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Science and common sense in the study of international politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Roger D. Spegele
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Extract

The history of recent efforts to establish a science of international politics may be usefully viewed as elaborate glosses on David Hume's powerful philosophical programme for resolving, reconciling or dissolving a variety of perspicuous dualities: the external and the internal, mind and body, reason and experience. Philosophers and historians of ideas still dispute the extent to which Hume succeeded but if one is to judge by the two leading ‘scientific’ research programmes1 for international politics—inductivism and naive falsificationism —these dualities are as unresolved as ever, with fatal consequences for the thesis of the unity of the sciences. For the failure to reconcile or otherwise dissolve such divisions shows that, on the Humean view, there is at least one difference between the physical (or natural) sciences. and the moral (or social) sciences: namely, that while the latter bear on the internal and external, the former are concerned primarily with the external. How much this difference matters and how the issue is avoided by the proponents of inductivism and naïve falsification is the subject matter of this paper.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , January 1984 , pp. 19 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1984

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References

1. I have borrowed the concept of a research programme from the late Imre Lakatos’ remarkably rich work ‘Falsificationism and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes’ in Lakatos, Imre and Musgrave, Alan (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 92–195CrossRefGoogle Scholar. However, whereas Lakatos employed the term as a full-blooded epistemological principle to demarcate the ‘mature from the immature sciences’, I am using the term as a modest principle of rational criticism.

2. Lest the reader mistakenly suppose a programme to be disembodied qualia or whatever, it might be prudent to cite some of its leading practitioners. By the inductiyist programme I mean, e.g. David Singer, J., ‘Behavioral Science Approach to International Relations’, SAIS, 10 (Summer 1966)Google Scholar and David Singer, J. and Small, Melvin, The Wages of War 1816–1965 (New York, 1972)Google Scholar; Rosenau, James N., The Scientific Study of Foreign Policy (New York, 1971)Google Scholar; Rummel, R. J., The Dimensions of Nations (Beverly Hills, 1972)Google Scholar; Russett, Bruce, International Regions and the International System (Chicago, 1967)Google Scholar; Zinnes, Dina A., ‘Research Frontiers in the Study of International Polities’, in Polsby, Nelson and Greenstein, Fred (eds.), Handbook of Political Science, 8, International Politics (Chicago, 1975), pp. 87–198Google Scholar; and a host of others.

3. As do Jones, Susan D. and Singer, J. David, Beyond Conjecture in International Politics (Itasca, Illinois, 1972)Google Scholar, intro.

4. Quine, W. v. O., Word and Object (Cambridge, Mass., 1960)Google Scholar, ch. 2.

5. Hesse, Mary, The Structure of Scientific Inference (Cambridge, 1974), p. 14Google Scholar.

6. Ibid. p. 28.

7. Rosenau, op. cit. p. 16.

8. Haack, Susan, ‘The Justification of Deduction’, Mind LXXXV (1975), pp. 112–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I have reformulated Haack's example slightly.

9. Paul Feyerabend makes this argument in Against Method (London, 1975)Google Scholar, chs. 2–3, but Popper, Karl, Objective Knowledge (Oxford, 1972)Google Scholar, chs. 10–11 is fond of it too.

10. Feyerabend, op. cit. p. 31; emphasis in text.

11. Zinnes, op. cit. p. 90.

12. Adherents to naive falsificationism constitute another heterogeneous group within the ‘scientific’ camp of international relations. The most important statements of this position (invariably identified misleadingly as ‘deduction’) are to be found in: Levy, Marion J. Jr, ‘Does it Matter if he's Naked? Bawled the Child’, in Knorr, Klaus and Rosenau, James N. (eds.), Contending Approaches to International Politics (Princeton, 1969), pp. 87–109Google Scholar; Young, Oran, ‘Professor Russett: Industrious Tailor to a Naked Emperor’, World Politics XXL (April, 1969)Google Scholar; Rogowski, Ronald, ‘International Politics: The Past as Science’, International Studies Quarterly XII (December, 1968)Google Scholar; Waltz, Kenneth N., ‘Theory of International Relations’, in Greenstein and Polsby, op. cit. pp. 1–86Google Scholar. For those who are sceptical about the alleged tendency of international relationists to apply the categories and concepts here criticized, see Hoole, Francis W. and Zinnes, Dina (eds.), Quantitative International Politics (New York, 1976)Google Scholar. The entire book is an attempt to assess, as Bruce Russett puts it in the foreword, ‘the progress of the “movement” as a whole’ (p. v). The criteria of evaluation sometimes fall into the category of inductivism but more frequently they reflect one or another version of naive falsificationism.

13. Acceptance of these principles is widespread among international relationists who regard themselves as falling under the rubric of ‘scientific students of international polities’. A pertinent example is James A. Caporaso, ‘A Philosophy of Science Assessment of the Stanford Studies in Conflict and Integration’ in Hoole and Zinnes, op. cit. pp. 356–8.

14. Waltz, op. cit. p. 13. Although the proponents of naive falsificationism employ the language of Karl Popper and some of his formulations, it is not at all clear that they are genuine Popperians. For one thing, they do not seem to have appreciated or, if appreciated, accepted Popper's strictures concerning the limits of theoretical knowledge in the social sciences. For another thing, they do not seem to accept Popper's notion of scientific progress as increasing verisimilitude. Waltz, for example, implies that theories are merely instruments, a notion which Popper is at pains to refute.

15. Lakatos, op. cit. p. 103.

16. Kuhn, T., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1962).Google Scholar

17. See Feyerabend, op. cit. ch. 12.

18. Waltz, op. cit. p. 6.

19. Young, op. cit. p. 490.

20. Haack, op. cit. p. 114. This argument is shamelessly borrowed from Professor Haack who is not, of course, to be held responsible for its use here. Anyway, Professor Haack has, as a philosopher and logician, different fish to fry.

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24. Popper, Karl, ‘The Aim of Science’, in Objective Knowledge (Oxford, 1972), pp. 191–205.Google Scholar

25. Waltz, op. cit. p. 12.

26. Waltz, op. cit. p. 15.

27. J. David Singer, ‘The Incompleat Theorist: Insight Without Evidence’, in Knorr and Rosenau op. cit. p. 65.

28. Ibid. pp. 66–7; emphasis added.

29. Any temptation to sneer at this view would have to be done in full recognition of the indisputable fact that this metaphysical understanding is to be found, in one version or another, in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and, more perspicuously in our time, in Charles Peirce and Willard van O. Quine. See, for example, Peirce, C. S., ‘How to Make our Ideas Clear’, Popular Science Monthly, 18 (1878), pp. 286–302Google Scholar and W. v. O. Quine, ‘The Scope and Language of Science’, op. cit. pp. 228–45.

30. See Quine, W. v. O., Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York, 1969)Google Scholar, ch. 2.

31. See, for example, Hedley Bull, ‘International Theory: The Case for a. Classical Approach’, in Knorr and Rosenau, op. cit. pp. 20–38.

32. I hasten to add that this does not appear to be any intention that one can derive, strictly speaking, from Quine. However, if one closely examines Quine's more specific proposals for a behavioural science as discernible, for example, in ‘Mind and Verbal Dispositions’, in Guttenplan, Samuel (ed.), Mind and Language (New York, 1975), pp. 83–95Google Scholar, we would have to grant that any scientific international relations properly so called, would be so completely far-fetched and so morally objectionable as to be beyond any future we, as intelligent, competent human beings would care about.

33. Waltz, op. cit. p. 4.

34. To understand why, see, for example Suppe, Frederick, The Structure of Sciencific Theories (Urbana, III, 1974)Google Scholar, esp. ch. IV.

35. Waltz, op. cit. p. 3.

36. Ibid. p. 8. In the event the reader believes this metaphysical conception idiosyncratic, I propose that one consult, e.g. Deutsch's, KarlThe Analysis of International Relations (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1978)Google Scholar. One will find at pp. 125–9 five versions of a ‘cascade model of influence and information flows’ in which Reality is represented as an input-output machine, connected up with everything else by a vast array of communication flows. Deutsch's ‘models’ constitute the absurd nadir of metaphysical realism.

37. ‘Explanation and Reference’ in Mind, Language and Reality (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 196–214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38. Quine, op. cit. p. 50.

39. The extent of the tension and the difficulty, if not impossibility, of resolving it in terms of the traditional assumptions of metaphysical realism were first noticed, I believe, by Michael Dummett. See his appropriately titled article ‘Truth’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society LIX (1959) pp. 141–162.Google Scholar

40. Putnam, Hilary, ‘What Theories Are Not’, in Nagel, E., Supper, P. and Tarski, A. (eds.), Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (Stanford, Calif., 1962), pp. 240–51.Google Scholar

41. Waltz, op. cit. p. 12.

42. See Singer, for example, op. cit.

43. I have argued in support of political realism elsewhere. See my ‘Toward Rediscovering Political Realism’, II Politico, Anno XLVII, (Settembre 1982), pp. 499–537.Google Scholar

44. For a commitment to just such a view, disclaimers notwithstanding, see Rogowski, Ronald, ‘Rationalist Theories of Polities’, World Politics, 22 (1978), pp. 296–323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45. On this see, in particular, Sen, Amartya K., ‘Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral Foundations of Economics’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 6 (Summer 1977), pp. 317–44.Google Scholar

46. See Davidson, Donald, ‘Psychology as Philosophy’, in Glover, Jonathan (ed.), The Philosophy of Mind (Oxford, 1976), pp. 101–10.Google Scholar

47. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, On Certainty, Anscombe, G. E. M. and von Wright, G. H. (eds.) (Oxford, 1969)Google Scholar, par. 670.

48. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford, 1967)Google Scholar, par. 485.

49. Ibid. par. 217.

50. Wittgenstein, On Certainty, par. 310.

51. Wittgenstein, op. cit. par. 226.

52. Wittgenstein, op. cit. par. 217.

53. Deutsch, Karl, The Nerves of Government (New York, 1966), p. 12Google Scholar.

54. Ibid. p. 14.

55. Ibid. p. 14.

56. Zinnes, Dina A., Contemporary Research in International Relations (New York, 1976)Google Scholar, ch. 1.

57. Ibid. p. 2.

58. Putnam, Hilary, Meaning and the Moral Sciences (London, 1978), p. 70Google Scholar.

59. Russell, B., ‘Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description’, in Mysticism and Logic (London, 1918)Google Scholar.

60. This example is due, essentially, to Godfrey-Smith, William, ‘Thoughts of Objects’, The Monist, 62 (April 1979), pp. 230–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61. Waltz, op. cit. p. 70.

62. Kripke, Saul, Naming and Necessity (Oxford, 1980)Google Scholar. See also Frohock, Fred M., ‘The Structure of “Politics”’, APSR 72 (September 1978), pp. 859–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Frohock has a discussion of some of the implications of Kripke's views but he does not draw out the implications of Kripke's work for the issue of generalization vs. particularization.