Mechanism of Question Acceptance

How do questions become accepted as legitimate topics of inquiry? What is the mechanism of question acceptance?

Various theorists have recognized that the kinds of questions that can be asked by scientists changes over time. Kuhn, van Fraassen, and Lauden have all noted this fact to varying degrees without proposing a concrete mechanism by which questions come to be accepted as legitimate at any given time. Kuhn, for example, recognized that the kinds of questions that can be asked by scientists changes with each paradigm shift, but declined to propose a specific mechanism for this phenomena (i.e. what makes a question acceptable in one paradigm but not in another).

The ontology of epistemic elements of scientific change put forward by William Rawleigh includes questions as one of the subtypes of epistemic elements, alongside theories and methods. This, along with the fact that Rawleigh proposes acceptance and unacceptance as the possible stances of epistemic communities suggests that there ought to be mechanism by which questions are introduced into a mosaic as legitimate topics of inquiry.

There already exists an accepted mechanism for theories and an accepted mechanism for methods to explain how those elements become part of a mosaic. Given that a mechanism for theories and methods exists, it is very likely that a mechanism for questions also exists.

In the scientonomic context, this question was first formulated by William Rawleigh in 2018. The question is currently accepted as a legitimate topic for discussion by Scientonomy community.

In Scientonomy, the accepted answer to the question is:

• A question becomes accepted only if all of its epistemic presuppositions are accepted and it is accepted that the question is answerable.

Scientonomic History

The first scientonomic attempt to answer the question was proposed in 2021 by Hakob Barseghyan and Nichole Levesley. Their law of question acceptance was discussed during the February 2024 scientonomy workshop; it became accepted nearly unanimously by over two-thirds majority of votes.

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	1 November 2018	The question became accepted accepted as a legitimate topic of scientonomic inquiry as a result of the acceptance of the respective suggested modification.	Yes

All Direct Answers

The following direct answers to the question have been suggested:

Theory	Formulation	Formulated In
The Law of Question Acceptance (Barseghyan-Levesley-2021)	A question becomes accepted only if all of its epistemic presuppositions are accepted and it is accepted that the question is answerable.	2021

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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	The Law of Question Acceptance (Barseghyan-Levesley-2021)	A question becomes accepted only if all of its epistemic presuppositions are accepted and it is accepted that the question is answerable.	21 February 2024

Suggested Modifications

Here is a list of modifications concerning direct answers to this question:

Modification	Community	Date Suggested	Summary	Date Assessed	Verdict	Verdict Rationale
Sciento-2021-0002	Scientonomy	1 August 2021	Accept the law of question acceptance as a new scientonomic axiom, the question rejection theorem, and a number of questions for future research.	21 February 2024	Accepted	Prior to the 2024 workshop, Carlin Henikoff left a comment on the encyclopedia affirming that the modification should be accepted, but also stating that it was unclear whether it should be accepted as an axiom, per se. During the 2024 workshop, it was clarified that in our taxonomy, if X follows from something else, it is a theorem, but if not, it is an axiom. At the time of the publication of Levesley and Barseghyan’s paper, Henikoff was engaged in conversations in the scientonomy community about whether the law of question acceptance could be deducible from other scientonomic theorems. This clarified the thrust of her comment; since the law hasn't been shown to follow from any other scientonomic theories, it can only be taken as an axiom. There were also concerns about the phrasing of the law. Specifically, Jamie Shaw highlighted that the acceptance of a question cannot be predicated upon the acceptance of all of its presuppositions, simply because a question can have an infinite number of presuppositions. However, the participants were reminded of the difference between epistemic presuppositions and logical presuppositions (proposed by Levesley and Barseghyan in the previously accepted modification Sciento-2021-0001). While a question can have an infinite number of logical presuppositions (i.e. these are “explosive”), the law explicitly talks about epistemic presuppositions, which are not explosive. The modification was accepted nearly unanimously by over two-thirds majority of votes. 17 out of 18 votes were for acceptance.

Current View

In Scientonomy, the accepted answer to the question is The Law of Question Acceptance (Barseghyan-Levesley-2021).

The Law of Question Acceptance (Barseghyan-Levesley-2021) states: "A question becomes accepted only if all of its epistemic presuppositions are accepted and it is accepted that the question is answerable."

First, the law implies that the acceptance of a question is predicated upon the acceptance of all of its epistemic presuppositions. Importantly, the law works with the notion of epistemic presupposition, rather than logical presupposition, as it would be unreasonable to expect that all logical presuppositions of a question can ever be accepted. This is due to the inherent "explosiveness" of logical presuppositions: if question Q presupposes theory T1 and T1 logically implies theory T2, then question Q also presupposes theory T2. But since a theory can have an infinite number of logical consequences, a question can also have an infinite number of logical presuppositions. For instance, among logical presuppositions of the question 'What is the distance between the Earth and the sphere of the stars?' are not only theories 'The Earth exists' and 'The sphere of the stars exists', but also 'The Earth exists or God exists', 'The Earth exists or it is made of cheese', 'The sphere of the stars exists or God exists', 'The sphere of the stars exists or it is made of cheese' and so on.1p. 6 In contrast, the epistemic presuppositions of a question are not explosive as they are agent-dependent: "what can be a presupposition for one agent need not necessarily qualify as a presupposition for another agent".1p. 5 As explained by Barseghyan and Levesley:

A theory would count as an epistemic presupposition of a certain question for an agent, only if the agent is prepared to accept that theory when they accept an answer to the question, irrespective of what that answer is. Consider, for example an epistemic agent who, when accepting p, nevertheless does not accept p-or-q in order not to clutter their mosaic and avoid explosion. For such an agent, not all logical presuppositions of a question would count as epistemic presuppositions.1p. 5

Thus, for most agents, such theories as 'The Earth exists or God exists' and 'The Earth exists or it is made of cheese' would likely not be within the epistemic presuppositions of the question 'What is the distance between the Earth and the sphere of the stars?' if only because most agents wouldn't want to clutter their mosaics with such theories. Generally speaking, "for agents with finite epistemic capacities, a question always has a finite number of epistemic presuppositions".1p. 6

Second, the law stipulates that the acceptance of a question is also predicated upon the acceptance of a second-order theory that the question itself is, in principle, answerable. Thus, the acceptance of all of the epistemic presuppositions of a question is necessary but not sufficient for the question to become accepted.

Related Topics

This question is a subquestion of Mechanism of Scientific Change. It has the following sub-topic(s):

• Role of Employed Methods in Question Acceptance