Unsure if I'm asking in right place but I need help with the topic. I have spent 12 months attempting to understand my ontological position and I am beginning to articulate it but can't align it easily with ontological positions present in the literature.
thank you, I thoroughly appreciate your response and will read the article. I guess my question is what if my beliefs don't quite fit with the existing ontological discourse? Bearing in mind this may be due to my beginning and limited understanding.
I have read and reflected widely and then with some certainty, positioned myself as a relativist. Once I did that, and began to argue from that position, I began to see that was incorrect and correct at the same time. How? This is an area I feel I need to devote much time and thought so I appreciate your response and your link to the article.
Thank you
thank you, I appreciate your view as mine gets cloudy some days, most days, ok alot!
To answer your question straightforward: You have to define your own ontological position in relation to the published (established/subscripted) body of knowledge.
Subscribing to something that you cannot justify does not make sense, at least to me.
Thank you all, After many months agonising and reading and re-reading literature, and being really annoying to everyone I know by asking far too many questions, and posting this question thread, I believ I have come to understand my ontological position and my epistemological approach to my research.
I hope haha
I like John's answer to this too. Here is mine.
Your own ontological position is inescapable and multiple, that is, you hold different positions in different circumstances (say, one at church, one at university, one with your family). The ontological question comes down to basically, what entities are 'possible entities' to you? What can exist? What cannot exist? Ontology is a question about 'being', or what can and cannot 'be' - and it is generally quite personal.
These possible entities (be they gods and aliens, or notions of justice, or anything you believe in as legitimate) are the basis for your ontological foundation.
This then determines your epistemological position, that is, what counts for knowledge and axiology, that is, what you value - and whatever methodology you choose or theories you are attracted to will absolutely stem from the intersection of these three constructs, because it comes down to what you can 'entertain' logically versus what you cannot. This is all determined by your OWN ontology.
The doctoral process is a negotiation between an established body of knowledge (the product of multiple individual ontological positions, agreed on as 'reasonable' via consensus in the knowledge field) and what you can and cannot agree upon within this body of agreed knowledge, according to your own ontological foundations.
Does this make sense? Each discipline has an ontological foundation (sometimes multiple, which is how we get sub-fields, concentrations and sub-disciplines - and occasionally splits) and your job is to make explicit where you do and do not concur with this body of knowledge, whilst reasonably performing according to the doctoral 'expectations'.
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