar [1986] 2009, 15.
18 Compare CitationBhaskar [1975] 1978, 249–50.
19 For discussion of the epistemic fallacy and its problems, which is relevant to the topic of this dialogue, see Collier Citation1994, 76–85; Groff Citation2007, 35–8; McWherter Citation2013, 41–2. For recent work in metaontology within analytic philosophy, which is more broadly relevant to the topic of this dialogue, see Berto and Plebani Citation2015; Chalmers et al. Citation2009.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Dustin McWherter
Dustin McWherter is the author of The Problem of Critical Ontology: Bhaskar Contra Kant (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and has previously published articles in Journal of Critical Realism, Kantian Review and Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy. He was previously Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the American University of Beirut.