Rawleigh (2022)

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Rawleigh, William. (2022) Reconceiving Scientific Mosaics: A New Formalization for Theoretical Scientonomy. In Barseghyan et al. (Eds.) (2022), 83-103.

Title Reconceiving Scientific Mosaics: A New Formalization for Theoretical Scientonomy
Resource Type collection article
Author(s) William Rawleigh
Year 2022
Collection Barseghyan et al. (Eds.) (2022)
Pages 83-103

Abstract

A central concept in scientonomy is the scientific mosaic, a concept intended to capture the state of an agent’s scientific knowledge at a given point in time. The currently accepted definition of the mosaic, “a set of all epistemic elements accepted and/or employed by an epistemic agent”, is a syntactic definition that fails to provide a theoretically robust investigational framework that allows scientonomists to explore mosaics and their minutiae fully and fruitfully. Pressingly, this definition leaves open some troubling semantic questions about the nature of deducibility and meaning within scientonomy’s theoretical framework. This paper tackles these problems by proposing a semantic foundation for theoretical scientonomy rooted in explicitly set-theoretic concepts. It begins by examining a problem of semantic recursion through self-reference posed by the current definition and shows how the syntactic definition is fundamentally unable to overcome this problem. Instead, it proposes a semantic definition of mosaics which, while recursive, is not viciously or self-referentially recursive. It argues that by formalizing mosaics semantically as natural language models for scientific communities, scientonomy can overcome its semantic problems while also illuminating how truth-value assignment, inference, and the operation of higher-order laws work within theoretical scientonomy. To that end, it shows how a semantic definition can solve an outstanding problem with the third law having to do with the concept of deducibility.

Theories

Here are all the theories formulated in Rawleigh (2022):

TheoryTypeFormulationFormulated In
Scientific Mosaic (Rawleigh-2022)DefinitionA model of all epistemic elements accepted or employed by the epistemic agent.2022
The Law of Norm Employment (Rawleigh-2022)DescriptiveA norm becomes employed only if it is derivable from a non-empty subset of other elements of the mosaic.2022
The Law of Method Employment (Rawleigh-2022)DescriptiveA method becomes employed only if it is derivable from a non-empty subset of other elements of the mosaic.2022

Suggested Modifications

Here are all the modifications suggested in Rawleigh (2022):

  • Sciento-2022-0001: Accept a new model-theoretic definition of scientific mosaic, according to which, a scientific mosaic is a model of all epistemic elements accepted or employed by the epistemic agent. The modification was suggested to Scientonomy community by William Rawleigh on 28 February 2022.1 The modification is currently being evaluated; a verdict is pending.
  • Sciento-2022-0002: 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. The modification was suggested to Scientonomy community by William Rawleigh on 28 February 2022.1 The modification is currently being evaluated; a verdict is pending.