Modification:Sciento-2021-0003

Accept the definition of error, stating that an epistemic agent is said to commit an error if the agent accepts a theory that should not have been accepted given that agent’s employed method.

The modification was suggested to Scientonomy community by Paul Patton and Sarah Machado-Marques on 1 August 2021.1 The modification was accepted on 8 October 2021.

Preamble

TODO: Paul add a preamble

Modification

Theories To Accept

• Error (Machado-Marques-Patton-2021): An epistemic agent is said to commit an error if the agent accepts a theory that should not have been accepted given that agent’s employed method.

Questions Answered

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

• Error: What is error? How should it be defined?

Verdict

The modification was accepted on 8 October 2021. It was agreed that the definition "succeeds in capturing the gist of the notion by explicitly stating that an error is always relative to an epistemic agent and to that agent's employed method".^{c1 c2} The importance of the concept of error for the Tree of Knowledge project was also noted. Specifically, it was argued that "we must be able to differentiate between those theories which were accepted in accordance with an agent’s employed method and those which were not" so that we can better understand the reasoning underlying individual transitions.^c3 Finally, it was suggested that a further distinction between “instances of honest error and misconduct” might be worth pursuing.^c4

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