Dear Ravu Iru

This is a big and complicated question. To provide a general answer, the following points can be raised:

- Ontology explores the question of the existenceof these factors or influences or the social reality.

- Epistemology is concerned with how these factors or influences or social reality are studied (i.e. methodology), including the relationship between the subject and the object, and which approach of deduction or induction or both can be used to reach to finding.

I hope that is helpful.

Regards

In short, an ontology is concerned with existence, whereas epistemology is concerned with knowledge, and that is why the ontology asks about the reasons for the existence of this or that thing, while epistemology asks about the definition of knowledge and the conditions of correct or true knowledge and how to make sure of that.

This question has already been asked several times on RG in slightly different forms. Here is my answer from a previous occasion:

Ontology deals with what kinds of things exist. Epistemology deals with what we can know and how we can know it (the means and conditions for knowledge), including how we can know what exists. The two are interconnected, since how we can know depends on the nature of the objects of knowledge, and determining what exists and its nature depends on how we can know.

Our ontology (or inventory) of the world might include physical objects, minds, events, properties, values, and abstract entities such as numbers and sets. Or some of these might be reduced to others. (e.g. a nominalist ontology might say there are no numbers, only symbols or inkmarks; a physicalist might say there are no minds only brains).

Epistemology might claim that some or all of these are means to knowledge: perception, sensation, intuition, reason (deduction, induction, abduction) — even faith as some religious believers claim. Epistemology might also attempt to define what it is to know: e.g. to improve on the traditional view of knowledge as "justified true belief".

— From https://www.researchgate.net/post/Can-someone-explain-the-ontology-and-epistemology-in-simple-way

The ontological and epistemological context of a research depends on the two research paradigms :

1. The first paradigm serves to fill the knowledge gap.

2. The second serves as a solution to a problem or an exploratory approach.

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1. The ontological context of a research according to the first paradigm consists in studying the relations between different concepts: it is a causal research or a correlational approach (only one reality).

The epistemological context of a research according to the first paradigm is an empirical epistemology which consists in saying that all our knowledge comes from experience: use of a methodology and a method related to the use of a questionnaire, or the carrying out of tests and statistics.

2. The ontological context of research according to the second paradigm consists in understanding and taking into account the context, the people, and describing what is observed: it is descriptive research or qualitative research (no single reality: reality is constructed in the context studied, several contexts = several realities / constructivist approach).

The epistemological context of a research according to the second paradigm consists of what the researchers' interpretation - in particular through qualitative analysis, constructs knowledge and theories: interpretative epistemology. Here, the methodology and methods will derive from the ontological and epistemological beliefs of the researchers.

Summary of a text from Christophe COUSI

That's a really inspiring example, by Martin Böhnert, to try to explain fundamental terms without which not a lot in the philosophy/methodology of science over the last century makes much sense. I'm not sure though that his example of research into animal wellbeing is the right one.

1. Methodological issues arise if there is a clear consensus on the goal of the research - if the ends are defined to everyone's satisfaction, there then ensues, in the 'normal' research situation, a discussion about means. (How do we find an efficacious vaccine for this pandemic? That's a 'means' type of discussion: it revolves around how to achieve something - mostly that's meant in the instrumental sense, something in the 'real world', but it can also be applied for something at the intellectual level: 'how do I become good at chess?' Or Chinese? Those are all discussions about methods.)

2. The epistemological side makes its presence felt as soon as there is disagreement about that means/ends relationship itself. In contemporary research: once one starts problematising the technocratic aspect of so much in today's research. We're all hoping now that the vaccines that are in the process of being rolled out are going to 'fix the problem', namely the disease caused by this virus. But the wider problem is that our species has had an 'instrumental' relationship to the natural environment for centuries now, and this 'instrumental exploitation' of the natural environment is in the process of destroying it. The 'other' of a means/ends type of discussion is one about values. (Martin Böhnert will know that animal wellbeing is just about the very last thing that most animal research has been about, until now. It's time we did that - but that's a value type discussion. There are also women researchers, and that too needs to be acknowledged. That too is a value-type discussion - that's why MB speaks of 'her' research. One can agree with both, but in doing so we've already left the methodological for the epistemological. Good for him I say, but there's no need to give up our analytic ability to be able to tell the difference between theoretical and practical discourses.)

3. The ontological part is that aspect of our lives - usually during childhood - where very fundamental 'predispositions' or 'stances' are laid down (almost a kind of imprinting) that mostly stay with us for the rest of our lives. Like religion, or belief-systems, or very fundamental codes of conduct and perception. Most people take them for granted, and find it very difficult to talk about. Though it can be done, and most of Western Philosophy over the last century has done exactly that. Controversies about matters of ontology are almost invariably deeply emotional. Issues at this level radiate out to both of the above: they affect what we think about and talk about in both methodology and epistemology. Here we're referencing the canonic authors of the previous century: from Wittgenstein to Heidegger and Adorno - in a sustained discourse with the 'Adamitic' religions (and beyond.)

What most researchers trained in the analytic tradition have difficulty with are the issues involved in the debate about the “ontology of the factual”. (With the exception of the Physicists: they have their own way of dealing with these things.) The best account of all this is still that of Habermas' Knowledge and Human Interests. For what this discussion does is to say: what in the above differentiation I’ve called the ‘methodological’ approach does itself have, seen from a certain ‘macro-’perspective (sort of at the level of the ‘species as a whole’) - the entire domain of ‘evidence-based’ research - is based on a rigid dualism between the objective and the subjective, going back to Descartes, is an impediment in all kinds of areas in the social sciences: psychology for instance, or anthropology or economics. (This here for instance gets it wrong: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/facts/ )

If you explained your research project, you might get more helpful answers to your core question.

Epistemology is always important. Some research questions have an ontology built into them, others are ambivalent about any underlying ontology. It depends...

Hi,

I think epistemology and ontology are the concepts that are difficult and limited to make sense with short answers in a research design. Therefore, I strongly recommend the following article that clearly explains these concepts.

Grix, J. (2002). Introducing Students to the Generic Terminology of Social Research. Politics, 22(3), 175-186.

Best wishes.