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{{Definitional Topic

|Topic Type=Definitional|Description=Scientonomy currently accepts three distinct stances which an epistemic agent may take towards a theory: acceptance, use, and pursuit.Sarwar and Fraser [[CiteRef::Sarwar and Fraser (2018)]] argue that there is another important a unique and independent epistemic stance which may can be taken by epistemic agenst towards theories which the current framework precludes: , ''scientificity''. We see from the The history of science shows that that epistemic agents view some theories as scientific and some as unscientific; general relativity is currently considered scientific by the contemporary scientific community,[[CiteRef::Hartle (2006)]], while the theory of phlogiston is considered unscientific.[[CiteRef::Wisniak (2004)]] It is generally understood that there exist pseudoscientific theories, which are a subclass of unscientific theories.[[CiteRef::Hansson (2017)]] FurthermoreIt is important, therefore, to have a definition of scientificity.|Parent Topic=|Authors List=Ameer Sarwar, an agent may not take Patrick Fraser|Formulated Year=2018|Prehistory=|History=|Current View=If scientificity is a definitive distinct epistemic stance regarding the scientificity of , it must have a definition, but it is unclear what a theoryprecise definition would entail. Consider the academic discipline of marketing, for instance; there following hypothetical formulation: “a theory is no consensus about the said to be scientific status if it is taken to deal with a legitimate topic of marketingscientific inquiry”. This may appear to be an intuitively plausible starting point, and there are arguments for and against the claim because any scientific theory must attempt to answer a question that marketing is a also scientific discipline.[[CiteRef::Brown (1996)]][[CiteRef::Anderson (1983)]]However, this definition fails for several reasons.

If scientificity is a distinct epistemic stance, it must have a definition, but it is unclear how it should be precisely defined. Consider the following hypothetical formulation: “a theory is said to be scientific if it is taken to deal with a legitimate topic of scientific inquiry”. This may appear to be a plausible starting point, now that questions have been accepted into the scientonomic ontology of epistemic elements, and it might strike one as intuitive that any scientific theory must attempt to answer a scientific question. However, this definition fails for several reasons. First, it defers the content of the scientificity's definition to the definition of “a legitimate topic of scientific inquiry”, which itself is dependent on the concept of scientificity. This is circular, and so this definition circularity does little to clarify define the notion of scientificity. Furthermore, according to Sarwar and Fraser, "dealing with a `"legitimate topic of scientific inquiry' " may be a necessary condition for the scientificity of a theory, but it cannot be a sufficient condition. It is possible that a theory may attempt to answer scientific questions, but the answers it provides may not be considered scientific".[[CiteRef::Sarwar and Fraser (2018)]] Thus, resorting to the question/answer part of the scientonomic framework in this way is not sufficient for a theory to be considered scientific. Sarwar and Fraser go further and claim that "it is reasonable to suspect that any attempt to define theory scientificity in terms of its relation to questions will inevitably be problematic for the same reasons listed above... It is always possible to construct ''ad hoc'', non-scientific theories that answer a given [scientific] question. We could, for instance, answer the question of the shape of the Earth by something as nonsensical as “the Earth is donut-shaped”. If the scientificity of a theory were to be determined by the qualities of the questions being answered, then any nonsense could potentially qualify as scientific".[[CiteRef::Sarwar and Fraser (2018)]] The content of questions appears to be a fruitless avenue for defining scientificity. This highlights the complexity that arise arises when one attempts to concretely define scientificity concretelyare made. As suchConsequently, a definition is requiredneeded, but it is not provided.|Authors List=Ameer Sarwar, Patrick Fraser,|Formulated Year=2018