International Relations. A self-Study Guide to Theory

particularism or indi-
vidualism – because all disciplines refer to the most basic, elementary 
“units”. We will come back to the notions of particularism and individualism 
in more detail in Complex 2 below. 
From what we have learned about the materialist/physicalist/ontological 
naturalist and at the same time atomist/particularist ontology of positivism, 
you can now better understand the notion of an empirical foundation of 
knowledge that exists at the heart of positivism.
A material, particularist world is observable. Therefore knowledge about 
this material world of particulars is possible because it can be experienced 
by the senses/observed. 
It is important to emphasize that atomist materialism/physicalism as an 
ontological position is not exclusive to a positivist philosophy of science but 
is also shared by other philosophies. What is, however, exclusive for positiv-
ism is the linkage to the empiricist epistemological position as described 
above and the methodology that will be discussed in section 2.2.2. (complex 
2).

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48 
Phenomenalism 
As has been mentioned, positivism considers observation/empirical experi-
ence to be information perceived by the senses. As such, sensual experience 
is a representation of reality and not reality itself. Positivist science’s particu-
lar ontological view of the nature of existence, or being, is therefore also 
called phenomenalism. From this viewpoint, physical objects do not exist for 
the observer “as things in themselves”, but only as perceptual phenomena. 
The object of knowing is therefore not “the thing as such”, but rather how 
these things appear to us (= phenomenon). For this reason, positivism as a 
philosophy of science is called “anti-realist”: for the observer, there is no 
world, no reality “as such”, only a representation of that reality (that is, a rep-
resentation empirically “mediated” by sensual experience). The sensual expe-
rience represents the “thing”, the object. In positivist science, scientific theo-
ries therefore refer to the phenomena, not to “true” reality. This is the back-
ground for the positivist claim that any scientific theory and hypothesis has to 
be formulated in terms of “observables” – as expressed in variables.
So the question arises: if the objects of knowing are perceptual phenome-
na and not reality itself, how can we achieve valid knowledge? 
Objectivism 
The epistemological positions of empiricism and phenomenalism are con-
nected to the view that there is a distinction between facts and values: in con-
trast to values, facts are “neutral”.
On the one hand this position is easy to follow because of the materialist 
ontology in positivism: what can be experienced/observed is assumed to be a 
matter of fact. Facts are observable and hence different than values (values 
would belong to the world of ideas – they cannot be observed and thus are 
not objects of positivist science). Facts are therefore assumed to be independ-
ent of any theory and value-neutral. Facts also form the basis for “objective” 
knowledge, which can be provided by (positivist) science and its methods.
In essence, science occupies such a central position in modern societies 
because of the conviction that it is the only means of “producing” objective 
knowledge. However, in order for facts to become “objective knowledge”, 
science requires the empirical experience to be made evident by experimental 
and logical “proof”. Only verified knowledge counts as “objective” knowl-
edge. Knowledge can be claimed to be “objective” in a scientific sense only 
under certain conditions. Firstly, the observation or empirical experience has 
to be verified. In other words, it must be intersubjectively proved by way of 
repeatable experiment – repeatable by different researchers, independently of 

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49 
each other and given the same experimental conditions. For a theory, this im-
plies that all hypotheses and theories have to be tested by empirical experi-
ence. In effect, the business of (positivist) science is testing theories and hy-
potheses about the world of facts (observables). If the outcome is “positive”, 
the observation counts as valid knowledge. What has been proven can then 
legitimately be claimed to count as valid knowledge. 
Such an epistemological position is referred to as objectivism. Objective 
knowledge about the material world made of particulars is assumed to be 
fundamentally possible. Positivist science provides the scientific methods to 
produce such objective knowledge. However, knowledge counts as objective 
knowledge only until it can be proved false. All hypotheses and theories are 
therefore provisional in nature. 
2.2.2. Complex 2 
Given the position of positivist science on what can be known, what counts 
as valid knowledge and what exists, we may ask ourselves the following 
questions: How can we know about entities such as “the state”, “the interna-
tional system”, or “society”? How can we formulate theories and hypotheses 
about such entities that are not “observable”? These questions lead us to epis-
temological and methodological aspects of positivist science that address the 
fundamental issue of how to know and the methods applied in order to know. 
Operationalism and instrumentalism 
We will start with a central methodological position of positivist science re-
ferred to as operationalism. Operationalism is the position of positivism that 
requires theoretical terms to be “translated” into observational ones. Because 
the validity of a theory ultimately rests on the facts, all concepts must there-
fore be defined operationally. In other words, they must be made into observ-
ables. The concepts of science must be defined in terms of the “operations” 
by which they are measured or applied. A concept is made measurable in the 
form of variables, which consist of specific observations. Epistemologically 
speaking, through operationalism we “make” things observable and hence 
knowable. This position is related to an instrumentalist treatment of theoreti-
cal terms. In positivist science, the theoretical term or concept itself is seen as 
an analytical instrument: a device to “organize” our observations, an instru-
ment to gain knowledge. In line with the materialist atomist ontology of posi-
tivism, a theoretical term or a concept (such as “the state”), ontologically has 
no “being”. It exists only by way of the observables into which the term can 
be “translated”, or, operationalized. 

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50 
Instrumentalism in the philosophy of science is also related to the view 
that theoretical concepts are to be judged by their effectiveness. A concept or 
theory should be evaluated by how effectively it explains or predicts phe-
nomena as opposed to how accurately it describes objective reality. 
The philosophical background of the methodological requirement of “op-
erationalization”, or in other words, the “translation” of theoretical terms into 
“observables”, deserves closer attention. Is any theoretical term operation-
alizeable? Due to its ontological materialist-atomist position (the assumption 
that the world ultimately is made of material indivisible particles), positivist 
science basically assumes that all theoretical terms are indeed operationalize-
able. However, the question also arises of how to make this operationaliza-
tion possible. This is a methodological question and subsequently also related 
to the positivist account of explanation. We will approach these aspects in the 
next step. Beforehand, however, we first need to discuss epistemological and 
methodological aspects of atomism/particularism in more detail. So far, at-
omism has been discussed in terms of its ontological aspects. However, at-
omism/particularism is also a feature of methodology and the model of ex-
planation in positivist science.
To develop the argument about the methodological and explanatory as-
pects of atomism, we will first return to the general ontological question of 
how universals and particulars relate to each other, as discussed in Step 1 of 
this unit. You know from Section 1 that the question of how universals and