Changes

|Authors List=Hakob Barseghyan

|Formulated Year=2015

<blockquote>By the method rejection theorem, a method is rejected only when other methods that are incompatible with the method in question become employed. Thus, a replacement of a procedural method by another method would be possible if the two were incompatible with each other. However, it can be shown that a procedural method can never be incompatible with any other method, procedural or substantive.

Thus, the only question that remains to be answered here is whether a procedural method can be replaced by a substantive method? Again, the answer is “no”. Substantive methods presuppose some contingent propositions about the world, while procedural methods presuppose merely necessary truths. But a necessary truth is compatible with any other truth (contingent or necessary). Therefore, no newly accepted theory can be incompatible with an accepted necessary truth. In particular, if we take the principles of pure mathematics to be necessarily true, then it follows that no empirical theory (i.e. physical, chemical, biological, psychological, sociological etc.) can be incompatible with the principles of mathematics. Consequently, a new substantive method can never be incompatible with procedural methods. Take the above-discussed abstract deductive acceptance method based on the definition of deductive inference: if a proposition is deductively inferred from other accepted propositions, it is to be accepted. It is safe to say that no substantive method can be incompatible with this requirement, for to do so would mean to be incompatible with the definition of deductive inference, which is inconceivable. Thus, a procedural method can be replaced neither by substantive nor by procedural methods.

Here is the deduction: