The Law of Question Acceptance (Barseghyan-Levesley-2021)

This is an answer to the question Mechanism of Question Acceptance that states "A question becomes accepted only if all of its epistemic presuppositions are accepted and it is accepted that the question is answerable."

The Law of Question Acceptance was formulated by Hakob Barseghyan and Nichole Levesley in 2021.1 It is currently accepted by Scientonomy community as the best available answer to the question.

Scientonomic History

Acceptance Record

Here is the complete acceptance record of this theory:

Community	Accepted From	Acceptance Indicators	Still Accepted	Accepted Until	Rejection Indicators
Scientonomy	21 February 2024	The law became accepted as a result of the acceptance of the respective modification.	Yes

Suggestions To Accept

Here are all the modifications where the acceptance of this theory has been suggested:

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.

Question Answered

The Law of Question Acceptance (Barseghyan-Levesley-2021) is an attempt to answer the following question: How do questions become accepted as legitimate topics of inquiry? What is the mechanism of question acceptance?

See Mechanism of Question Acceptance for more details.

Description

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.

The gist of this theory can be illustrated by the following examples.

Example: Does God exist?

Barseghyan and Levesley provide another example showing that the acceptance of the answerability of a question is one of the prerequisites of the acceptance of the question:

Another example is that of the contemporary scientific community’s stance on the question of God’s existence. The presupposing theories here are the respective definitions of existence and God (however vague these may be). Both of these are present in the community’s mosaic and, yet, the community takes an agnostic view of the question and claims that it cannot be answered. In other words, they lack a theory that would state “The question, ‘Does God exist?’ is, in principle, answerable”.1p. 7

Example: Why did God give humans finite intellects?

The following example illustrates how the acceptance of a question's answerability is necessary for the acceptance of the question:

In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes presents the propositions “Humans have finite intellects” and “God gave humans their faculties of intellect” (Descartes, 1984, pp. 37-38). A natural question that may arise – and which Descartes formulates – is “Why did God give humans finite intellects?”. However, while this question was indeed formulated, Descartes did not accept it as a legitimate topic of inquiry. This unacceptance of the question was due to Descartes’ belief that this question could not be answered, because it lay outside the realm of any possible human knowledge. Thus, while Descartes’ mosaic contained the necessary epistemic presuppositions of the question, it did not contain the theory asserting the question’s answerability.1p. 7

Example: Do superstrings exist?

The following illustration is by Barseghyan and Levesley:

For instance, consider the contemporary physics community’s stance on the question “Do superstrings exist?”. Based on the sheer number of publications on the topic (Dine, 2016; Smolin, 2017), we can safely assume that the question is accepted. However, it is also clear that physicists believe that we do not currently possess the technological means required for detecting some of the phenomena predicted by the theory, such as micro black holes or SUSI particles (Lazanu, Lazanu, & Pârvu, 2020). Yet, the community accepts that the question is in principle answerable. In general, the fact that the agent is not in a position to answer a question due to limitations in funding, technology, etc. does not affect the acceptance of the question by the agent.1p. 8

Reasons

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Questions About This Theory

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