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Possible Mosaic Split theorem (Barseghyan-2015) (view source)
Revision as of 03:28, 12 March 2017
, 03:28, 12 March 2017no edit summary
Because any time an assessment outcome is [[Outcome Inconclusive|inconclusive]] we may either accept or reject the theory being assessed we always face the possibility that one subsection of the community will reject the theory and another subsection will accept it. In these cases the two communities now bear distinct mosaics and a mosaic split has occurred. However it is important to note that the ambiguity inherent in inconclusive assessments means that it is never entailed that there will be competing subsections of the community. A community may, in the face of an inconclusive assessment, collectively agree to accept or reject the theory being assessed. Thus, in cases with an inconclusive assessment mosaic split is possible but never necessarily entailed by the circumstances.
|Resource=Barseghyan (2015)
|Prehistory=Like the broader topic of the [[Mechanism of Mosaic Split]] the matter of possible mosaic split has classically been regarded as a case of divergent belief systems in communities, with the caveat that the divergence in the community is contingent, not necessary. As such pre-scientonomic approaches are those that are considerate of situations in which community beliefs ''may'' diverge but will not do so necessarily.
The obvious starting point for this sort of discussion is [[Thomas Kuhn]], for whom any case of scientific change is merely contingent owing to the nature of scientific revolutions.[[Kuhn (1962)|pp.146-149]] In terms of the mechanism itself, Kuhn suggested that the actual process of theory choice ultimately comes down to the deliberation of values inherent to scientific endeavors, which together constitute the "shared basis for theory choice."[[CiteRef::Kuhn (1977)|p.103]] A divergence within the community implies a conflict in the value-assessment that the community has undertaken when deliberating between two theories. In such cases the emergence of two distinct communities with two different sets of theories arises due to the possibility of differing beliefs with regards to values. These debates do not necessarily end in a division in the community, so it is clear that we are still within the domain of contingent divergence of belief.
[[Larry Laudan]] would later take up a model similar to Kuhn's except that Laudan more clearly explicated the role of values within a hierarchy of scientific debate.[[Laudan (1984)|Ch.2]] Laudan's proposal was that a community could experience divergence of belief and a split in the community any time there was a disagreement at any level in the hierarchy, though this is not necessarily the case.[[CiteRef::Laudan (1984)|p.46]]
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