Modification:Sciento-2019-0015

Accept that there are two types of epistemic agents – individual and communal. Also accept the question of applicability of the laws of scientific change to individuals as a legitimate topic of scientonomic inquiry.

The modification was suggested to Scientonomy community by Paul Patton on 26 December 2019.1 The modification was accepted on 10 January 2022.

Preamble

TODO

Modification

Theories To Accept

• Individual Epistemic Agent Exists: There is such a thing as an individual epistemic agent.
• Individual Epistemic Agent Is a Subtype of Epistemic Agent (Patton-2019): Individual Epistemic Agent is a subtype of Epistemic Agent, i.e. epistemic agent is a supertype of individual epistemic agent.

Questions To Accept

• Applicability of the Laws of Scientific Change to Individuals: Do the scientonomic laws apply to individual epistemic agents?

Questions Answered

This modification attempts to answer the following question(s):

• Subtypes of Epistemic Agent: What are the subtypes of an epistemic agent?
• Existence of Individual Epistemic Agent: Does an individual epistemic agent exist?
• Supertypes of Individual Epistemic Agent: What are the supertypes of an individual epistemic agent?

Verdict

The modification was accepted on 10 January 2022. It was agreed during seminar discussions that the "modification aims to codify our de facto communal stance towards the ontology of epistemic agents".^c1 This is confirmed by the fact that several recent articles take this ontology of epistemic agents for granted (e.g., Barseghyan and Levesley (2021), Machado-Marques and Patton (2021)).23 Even as early as 2017, several of Loiselle's examples of authority delegation concern individual experts (see Loiselle (2017)).4

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