Tony Lawson makes a compelling case that it is only naive realism that feminist social scientists and philosophers need to avoid, not any and all realist arguments. However, he leaves mysterious, on the one hand, why so many feminists have preferred epistemological to ontological arguments and,...

Is there only one basic structure of reality? Can anyone produce culture-free representations of reality? Is the partiality of our representations only a problem or inconvenience rather than also an epistemic resource? Should we think of the goal of sciences as the production of accurate...

Sandra Harding identifies a set of questions to which, she suggests, she and I would provide contrasting answers. In this short note I wonder if our differences are quite as sharp as Harding supposes.

Tony Lawson (1999) argues that critical realism will facilitate revelatory and emancipatory projects in feminist economics. The strength of Lawson's argument lies in its rejection of social atomism and methodological individualism. Societies are best understood as structurally connected systems...

In a recent contribution to this Journal , Tony Lawson (1999) claims that the methodological framework of critical realism fits the "explanatory and emancipatory projects" of feminist economics. This essay challenges his claim on the basis that a "naive" notion of science underlies critical...