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How do methods become employed by an epistemic agent?

When the classical philosophy of science finally came to terms with the fact that methods of theory assessment do in fact change through time, the question became how exactly they change. Since circa 1980, explaining the process of transitions from one employed method to the next has been one of the most challenging tasks for any theory of scientific change. A proper answer to this question helps to shed light on one of the key aspects of scientific change.

In the scientonomic context, this question was first formulated by Hakob Barseghyan in 2015. The question is currently accepted as a legitimate topic for discussion by Scientonomy community.

In Scientonomy, the accepted answer to the question is:

  • A method becomes employed only if it is derivable from a non-empty subset of other elements of the mosaic.

Broader History

A number of philosophers of science addressed the question of method employment before the inception of scientonomy. Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, Dudley Shapere, Larry Laudan, and Ernan McMullin all suggested that our theories about the world shape our methods of theory evaluation.

Thomas Kuhn can be credited by articulating this idea first in his Structure as part of his conception of paradigm shifts.1

Paul Feyerabend, who is often credit with the anarchist claim that in many cases methods are chosen in an arbitrary fashion,2 did also admit that there is a certain "way in which science... revises its 'standards'".3p. 243 Chapter 18 of his Against Method provides a number of examples of how accepted theories have shaped the methods of theory evaluation.4

Dudley Shapere greatly developed the idea of beliefs affecting methods of theory evaluation in his The Character of Scientific Change, where he argued that the criteria scientists employ in theory assessment are not transcendent to science but are an integral part of it.5

Similarly, in his Science and Values, Larry Laudan argued that the discovery of previously unaccounted effects (such as placebo effect or experimenter's bias) resulted in the formulation of new methods of drug testing.6pp. 38-39

The same idea has been expressed around the same time by Ernan McMullin. In his account of the transition from the Aristotelian Medieval method to the hypothetico-deductive method in the early 18th century, McMullin shows that the employment of the hypothetico-deductivism was a result of accepting that the world is more complex than it appears in our observations.7pp. 32-34

There have been many other attempts at explaining how methods of theory evaluation come to be employed by a community (e.g. the reconstructions of Plato’s method performed by David Lindberg8pp. 37-38).

Barry Barnes, David Bloor, Bruno Latour, Steve Woolgar and other have suggested that methods of science are determined to a large degree by the underlying sociocultural factors.910

Scientonomic History

In the context of scientonomy the answer to this question has been traditionally provided by the third law. Until 2017 it was Barseghyan's original third law.11p. 54 In that formulation, it wasn't clear whether employed methods follow from all or only some of the accepted theories and employed methods of the time. This led to a logical paradox which was resolved by Zoe Sebastien. Sebastien's reformulation of the law made it explicit that an employed method need not necessarily follow from all other employed methods and accepted theories but only from some of them.12 This made it possible for an employed method to be logically inconsistent and yet compatible with openly accepted methodological dicta. Sebastien's formulation became accepted in 2017.

In 2022, William Rawleigh suggested a new formulation of the law applicable to norms of all types rather than only methods. It replaces 'deducible' with 'derivable', which in the context of mathematical model theory simply means to be semantically entailed, and thus can potentially include non-deductive inferences (e.g. inductive, abductive). It also replaces a specific enumeration of epistemic elements with a general "elements of the mosaic". The law was discussed in 2024 scientonomy workshop and was accepted by over a two-thirds majority of voters.

Acceptance Record of the Question

Here is the complete acceptance record of this question (it includes all the instances when the question was accepted as a legitimate topic for discussion by a community):
CommunityAccepted FromAcceptance IndicatorsStill AcceptedAccepted UntilRejection Indicators
Scientonomy1 January 2016This is when the community accepted its first answer to this question, The Third Law (Barseghyan-2015), which indicates that the question is itself considered legitimate.Yes

All Direct Answers

The following direct answers to the question have been suggested:
TheoryFormulationFormulated In
The Third Law (Barseghyan-2015)A method becomes employed only when it is deducible from other employed methods and accepted theories of the time.2015
The Third Law (Sebastien-2016)A method becomes employed only when it is deducible from some subset of other employed methods and accepted theories of the time.2016
The Law of Method Employment (Rawleigh-2022)A method becomes employed only if it is derivable from a non-empty subset of other elements of the mosaic.2022

If a direct answer to this question is missing, please click here to add it.

Accepted Direct Answers

The following theories have been accepted as direct answers to this question:
CommunityTheoryFormulationAccepted FromAccepted Until
ScientonomyThe Third Law (Barseghyan-2015)A method becomes employed only when it is deducible from other employed methods and accepted theories of the time.1 January 201621 January 2017
ScientonomyThe Third Law (Sebastien-2016)A method becomes employed only when it is deducible from some subset of other employed methods and accepted theories of the time.21 January 201721 February 2024
ScientonomyThe Law of Method Employment (Rawleigh-2022)A method becomes employed only if it is derivable from a non-empty subset of other elements of the mosaic.21 February 2024

Suggested Modifications

Here is a list of modifications concerning direct answers to this question:
Modification Community Date Suggested Summary Date Assessed Verdict Verdict Rationale
Sciento-2016-0001 Scientonomy 3 September 2016 Accept a new formulation of the third law to make it clear that employed methods do not have to be deducible from all accepted theories and employed methods but only from some. 21 January 2017 Accepted There was a community consensus that "the new formulation of the third law does bring an additional level of precision to our understanding of the mechanism of method change".c1 The community agreed that the new formulation "makes a clarification that, on its own, warrants this modification's acceptance".c2 Importantly, it was also agreed that the modification "solves the paradox of normative propositions".c3
Sciento-2022-0002 Scientonomy 28 February 2022 Accept the new law of norm employment that fixes some of the issues of the current law of method employment and makes it applicable to norms of all types. 21 February 2024 Accepted Prior to the 2024 workshop, Hakob Barseghyan commented on the encyclopedia with his opinion that the modification should be accepted given that the formulation seemed relatively future-proof: it would not have to change even if more elements are included into our ontology. Paul Patton and Cameron Scott raised some concerns about the differences between norm employment and norm acceptance, and about the derivability of norms from agents’ mosaics, given cases in the history of science where agents accept a norm that is derivable from their mosaic but do not act accordingly (that is, they fail to employ the norm). However, it was noted that this is a separate issue from what the modification aims to do: the law of norm employment does not describe what happens to norms that are already present in the mosaic, but merely describes how norms come to be part of the mosaic. Yet, the discrepancy in the community’s accepted definitions of norm acceptance (as a subtype of theory acceptance) and norm employment was highlighted as a pertinent issue for later focus. After this clarification, there were no further issues raised, and the modification was accepted by over a two-thirds majority of voters. 14 out of 16 votes were for acceptance.

Current View

In Scientonomy, the accepted answer to the question is The Law of Method Employment (Rawleigh-2022).

The Law of Method Employment (Rawleigh-2022) states: "A method becomes employed only if it is derivable from a non-empty subset of other elements of the mosaic."

This law of method employment is a corollary of Rawleigh's law of norm employment. It implies that, just like the norms of all other types, methods become employed when they are derivable from other elements of the agent's mosaic (such as other theories, other methods, and perhaps even questions). As such, the law preserves most of the content of Sebastien's third law by solving some of the issues inherent in it.

See The Law of Norm Employment (Rawleigh-2022) for a more thorough exposition.

Related Topics

References

  1. ^  Kuhn, Thomas. (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press.
  2. ^  Feyerabend, Paul. (1973) Theses on Anarchism. In Motterlini (Ed.) (1999), 113-118.
  3. ^  Feyerabend, Paul. (2010) Against Method. Fourth Edition. Verso.
  4. ^  Barseghyan, Hakob. (2021) Feyerabend’s General Theory of Scientific Change. In Bschir and Shaw (Eds.) (2021), 57-71.
  5. ^  Shapere, Dudley. (1980) The Character of Scientific Change. In Nickles (Ed.) (1980), 61-116.
  6. ^  Laudan, Larry. (1984) Science and Values. University of California Press.
  7. ^  McMullin, Ernan. (1988) The Shaping of Scientific Rationality: Construction and Constraint. In McMullin (Ed.) (1988), 1-47.
  8. ^  Lindberg, David. (2007) The Beginnings of Western Science. The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450, Second Edition. University Of Chicago Press.
  9. ^  Latour, Bruno and Woolgar, Steve. (1979) Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton University Press.
  10. ^  Barnes, Barry; Bloor, David and Henry, John. (1996) Scientific Knowledge: A Sociological Analysis. University of Chicago Press.
  11. ^  Barseghyan, Hakob. (2015) The Laws of Scientific Change. Springer.
  12. ^  Sebastien, Zoe. (2016) The Status of Normative Propositions in the Theory of Scientific Change. Scientonomy 1, 1-9. Retrieved from https://www.scientojournal.com/index.php/scientonomy/article/view/26947.