Indicators of Conclusiveness for Scientificity Assessment

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What are the historical indicators that an assessment by the demarcation criteria was conclusive or inconclusive? Does the lack of agreement or evidence count in favor of inconclusive assessment outcome?

It is presently accepted that there are historical indicators which indicate the epistemic stances taken by epistemic agents (i.e. scientific communities) in the past. Sarwar and Fraser 1 present a new epistemic stance which may be taken toward theories, scientificity, and as such, in order to understand what theories were considered to be scientific or unscientific by a particular community in history, one must understand what the indicators of different assessment outcomes of scientificity. In particular, it is unclear precisely when assessment may be inconclusive. Noting that there are historical indicators for conclusive assessment of theory acceptance or method employment, Sarwar and Fraser state that "it is unclear whether indicators can be found to determine if evaluation by the demarcation criteria took place. This is mostly due to the fact that scientists may presumably keep track of only those theories that are accepted (and are scientific), not those that are scientific (and unaccepted). Thus, there is a legitimate question concerning the indicators of scientificity. Once this question is reasonably answered, one may also try to locate historical indicators that that could tell us whether an assessment for scientificity was conclusive or inconclusive. It is conceivable that we may find solid indicators of conclusive assessments, while having trouble locating indicators of inconclusive assessments" 1. It is further postulated that, if there is a definite lack of evidence about the scientific status of a theory, this may itself indicate an inconclusive assessment outcome.

In the scientonomic context, this question was first formulated by Patrick Fraser and Ameer Sarwar in 2018.

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References

  1. a b  Sarwar, Ameer and Fraser, Patrick. (2018) Scientificity and The Law of Theory Demarcation. Scientonomy 2, 55-66. Retrieved from https://www.scientojournal.com/index.php/scientonomy/article/view/31275.