UNDERSTANDING AND EVALUATING THE SOCIAL SCIENCES’ THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE
Two Pillars of Knowledge Claims: Ontology and Epistemology
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Ontology encompasses a set of assumptions regarding the composition of material and social reality, defining what the elements of reality are, how they are distinguished, and why the interact in certain ways.
Cartesian dualism is an ontology, because it proposes a fundamental paradigm of reality, one consisting in this case of three essential, discrete and ineradicable substances enumerated as mind, matter and divinity.
Epistemology is the assumed domain of legitimate knowledge, defining how knowledge is acquired, how knowledge is limited and how claims to knowledge are validated.
Cartesian rationalism is an epistemology, because it proffers a coherent structure for the acquisition and systematization of knowledge, comprising foremost a reflective intuition which affirms axiomatic, abstract truths and proceeds to build outwards to a proof of empirical reality upon the basis of these truths.
The Great Divide: Positivist and Post-positivist Epistemological Paradigms
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A defining difference between positivists and post-positivists is found in the ontologies they subscribe to.
Positivistic ontology is objective, implicating that reality exists as causally independent of and comprehensibly distinguishable from social perceptions. Therefore, positivists adjudge themselves validated in drawing research programs which are empirical in method, nomothetic in scope, and causal in their claimed explanation.
Post-positivists are contrastingly favorable to a subjective ontology, meaning that reality is inextricable from social perceptions. Therefore, research should focus on the assumptions which underlie perceptions rather than what is empirically perceived; should be limited to a local, idiographic scope rather than expanded to a universally nomothetic one, and should draw at most probable conclusions, rather than causal ones.
Despite their fundamental ontological difference however, neither positivists nor post-positivists would eschew the importance of internal validity to research. It is impossible to criticize or commend an argument without affirming internal validity’s import. Absent internal validity, there would exist no standard of logical coherence in argumentation.
The two camps would likewise be in agreement that worthwhile research stems from intellectually stimulating research puzzles and should prove capable of meaningfully impacting an audience of appreciable size.
The Scientific Method: Its Assumptions, Relevance, Limitations and Revisions in the Social Sciences
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The scientific method assumes an objective reality as its ontology, and through epistemologies such as positivism and critical realism, assumes the interaction of entities within this reality to be empirically discernable, testable and demonstrable.
Therefore, deductively formed hypotheses can be inductively observed in their degree of relevance to the phenomenon they purport to explain. Consequent from this process is the production of causal laws.
The scientific method is applicable to international relations provided the aforementioned ontological and epistemological assumptions of the scientific method appropriately conceptualize the particular field it seeks to study within international relations. A realist ontology and empirically-oriented epistemology are apposite to the study of consistent causal relationships between discrete entities.
If the causal relationship is subject to volatility, rendering it open rather than closed, and if the entities under observations are ambiguously defined or protean by nature, then the scientific method is unsuitable.
The potential research questions of international relations are not wholly encompassed by the scientific method. Many research questions involve open systems and nebulous definitions. Consequently the scientific method may be applied to IA research, but only judiciously.