Abstract
It is indubitable that social sciences must inform us of the reality of the social realm. However, there is no consensus among the social sciences regarding what social reality is. Furthermore, positivist social sciences, such as economics, are inundated with theories whose reality is seldom cared about, defending the methodology by instrumentalism. Positivism must have begun to ground our knowledge of reality. How has reality vanished from the positivist tradition, and how could it be regained? Bhaskar (1997) answered this question. However, his real novelty is that he made explicit the ontology presupposed by positivism, reflecting actual scientific practices. If reality in the social sciences is at issue, the methodologies of the current disciplines would not help. It is a social ontology that provides the foundation for this fundamental research.
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Katsuragi, M. (2023). A Case for Social Ontology: Why Does Reality Matter for Social Sciences?. In: Urai, K., Katsuragi, M., Takeuchi, Y. (eds) Realism for Social Sciences. Translational Systems Sciences, vol 36. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4153-7_1
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