Roy Bhaskar and the epistemic fallacy
31 Dec, 2025 at 15:52 | Posted in Theory of Science & Methodology | Leave a comment
At the juncture of Roy Bhaskar’s refounding of critical realism philosophy of science, postmodernism had spread like a virus across academia with its seductive attack on grand theories or “metanarratives.” Neoliberal policies took advantage of the subsequently lowered intellectual immune systems and “identity politics” squabbling to impose its anti-working class “meta” economic model upon global humanity.
Where Bhaskar’s work struck with devastating consequences for degeneration of theories of knowledge toward irrealism was in his compelling argument over philosophy of science imbibing what he dubs the “epistemic fallacy.” Quite simply, what that entails is the belief that in answering the epistemological question of how we know something, the ontological question of what there is to be known is simultaneously answered. For Bhaskar, rather, it is the ontological question and the specific nature of the object of study in the real world which determines the form and scope of its possible science.
Further, Bhaskar argued that the “flat” ontological model of empiricism, which based scientific knowledge on observation, cannot explain how revolutions in science occur. Scientific change across the ages is possible because of an ontological structure of the world and all its furniture that is deep and stratified with causal mechanisms which generate myriad phenomenon we observe. Capturing these causal mechanisms and the scientific laws they designate operates through a process of “retroduction.” Here, scientists puzzled by phenomena both in terms of observation and limits of current theory posit the existence of a deep causal mechanism responsible for those surface manifestations they perceived. Scientific truth is reached when a correspondence is arrived at between the causal structure of the object of knowledge to be explained or defined and the logical structure of the theory that purports to explain or define it.
No philosopher of science has influenced yours truly’s thinking more than Roy Bhaskar. At a time when scientific relativism still advances, upholding his insistence that science must not be reduced to mere discourse is vital.
Science is possible because a reality exists beyond our theories. Our theories must engage with this reality. Contrary to positivism, science’s primary task is not to detect regularities between observed events, but to identify the underlying structures and forces that generate them.
The flaw in positivist social science is not that it provides wrong answers, but that it provides none at all. Its explanatory models assume a ‘closed’ social reality, yet reality is fundamentally ‘open.’ To function, positivism must impose this false closure upon society’s actual structure.
Social scientific knowledge is possible because society comprises structures and positions that shape individuals, serving both as prerequisites for action and as influences upon it. These form society’s ‘deep structure.’
Our observations are concept-laden but not concept-determined. An independent reality exists. While we need concepts to apprehend it, they are not reality itself. Social science studies the structures and relations that actors continually reproduce and transform.
Explaining social phenomena requires theoretical construction, moving beyond surface correlations to uncover deeper generative mechanisms. The essential question is: what fundamental relations constitute these phenomena? The answer points to causal mechanisms whose activation and effects depend on contingent contexts, making precise prediction impossible. We can, however, discern the driving forces and directional tendencies of development.
The world must never be conflated with our knowledge of it. Science produces meaningful knowledge only by acknowledging its dependence on that external reality. My core critique of mainstream economics is its failure to take this ontological requirement seriously.
