Existence of Tool Reliance

Does tool reliance exist?

In the scientonomic context, this question was first formulated by Paul Patton in 2019. The question is currently accepted as a legitimate topic for discussion by Scientonomy community. The following claim concerning the existence of Tool Reliance is currently accepted in Scientonomy:

• There is such a thing as tool reliance.
  

Scientonomic History

Acceptance Record of the Question

Here is the complete acceptance record of this question (it includes all the instances when the question was accepted as a legitimate topic for discussion by a community):

Community	Accepted From	Acceptance Indicators	Still Accepted	Accepted Until	Rejection Indicators
Scientonomy	26 December 2019	The question of Existence of Tool Reliance became accepted by virtue of the acceptance of Tool Reliance. This is when the first definition of the term was suggested, indicating that that the term itself is accepted.	Yes

All Direct Answers

The following answers have been added to this encyclopedia:

Theory	Formulation	Formulated In
Tool Reliance Exists	There is such a thing as tool reliance.	2019

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Accepted Direct Answers

The following theories have been accepted as direct answers to this question:

Community	Theory	Formulation	Accepted From	Accepted Until
Scientonomy	Tool Reliance Exists	There is such a thing as tool reliance.	23 February 2024

Suggested Modifications

Here is a list of modifications concerning this topic:

Modification	Community	Date Suggested	Summary	Date Assessed	Verdict	Verdict Rationale
Sciento-2019-0018	Scientonomy	26 December 2019	Accept that the relationship of tool reliance can obtain between epistemic agents and epistemic tools. Also accept the definition of tool reliance, which states that an epistemic agent is said to rely on an epistemic tool when there is a procedure through which the tool can provide an acceptable source of knowledge for answering some question under the employed method of that agent.	23 February 2024	Accepted	The modification was discussed during the 2024 workshop. Firstly, the similarity between this definition and the recently accepted modification suggesting a definition of epistemic tool was highlighted by the community as an indicator that this modification might require further work to separate out its definitional content from dynamics content before it could be accepted. However, most of the discussion surrounding the modification concerned, as Jamie Shaw put it, whether the distinction between authority delegation and tool reliance was a distinction without a difference. Deivide Garcia suggested that there is a meaningful difference between the two: epistemic tools are inherently passive, whereas epistemic agents inherently play an active role both in tool reliance and in authority delegation. Paul Patton highlighted several examples of “troubleshooting” epistemic tools in the history of science, which is suggestive of a relationship between the epistemic agent and the epistemic tool that differs significantly from the relationship between two epistemic agents in an authority delegation relation. Yet, Hakob Barseghyan highlighted that the process of troubleshooting of tools could be conceptualized in different terms very similar to how scientonomers already describe authority delegation relations. Joshua Allen suggested that the modification would be useful to accept anticipating further work being done on the relationship between epistemic tools and epistemic actions. Ultimately, after most participants agreed that the modification was useful in its current state, the modification was accepted with over 2/3rds majority (11 votes to accept, 4 votes to keep the modification open).

Current View

In Scientonomy, the following claim concerning the existence of Tool Reliance is currently accepted:

• There is such a thing as tool reliance.
  

Tool Reliance Exists states: "There is such a thing as tool reliance."

According to Patton, when an epistemic agent uses a tool to gauge an answer to a question, a relation of tool reliance obtains between the agent and the tool.1