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The Paradox of Normative Propositions (view source)
Revision as of 22:46, 28 March 2017
, 22:46, 28 March 2017no edit summary
|History=Within the scientonomic context, it was initially unclear whether normative propositions (such as those of methodology or ethics) fell within the scope of scientonomy and could hold a place within a scientific mosaic. The problem became acute when ''the paradox of normative propositions'' was identified by Joel Burkholder in 2014.[[CiteRef::Burkholder (2014)]] As a result, in [[Barseghyan (2015)|''The Laws of Scientific Change'']] Barseghyan left the question of the status of normative propositions open, by noting that further theoretical work coupled with historical evidence would be needed to settle the issue.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 60]]
The problem was that including methodologies in the scientific mosaic would result in violations of the third law of scientific change. At the time, [[The Third Law (Barseghyan-2015)|the third law ]] stated that "a method becomes employed only when it is deducible from other employed methods and accepted theories of the time". But if ''methodologies'' were to be considered ''theories'', then, by the third law, employed ''methods'' would have to be deductive consequences of accepted methodologies. among other things. If employed methods were deducible from accepted methodologies, then how could there ever be any discrepancy between employed methods and accepted methodologies? This wouldn't make any sense from a logical perspective.
The theory of scientific change did not include normative propositions until a resolution to the paradox of normative propositions proposed by [[Zoe Sebastien]] was accepted by the scientonomic community in 2016. The modifications consequently accepted included changing the definition of ''theory'' from "a set of propositions that attempt to describe something" to "a set of propositions".[[CiteRef::Sebastien (2016)]] This new definition of ''theory'' could include normative propositions and, as a result, methodologies.