Ontology and Methodology in Contemporary Philosophy of Social Science: Status Quaestionis.

Abstract

Nowadays many social scientists describe themselves as pluralists. Up to which extent have philosophers provided those social scientists with tools and reflections that could help them making their points of view (philosophically) more explicit? As an introduction to a special issue on critical realism and methodological pluralism in the social sciences this article (a) enumerates the central questions of the issue, (b) develops how these questions involve central debates on ontology and methodology in the contemporary philosophy of social science, and (c) gives the reader an outline of the contributions to this issue and their relation to the central questions.