In the world of international relations, there are several major philosophical hubs of influence that act as teams in the same professional sports league. There are the Neo-Liberals who pride themselves on approaching peace above all at most costs. There are also Constructivists (Critical Theorists) who instead see international relations as something dominated not by states but by ideas that transcend those entities. Finally, there are realists, who attest that force and the study of human conflict determines the outcome of international relations.
Normally, these three bicker about each-other and periodically appear in subsequent chapters of college textbooks, still bickering about each-other. There are some outside voices that once in a while present themselves to factor into the debate as to which school of thought is the "least wrong" of the three, but those attacks normally repeat what each side has already said about the other.
This is why it seemed odd to me to find such a weird objection to one of the schools of international relations, ironically the one I most vehemently defend, to come from, philosophically speaking at least, the most obvious source of theoretical objections, one David Hume.
This is a well known joke within philosophical circles given Hume's skepticism; he isn't actually a philosopher so much as he is a philosophical "party-pooper". Joking aside Hume's (arguably) most famous piece of skepticism in my view creates one of the most condemning pieces of evidence against Realism, attacking perhaps its core and its biggest pillar. I of course am talking about his "Problem of Induction".
To show why Hume's problem applies to Realism, I will first give the best case for Realism using the very argument that Hume would disavow. I will then go on to explain the Problem of Induction, hopefully making my worry come to light by putting the two ideas head to head.
Realism is historically split into two eras of explaining the theory. The first comes from classical Realism which relays a rather dark view of human nature (Hobbes, Morgenthau and company) to expose that the only thing states and the people who run them are interested in is power and what power gives them.This view of the world is most often defended by a long laundry list of atrocious acts committed by man after the search of power and riches.
The second comes from Structural Realism or Neo-Realism which is mostly attributable to Kenneth Waltz and his approach that tries to stay as far away from topics of human nature and disposition as possible. Waltz instead tried to make Realism apply as a science and hoped to describe the actions of states the same way someone decides which store to go to in order to buy groceries; by making the most "economical" decision. To Waltz, states reason to try to maximize the benefits from whatever costs they will incur, and that to him is what defines the international agenda.
With that very fast crash course in realist IR theory over, I will now go on to give an even more brutal crash course on the Problem of Induction. The scene used by almost all philosophy professors is the same; imagine a lake filled with white swans.
For some reason, someone who has far too much time on their hands decides to document, for 100 days, what sort of swans congregate on this lake. For 100 days, this poor soul drags his or her lawn chair out on the edge of the lake and starts counting away, finding that these last 100 days have only been filled with white swans. This amateur ornithologist then deduces that this particular lake only houses white swans, packs up his/her chair, and heads home proud that they've reached such an important conclusion. Unfortunately for them, that person has just wasted 100 days if Hume is to be listened to.
Just because you saw an event happen for 100 times in a row does in no way give you more reason to have a justified true belief in expecting it to happen 101 times than you do going from a single event to expecting a second. Simply put, inducing from a frequency of events does not give enough reason to be able to claim to have knowledge about a specific event of the world. Going back to the swan example, the person watching the swans has no good reason to believe that on the 101st day a black swan will appear, ruining his or her previous instinctual thought.
If you are able to put two and two together, you are probably able to see where Hume becomes a major pain in the side for all realists. First of all, the Problem of Induction takes away the biggest sword in the arsenal of the classical realist, because now his/her claim that history shows a steady track record of terrible acts committed by those in power fully embodies the example of the swan-whisperer, giving them no real reason to expect the world to always produce bad people.
Even Waltz is not safe, no matter how far away he wants to get from philosophical discussions because even he is invoking history when he claims that states are rational and have the capacity to reason. Now, some will say that introspection and therefore internal reasoning is outside the realm of the Problem of Induction, but then those people will have to also try to explain that a state reasons the same way a person does which is ridiculous (too many differences in scope, states have a much more limited list of interests than people, states have to "guess" whether or not other states are "reasonable" or not much more than people do which changes how reasoning is done).
Parentheses aside, states do not have introspection and do not mentally progress over time like individuals, so even Waltz is forced to say that most states are rational because of a historical record. Let's assume however that state reasoning is safe and that states do reason like people; you would still have to get over the fact that tomorrow morning there will still be a historically relevant international structure based on the relevant international structure of yesterday which by itself is null and void because of the Problem of Induction.
So, is this problem the end for Realism? Should we all just start throwing Leviathan in a giant fire and choose which of the remaining two theories sounds the best? At this point, it almost looks like it. This critique however should not dismay the realist, it should instead empower him/her, especially Neo-Realists, to separate the school of thought from amateur psychology even more than Waltz wanted to do. The reason why most realists are considered to have been the kids at school who were picked on the most is because the intuition most of us have about human nature producing only jerks in society is just that; an intuition not founded by scientific evidence of said human nature.
All that Hume has done here is remind us that there needs to be a more refined explanation for why balance of power and the international structure which it should create can be taken seriously. If anything, a Humean critique of Realism is the undercurrent that leads all other critiques of it; Neo-Liberals and Constructivists will very quickly point out that their ideas stem much less from a direct observation of the world and instead on logical explanations for what the direct observation of the world means. Realists do not have this luxury and have to do more work to explain what to them seems to be obvious historical evidence in their favor.
Are there any possible solutions to this problem? Probably. That answer is definitely not what most of us wanted to hear, nor is it in any way good enough to fully encapsulate the problem before us. However it is as good as we can get so far; this isn't a problem that is solved in a day, mostly because the Problem of Induction itself does not have a direct response or solution. Even Hume tried to quantify it rather than solve it by citing a pseudo-evolutionary theory of his, but those sorts of attempts are not good enough to give us any solution that fully answers the problem of the Realist historical account.
"Probably" is only adequate insofar as we quietly swallow our logical prides and accept inductive reasoning as something that although imperfect is as good as we have to try to make sense of the world, IR theory or otherwise. There must be a reason for why we reason inductively, and so there must be a reason for why some people vehemently believe in Realism and why they will, like me, continue to be Realists even though this problem continues to surface. This however is not something that can be completely ignored mostly because unlike counting swans, IR theories have a very real impact on the lives of every person on Earth in this interconnected world.
Finding a solution is important not only from a philosophical basis but also because it will give a more robust meaning to the actions that states and policy makers take as opposed to having to little logical basis for the aforementioned actions. That solution will not only make the actions and thoughts by Realists applicable, but also give an added edge of justice within the actions themselves, making Realism stronger as a school of thought and more approachable as a theory in general.
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Normally, these three bicker about each-other and periodically appear in subsequent chapters of college textbooks, still bickering about each-other. There are some outside voices that once in a while present themselves to factor into the debate as to which school of thought is the "least wrong" of the three, but those attacks normally repeat what each side has already said about the other.
This is why it seemed odd to me to find such a weird objection to one of the schools of international relations, ironically the one I most vehemently defend, to come from, philosophically speaking at least, the most obvious source of theoretical objections, one David Hume.
This is a well known joke within philosophical circles given Hume's skepticism; he isn't actually a philosopher so much as he is a philosophical "party-pooper". Joking aside Hume's (arguably) most famous piece of skepticism in my view creates one of the most condemning pieces of evidence against Realism, attacking perhaps its core and its biggest pillar. I of course am talking about his "Problem of Induction".
To show why Hume's problem applies to Realism, I will first give the best case for Realism using the very argument that Hume would disavow. I will then go on to explain the Problem of Induction, hopefully making my worry come to light by putting the two ideas head to head.
Realism is historically split into two eras of explaining the theory. The first comes from classical Realism which relays a rather dark view of human nature (Hobbes, Morgenthau and company) to expose that the only thing states and the people who run them are interested in is power and what power gives them.This view of the world is most often defended by a long laundry list of atrocious acts committed by man after the search of power and riches.
The second comes from Structural Realism or Neo-Realism which is mostly attributable to Kenneth Waltz and his approach that tries to stay as far away from topics of human nature and disposition as possible. Waltz instead tried to make Realism apply as a science and hoped to describe the actions of states the same way someone decides which store to go to in order to buy groceries; by making the most "economical" decision. To Waltz, states reason to try to maximize the benefits from whatever costs they will incur, and that to him is what defines the international agenda.
With that very fast crash course in realist IR theory over, I will now go on to give an even more brutal crash course on the Problem of Induction. The scene used by almost all philosophy professors is the same; imagine a lake filled with white swans.
For some reason, someone who has far too much time on their hands decides to document, for 100 days, what sort of swans congregate on this lake. For 100 days, this poor soul drags his or her lawn chair out on the edge of the lake and starts counting away, finding that these last 100 days have only been filled with white swans. This amateur ornithologist then deduces that this particular lake only houses white swans, packs up his/her chair, and heads home proud that they've reached such an important conclusion. Unfortunately for them, that person has just wasted 100 days if Hume is to be listened to.
Just because you saw an event happen for 100 times in a row does in no way give you more reason to have a justified true belief in expecting it to happen 101 times than you do going from a single event to expecting a second. Simply put, inducing from a frequency of events does not give enough reason to be able to claim to have knowledge about a specific event of the world. Going back to the swan example, the person watching the swans has no good reason to believe that on the 101st day a black swan will appear, ruining his or her previous instinctual thought.
If you are able to put two and two together, you are probably able to see where Hume becomes a major pain in the side for all realists. First of all, the Problem of Induction takes away the biggest sword in the arsenal of the classical realist, because now his/her claim that history shows a steady track record of terrible acts committed by those in power fully embodies the example of the swan-whisperer, giving them no real reason to expect the world to always produce bad people.
Even Waltz is not safe, no matter how far away he wants to get from philosophical discussions because even he is invoking history when he claims that states are rational and have the capacity to reason. Now, some will say that introspection and therefore internal reasoning is outside the realm of the Problem of Induction, but then those people will have to also try to explain that a state reasons the same way a person does which is ridiculous (too many differences in scope, states have a much more limited list of interests than people, states have to "guess" whether or not other states are "reasonable" or not much more than people do which changes how reasoning is done).
Parentheses aside, states do not have introspection and do not mentally progress over time like individuals, so even Waltz is forced to say that most states are rational because of a historical record. Let's assume however that state reasoning is safe and that states do reason like people; you would still have to get over the fact that tomorrow morning there will still be a historically relevant international structure based on the relevant international structure of yesterday which by itself is null and void because of the Problem of Induction.
So, is this problem the end for Realism? Should we all just start throwing Leviathan in a giant fire and choose which of the remaining two theories sounds the best? At this point, it almost looks like it. This critique however should not dismay the realist, it should instead empower him/her, especially Neo-Realists, to separate the school of thought from amateur psychology even more than Waltz wanted to do. The reason why most realists are considered to have been the kids at school who were picked on the most is because the intuition most of us have about human nature producing only jerks in society is just that; an intuition not founded by scientific evidence of said human nature.
All that Hume has done here is remind us that there needs to be a more refined explanation for why balance of power and the international structure which it should create can be taken seriously. If anything, a Humean critique of Realism is the undercurrent that leads all other critiques of it; Neo-Liberals and Constructivists will very quickly point out that their ideas stem much less from a direct observation of the world and instead on logical explanations for what the direct observation of the world means. Realists do not have this luxury and have to do more work to explain what to them seems to be obvious historical evidence in their favor.
Are there any possible solutions to this problem? Probably. That answer is definitely not what most of us wanted to hear, nor is it in any way good enough to fully encapsulate the problem before us. However it is as good as we can get so far; this isn't a problem that is solved in a day, mostly because the Problem of Induction itself does not have a direct response or solution. Even Hume tried to quantify it rather than solve it by citing a pseudo-evolutionary theory of his, but those sorts of attempts are not good enough to give us any solution that fully answers the problem of the Realist historical account.
"Probably" is only adequate insofar as we quietly swallow our logical prides and accept inductive reasoning as something that although imperfect is as good as we have to try to make sense of the world, IR theory or otherwise. There must be a reason for why we reason inductively, and so there must be a reason for why some people vehemently believe in Realism and why they will, like me, continue to be Realists even though this problem continues to surface. This however is not something that can be completely ignored mostly because unlike counting swans, IR theories have a very real impact on the lives of every person on Earth in this interconnected world.
Finding a solution is important not only from a philosophical basis but also because it will give a more robust meaning to the actions that states and policy makers take as opposed to having to little logical basis for the aforementioned actions. That solution will not only make the actions and thoughts by Realists applicable, but also give an added edge of justice within the actions themselves, making Realism stronger as a school of thought and more approachable as a theory in general.
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