I was recently asked to define how I think about the world, in relation to these questions:
How do we define our self?
What is the nature of reality?
What can be the relationship between nature and participant?
How do we know the world, or gain knowledge of it?
I answered with the viewpoint of a single role: that of a researcher seeking to gain information and understanding. That in itself is a fairly post-positivist viewpoint I now think, because of the underlying implication that there is information out there to be gained, and understanding to be had. Also it doesn't reflect any changes in philosophy as I move through different roles and interactions.
For example, when I'm active in politics I take a more discursive position: there isn't a "right" or "correct" policy, there are different choices with different outcomes. The choice made by an individual will be based on their ideology and their philosophical position on ethics, and the importance of the problem to them: a politician dealing with an uninteresting (to them) problem may well choose the populist option out of expedience whether or not they would do so given more thought.
I identify in myself a need to move beyond post-positivism, in that I understand other research worldviews like social constructivism and even see the value in using such a worldview in my own research, but do not yet internalise such a view or see how to apply its implications (or what they are). It must be the case that social interactions (including in software engineering) are negotiated, and that this has implications for even the supposedly "objective" ideas like technology design and choice: the "best tool for the job" is seen through the lens of what is acceptable, desirable, and superlative; through the lens of what the job is; and through the lens of what can be agreed with the people doing (and paying for) the work. But I still come back to questions like "what's the best way to do" and "are RSEs efficient at". Is efficiency the goal? For whom? Why? Who agrees?
It seems like in addition to the very egocentric "how do I define myself" there's another question I need to think about, which is how others define their selves. And that that's a key part of the research I'm going to do. It's also a key part of the "RSE movement", in that it's inviting a new categorisation and label that may not be appropriate or acceptable to all. I see Katz and the US-RSE community trying to be more inclusive, and the UK-RSE community being more categorical. Is that due to the leadership or the membership? Or the ways of navigating careers in the two countries' research communities?
Reading on, my view seems to accord with critical realism: yes there is some objective reality, but there is no objective exploration of that reality. All description of reality is mediated by language, communication, and shared understanding.