List of Open Questions

Seminar 2016

TODO: These questions should be incorporated in their respective articles.

• What makes methods and methodologies that are inconsistent, compatible? For example, why do we think that the HD method and inductivist methodologies are compatible?
• Has our criteria of compatibility, which accepts inconsistencies, become vacuous or trivial? (Jennifer Whyte)
• What is the relationship between methods and technical research tools? Are there tools that are used independently from any method? (Paul Patton)
• What is the relationship between individuals and mosaics? Can an individual ever be considered the bearer of a mosaic? (Kevin Zheng) Two possibilities: either the definition of “community” is reformulated to allow for a community to be comprised of only one person, or we change the definition of “mosaic” to include the possibility that an individual can bear a mosaic. (Hakob Barseghyan)
• How do we define the term “law”? Hakob currently loosely defines “law” as “a regularity that applies to everything in your given ontology”. Is this acceptable? This seems to differ from current usage (for example, the fact that evolutionary biology explains regularities but is not considered a law). Is that a problem? (Paul Patton)
• If something like evolutionary biology has predictive power in virtue of explaining past regularities, does this imply that the TSC, which also explains past regularities, does or should as well? (Paul Patton)
• Are there in fact philosophical communities, or is there always too much disagreement? Are these disagreements the result of acceptance criteria which are too strict, or too vague? (Jennifer Whyte, Hakob Barseghyan)
• Choice of relevant facts is guided by our theories. Is this the case for our choice of relevant questions/problems? How do questions/problems become relevant? (Nick Overgaard, Hakob Barseghyan)
• In what circumstances can the views of an individual scientist be indicative of the views of their community? (Jacob MacKinnon, Joshua Payne Smith)
• Is it possible for a community to say that they do not accept a theory, but in reality they do? Are there any historical examples of a case like this? (Jaqueline Sereda)
• If a theory is accepted in violation of the second law, should we ignore this in our historical analysis, or should the TSC attempt to explain these instances? (Jacob MacKinnon)
• Can we apply the "accepted/used/pursued" distinction to methods?
• How do normative propositions (e.g ethics) affects method employment? Or does it only affect method "use"?
• The Asynchronism of Method Employment theorem says that employment of methods is not always necessarily a result of the acceptance of new theories. But surely all methods (even concrete implementations of abstract requirements) are employed simultaneously with the acceptance of a descriptive proposition which states that that method is effective. Does this poses a challenge towards the Asynchronism of Method Employment theorem? (Mirka Loiselle)
• Are practical propositions normative theories, or some other entity? How do they change through time? How do they become accepted? How do they affect other elements of the mosaic; specifically, can they ever affect the method employment? (Hakob Barseghyan)
• Can we identify a case of inconclusive assessment apart from mosaic split? (Paul Patton)
• Are there really cases of necessary theory assessment, or is every case of theory assessment inconclusive to a degree? If there are, is there a way for us as historians to show decisively that a theory was necessarily accepted rather than accepted after inconclusive assessment? (Paul Patton)
• Are necessary mosaic splits really possible, or are all mosaic splits the result of inconclusive assessment? And if they are possible, can we ever as historians detect them? (Paul Patton)
• Given two geographically isolated communities with different sets of beliefs that then undergo change and end up with the same set of beliefs (without any inter-communication between the communities), do they become one community? (Jennifer Whyte, Hakob Barseghyan)