The Ontological Fallacy: a rejoinder on thestatus of scientific realism in internationalrelations

This article argues that scientific and critical realism have embraced severalmistaken claims, among them that social science enquiry cannot proceed unless thetheoretical objects of study are specified in advance. The article argues, rather, that althoughpre-scientific, observable objects and events must be specified from the outset, theoreticalobjects come to our attention only in the course of formulating theories. The articleadvances an alternative to scientific realist and critical realist foundations, namely, causalconventionalism, which is an adaptation to the social sciences of several elements of PierreDuhem’s conventionalist account of physical science. The article argues that major goals oftheorising that scientific realism and critical realism seek to fulfill are better satisfied by theconventionalist alternative. In an effort to clarify some important issues, the article identifiesand responds to a series of related criticisms of my views offered by Colin Wight in hisrecent article ‘A Manifesto for Scientific Realism in IR: Assuming the Can-Opener Won’tWork!’ in ‘Millennium’, and in his book, Agents, Structures and International Relations:Politics as Ontology