Report R5.14 Pursuing Doctoral Research: How the Study of Philosophy Can Help Seminar Leader: Prajit K. Basu, University of Hyderabad pkbsh[at]uohyd.ernet.in Doctoral education can be viewed as a process of social reproduction within academic research communities. Social reproduction refers to the process by which groups of people, notably social classes, reproduce their social structure and patterns over time. As the research student undergoes training under a supervisor and becomes trained to become an independent researcher he/she often gets persuaded to adopt the practices considered “appropriate.” Often, this is not learnt explicitly but through tacit understanding. The process of research begins with asking appropriate questions. The appropriateness of the question is defined by ontology and finding out details of the specific kinds of things that exist. Ontology is a description of the concepts and relationships that can exist for an agent or a community of agents (Gruber, 1992). For example, the current ontology in physics would consider appropriate questions such as what causes state of matter. Questions such as what causes motion would not be appropriate. The cause of motion has now long been established in physics. No research is free from such ontological commitments. For example, in Marxism, class is firmly embedded in the ontology. The concept of mass is similarly embedded within the physical sciences, but it changes as the framework changes from physics to chemistry. While we consider mass to be constant in chemistry, the Einsteinian concept of mass in physics assumes that the mass of a body increases when the velocity of the body tends towards the velocity of light. Students work for a fixed ontology which gives them a well-worked fixed guideline. Despite the boundaries set by ontology some researchers are breaking away from the ontologies established in their fields of research. It is interesting to note that about 40 Nobel laureates have broken the ontological barriers in their fields to pursue curiosity-driven research. Path-breaking research where a new ontology replaces an old one is not therefore a research under supervisory guidance as this can be done only when there is absence of social reproduction. Further, ontologies cannot always be mixed because some may be contrary to each other. Once in use, an ontology tends to perpetuate, although theories based on the ontology may change. Subjects such as management do not have a single ontology. There is a certain degree of relativity in the social and behavioural sciences which allows the construction of competing and overlapping ontologies. According to philosophy, one cannot do research without an ontology. Research does not start on a blank slate, so we have to resort to previous theories or previous work done in some area to understand the issues involved. This indoctrinates us into the use of the established ontology and thus completes the process of social. Ontology refers to the subject of existence while epistemology is about knowledge and knowing (Gruber, 1992). While ontology would refer to the nature of reality and the filters through which we see and experience the world. Epistemology would be questioning the sources and assumptions of knowledge and therefore questioning what we “do know” and we “can know” (Allison & Pomeroy, 2000, p. 13). The relationship between philosophy and science and the evolution of that relationship were then discussed. It was in the nineteenth century that the demarcation of science became an important concern in philosophy. The question whether parapsychology was a science or not led to the need for a distinction between science and nonscience. Science came to be seen as a particular way of gathering knowledge. Gradually the domain of science has become broader while that of philosophy has become narrower. In the twentyfirst century, philosophy seems to have reached its last bastion where it is limited to the study of mind or consciousness. The kind of help that philosophy can extend while pursuing research in natural and social sciences indeed can be varied. The idea of a doctoral programme is to get initiated into a certain way of exploring issues that interest us. It involves getting used to asking uncomfortable questions to ourselves. These questions may relate to some objects of investigation. Are those questions appropriate? How do we establish that the objects of investigation are out there? Philosophy helps us pose such questions in ways that make them discussable in scholarly communities. References Allison, P., & Pomeroy, E. (2000). How shall we "know?" Epistemological concerns in research in experiential education. The Journal of Experiential Education, 23(2), 91-98. Gruber, T. (1992). What is an ontology? Retrieved January 15, 2007, from Stanford University, Knowledge Systems, AI Laboratory Web site: http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/kst/what-is-an-ontology.html
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