In the epistemic fallacy, statements about being are to be interpreted as statements about knowledge (SRHE 6). Basically, being is understood as perceived being, something that is unperceived being a thing-in-itself at best (and neither real nor actual at worst). In the ontic fallacy, knowledge is analyzed as a direct, unmediated relation between a subject and being. The ontic fallacy ignores the cognitive and social mechanisms by which knowledge is produced from antecedent knowledge, leaving an ontology of empirical knowledge events (raw perceptions) and a de-socialized epistemology (SRHE 23, 253).
Bhaskar sees a close relation between these two fallacies, especially in relation to classical empiricism. The epistemic fallacy first projects the external world onto a subjective phenomenal map, then the ontic fallacy projects the phenomenal entities of that subjective map back out on the world as objective sense data, of which we have direct perceptual knowledge. So reality independent of thought is first subjectified, then the subjectified elements are objectified to explain and justify our knowledge.
Copyright © 1997 Louis Irwin
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