Hierarchical Authority Delegation

What is hierarchical authority delegation? How should it be defined?

When the authority over a certain topic is delegated to more than one expert, the opinion of different experts can have different weight, i.e. the experts can be arranged in a hierarchy. The question here is how the notion of hierarchical authority delegation is to be defined.1

In the scientonomic context, this question was first formulated by Mirka Loiselle in 2017. The question is currently accepted as a legitimate topic for discussion by Scientonomy community. Hierarchical Authority Delegation (Loiselle-2017) is currently accepted by Scientonomy community as the best available definition of the term. Hierarchical Authority Delegation (Loiselle-2017) states "A sub-type of multiple authority delegation where different communities are delegated different degrees of authority over topic x."

History

Acceptance Record

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	19 May 2017	The publication of the article by Loiselle titled Multiple Authority Delegation in Art Authentication is a good indication of acceptance of the question.Loiselle (2017)	Yes

All Theories

The following theories have attempted to answer this question:

Theory	Formulation	Formulated In
Hierarchical Authority Delegation (Loiselle-2017)	A sub-type of multiple authority delegation where different communities are delegated different degrees of authority over topic x.	2017
Hierarchical Authority Delegation (Patton-2019)	A sub-type of multiple authority delegation where different epistemic agents are delegated different degrees of authority over question x.	2019

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Accepted Theories

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

Community	Theory	Accepted From	Accepted Until
Scientonomy	Hierarchical Authority Delegation (Loiselle-2017)	23 October 2018

Suggested Modifications

Here is a list of modifications concerning this topic:

Modification	Community	Date Suggested	Summary	Verdict	Verdict Rationale	Date Assessed
Sciento-2017-0007	Scientonomy	19 May 2017	Accept the definitions of the following subtypes of authority delegation: singular authority delegation, multiple authority delegation, hierarchical authority delegation, and non-hierarchical authority delegation.	Accepted	While the notions of singular and multiple authority delegation didn't cause much controversy, the notions of hierarchical and non-hierarchical authority delegation gave rise to notable disagreement among scientonomists. As a result, the modification was in discussion for about a year and a half.c1 Eventually, a consensus emerged mostly as a result of offline (in-person) discussion meetings. It was agreed that "for decisions that are not rote and routine, it seems highly unlikely that a pre-established hierarchy of authority delegation does or could exist, nor could a pre-established belief that all authorities should be given equal weight".c2 However, it was also agreed that Loiselle's study "have identified at least one aspect of hierarchical authority delegation in epistemic communities",c3 for "there seem to be instances where some experts occupy privileged positions in the eyes of those delegating authority" and that "alone is sufficient to suggest that hierarchies of authority delegation exists, regardless of of how transient or fixed they might be".c4	23 October 2018
Sciento-2019-0017	Scientonomy	26 December 2019	Accept the definitions of authority delegation, and its subtypes, that generalize the currently accepted definitions to apply to all epistemic agents, rather than only communities.	Open

Current View

In Scientonomy community, the accepted definition of the term is Hierarchical Authority Delegation (Loiselle-2017). It is defined as: "A sub-type of multiple authority delegation where different communities are delegated different degrees of authority over topic x."

Hierarchical authority delegation is a sub-type of multiple authority delegation. It describes a situation in which a community delegates authority over some question to multiple communities, but at different degrees of authority. Consider a case of multiple authority delegation in which either expert A OR expert B might be consulted. If the word of expert A is always accepted over the word of expert B, we have a case of hierarchical authority delegation. Read More

Related Topics

This topic is also related to the following topic(s):

• Multiple Authority Delegation
• Non-Hierarchical Authority Delegation