At the July 2013 Integral Theory Conference in San Francisco, Giorgio Piacenza met with Roy Bhaskar, well known ontological philosopher of Critical Realism and Keynote Speaker at the Conference. Bhaskar was a founding member of the Centre for Critical Realism and the International Association of Critical Realism. He is currently employed at the Institute of Education in London where he is working on the application of CR to Peace Studies. Piacenza has published in Integral Leadership Review and has maintained a wide-ranging interest that impinges on various aspects of reality, aspects such as the mind-body problem, philosophy, cosmology and physics.

Ken Wilber has responded to criticisms of integral theory from the lens of critical realism.