Tool Reliance

What is tool reliance? How should it be defined?

The term tool reliance is intended to refer to the relationship that obtains between epistemic agents and their epistemic tools. A proper scientonomic definition of the term is needed.

In the scientonomic context, this term was first used by Paul Patton in 2019. The term is currently accepted by Scientonomy community.

In Scientonomy, the accepted definition of the term is:

• An epistemic agent is said to rely on an epistemic tool iff 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.

Scientonomic History

Acceptance Record of the Term

Here is the complete acceptance record of this term (it includes all the instances when the term was accepted as a part of a community's taxonomy):

Community	Accepted From	Acceptance Indicators	Still Accepted	Accepted Until	Rejection Indicators
Scientonomy	26 December 2019	This is when the first definition of the term was suggested, indicating that that the term itself is accepted.	Yes

All Definitions

The following definitions of tool reliance the term have been suggested:

Theory	Formulation	Formulated In
Tool Reliance (Patton-2019)	An epistemic agent is said to rely on an epistemic tool iff 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.	2019

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Accepted Definitions

The following definitions of tool reliance have been accepted:

Community	Theory	Formulation	Accepted From	Accepted Until
Scientonomy	Tool Reliance (Patton-2019)	An epistemic agent is said to rely on an epistemic tool iff 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

Suggested Modifications

Here is a list of modifications concerning the definitions of tool reliance:

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 Definition

In Scientonomy, the accepted definition of the term is Tool Reliance (Patton-2019).

Tool Reliance (Patton-2019) states: "An epistemic agent is said to rely on an epistemic tool iff 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."

An epistemic agent is said to rely on an epistemic tool iff 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. Note that tool reliance, like authority delegation, is reducible to the theories and methods of an agent.

Ontology

Existence

In Scientonomy, it is currently accepted that "There is such a thing as tool reliance."

Subtypes

In Scientonomy, there are currently no accepted subtypes of Tool Reliance.

Supertypes

In Scientonomy, there are currently no accepted supertypes of Tool Reliance.

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Dynamics

If a question concerning the dynamics of tool reliance is missing, please add it here.