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Modification talk:Sciento-2018-0008

Commenting on this modification is closed; the modification is accepted.


Paul Patton

62 months ago
Score 0

I support the acceptance of this definition. However, its acceptance will require making significant changes to our accepted definitions of ‘normative theory’ and ‘employment’.

First ‘norm’ is simply a shortened way of referring to ‘normative theory’. The definition of normative theory should be modified to indicate that a normative theory may also be referred to as a ‘norm’. We would also need to make a redirect so that any search for ‘norm’ leads to the definition for ‘normative theory’.

Secondly, we need to modify our definition of ‘employment’ (Epistemic stances towards methods – Employment (Barseghyan -2015), since it currently only mentions methods as epistemic elements towards which this stance can be taken. The definition would need to be modified to indicate that any kind of normative theory, and not just methods, can be employed (in general, this definition, as currently stated in the encyclopedia, isn’t very good and needs work).

I would point out that if these two changes are made, the new definition of 'norm employment' will become a deductive consequence of them. Is it then worthwhile to state, as its own separate definition in the encyclopedia? Or, instead, should it simply be regarded as an understood consequence of the modified definitions of 'normative theory' and 'employment' without the need for a separate definition?

This discussion raises a more general issue. Whenever a new theory is accepted it is typically the case that at least small modifications need to be made to old theories, and to discussions of them in the encyclopedia for the sake of consistency and clarity. Perhaps a proposal for accepting a new theory should identify all instances where old theories and old encyclopedia entries need to be modified for the sake of maintaining consistency. Sometimes, though, it might be difficult to identify all of them. Alternately, the acceptance of a new theory could be considered to implicitly grant permission to the editors to make small changes to old theories for the sake of maintaining consistency, without the need for explicit review and acceptance.

Hakob Barseghyan

55 months ago
Score 0

This is to record that a consensus regarding this modification has emerged primarily off-line, outside this discussion page.

It was also agreed that Paul's concerns raised above are justified: when a modification is introduced to the body of scientonomic knowledge, it can cause a ripple effect of additional minor changes in some other elements. As scientonomists are not omniscient, not all of these additional required changes are listed at the moment of the publication of the respective modification. This raises an important normative question concerning our workflow: how should these ripple effects be handled: should the editors be granted a permission to modify the respective articles without any additional reviews, or should any additional changes go through the standard scientonomic mechanism of suggested modifications? It was agreed that this question is to be accepted as a legitimate topic of scientonomic inquiry.

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