ABSTRACT
An empirically grounded refutation of an indispensable conjecture threatens the integrity of the research program. Hard-core assumptions are vulnerable to ‘attack.’ The appropriate, Lakatosian response to this danger is to generate a protective belt ‘of auxiliary hypotheses, problem shifts, and empirical shifts’. In short, any research program puts forward a makeshift collage of conjectured causal relations for empirical specification. Any empirical adjustments must be reformulated in comparable terms. This is what language is for, what language always does. In Gavan Duffy’s capable hands, rule-oriented Constructivism has achieved some measure of empirical specification and enrichment. Virtuous circularity reinforces his judgment, and mine, that rules really do matter in international relations. All inquiry seems circular to the extent that any inquiry yields the “empirical products” by means of which conjectured states of affairs are specified. All inquiry proceeds from what seems to be an unproblematic empirical backdrop of extraordinary richness.
