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|Question=What is '''scientificity'''? How should it be ''defined''?
|Topic Type=Definitional
|Description=Sarwar and Fraser [[CiteRef::Sarwar and Fraser (2018)]] argue that a unique and independent epistemic stance can be taken by epistemic agenst towards theories, ''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)]] Furthermore, an agent may not definitive take the stance of scientificity towards a theory. Consider the academic discipline of marketing, for instance; there is no consensus about the scientific status of marketing, and there are arguments for and against the claim that marketing is a scientific discipline.[[CiteRef::Brown (1996)]][[CiteRef::Anderson (1983)]]
If scientificity is a distinct epistemic stance, it must have a definition, but it is unclear what a precise definition would entail. 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 an intuitively plausible starting point, because any scientific theory must attempt to answer a question that is also scientific. However, this definition fails for several reasons.
