The article discusses the relevance of ontology, the metaphysical study of being, in social sciences through a comparison of three distinct outlooks: Roy Bhaskar's version of critical realism, a pragmatic realist approach the most renowned representatives of which are Rom Harré and Hilary Putnam, and the authors’ own synthesis of the pragmatist John Dewey's and the neopragmatist Richard Rorty's ideas, here called methodological relationalism. The Bhaskarian critical realism is committed to the heavy ontological furniture of metaphysical transcendentalism, resting on essentialist presumptions of causality and social structures, tacitly creating a dualism between individuals and society. Pragmatic realists, for their part, carry much lighter metaphysical baggage than critical realists and, much in a pragmatist vein, accept the idea that social scientists should study society by studying social life—the interwoven activities of individuals. Nevertheless, pragmatic realists only reluctantly, if at all, renounce the subject–object dualism and its ontological implications. Drawing on the ideas of Donald Davidson and Richard Rorty, the writers outline their own antirepresentationalist, antiessentialist approach to social sciences. The proposed methodological relationalism is a pragmatist approach of Deweyan origin. Based on a Darwinian understanding of human beings as organisms trying to cope with their environment, it emphasises the insight that one can neither step outside one's own action, nor withdraw from the actor's point of view, just as one cannot cognitively step outside language.

there is an urgent need for a new branch of philosophy, "Philosophy of Society," which would consist of social ontology-meaning conceptual analysis of the logical structure of society, not traditional "metaphysical ontology" (Searle, 2010, pp. 3-6). Philosophy of Society would revolve around the trinity of human society, language and consciousness, trying to explicate the interrelations between them-or, as Searle (1998, p. ix) puts it, the logic of how they all hang together. 1 Searle's explication of the logic of this trinity starts with the emergence of intrinsic intentionality and consciousness from the biological brain, explains language as a natural outgrowth of that consciousness, and concludes with the mechanisms of social institutions and "the foundation for all institutional ontology" being created by language-use (e.g., Searle, 2010, pp. 61-63).In this paper we will scrutinize "intrinsic naturalism" as developed by Searle and other external realists such as Noam Chomsky, and contrast it with another type of naturalistic approach, one which leans heavily on a conception of evolution such that takes into account the variety of different and constantly diversifying ecological niches. 2 By the same token at issue here is the contrast between two methodological standpoints: subject-object dualism and methodological relationalism. We will focus specifically on the relationship between language and consciousness from a sociological angle; that relationship is a key philosophical theme in many intrinsic naturalistic accounts, but also an area of interest where a sociological version of niche-construction approach can be fruitfully applied. SEARLE'S ACCOUNT OF "HOW IT ALL HANGS TOGETHER"Searle's explanation of how consciousness, language and society all relate to each other is a naturalistic endeavour such that honours "the Enlightenment vision" of external realism where the objective nature of the universe exists independently from our subjective minds but can be (partially) comprehended by those minds.

This article takes an evolutionary "reverse engineering" standpoint on Homo discens, learning man, to track down the (learning) mechanisms that played a pivotal role in the natural selection of human being. The approach is "evolutionary sociological"-as opposed to gene-centred or psychologising-and utilises notions of co-evolutionary organism-environment transactions and niche construction. These are compatible with a Deweyan theory of action, which entails that in action one cannot but learn and one can only learn in action. Special attention is paid to apprentice-like learning-by-

In this article, relationalist approaches to social sciences are analyzed in terms of a conceptual distinction between “philosophizing sociology” and “sociologizing philosophy.” These mark two different attitudes toward philosophical metaphysics and ontological commitments. The authors’ own pragmatist methodological relationalism of Deweyan origin is compared with ontologically committed realist approaches, as well as with Bourdieuan methodological relationalism. It is argued that pragmatist philosophy of social sciences is an appropriate tool for assisting social scientists in their methodological work, especially as regards problem-driven case studies.

There are realist philosophers and social scientists who believe in the indispensability of social ontology. However, we argue that certain pragmatist outlines for inquiry open more fruitful roads to empirical research than such ontologizing perspectives. The pragmatist conceptual tools in a Darwinian vein-concepts like action, habit, coping and community-are in a particularly stark contrast with, for instance, the Searlean and Chomskian metaphysics of human being. In particular, we bring Searle's realist philosophy of society and mind under critical survey in this paper and contrast it with a pragmatist, sociologizing approach. Drawing from Dewey, James, and recent antirepresentationalism, we propose for research work a methodological relationalism of its own kind, altogether detached from the ontologies of society and mind.