Theories of International Relations

Ontology and Epistemology

Epistemology: How we know what we know. It is the study of the nature of knowledge.

• What can we know?
• How can we learn if something is true
• what method do we use to learn?

Ontology and Epistemology

Ontology: The Nature of being, what exists

Ontology deals with the structure of our world and can include questions of religion or categorization.

Kuhn's Model of Scientific Change

• Theories help us to explain a variety of phenomena that happen in the world, but they are not always perfect
• An event or anomaly may arise that shows the theory is faulty, opening up a period of crisis
• New experiments are undertaken to explain this new phenomenon
• once a new solution is found, a paradigm shift takes place.

Today's assignment:

Making Theory

How can we account for Tiger's choice of diversion?

Why is this important?

When there are a large number of guest, Tiger's owner would like for him to be comfortable playing on his own. She would like to know what conditions are best to encourage Tiger to occupy himself for 30 minutes to an hour

In the creation of your theory, you must include the following:

Diagnosis-What is influencing Tiger's behavior

Prediction- What are possible factors that can influence tiger's behavior and what are their potential outcomes? 

Prescription-How to manipulate Tiger's behavior to get him to do what we want him to do?

Evaluation- How will I know that a theory is working? What are the measure that I can use to track the theory's success?