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|Authors List=Hakob Barseghyan,
|Formulated Year=2015
|History=Barseghyan (2015) picked up on the Worrall-Laudan debate and further clarified things, first by providing a more precise distinction, already hinted at by Worrall, between on the one hand methods as the implicit rules employed in theory assessment and methodology, or the explicitly formulated rules, on the other Second, by breaking the issue debated into two different questions, one empirical and pertaining to HSC (“are there any methods that have not changed over time?”) and another theoretical and pertaining to TSC (“are there any unchangeable or immune methods in principle?”). He also provided a more precise distinction of of substantive and procedural methods, by asking what sorts of presuppositions they respectively make. In this order of ideas, substantive methods are those which presuppose at least one contingent proposition, while procedural methods are those which don’t presuppose any, but only necessary truths. An example of the former is the double-blind trial method and an example of the latter is the deductive acceptance method. However, specification and implementation of procedural methods depend on both the type of logical inference rules employed, as well as on the applicability of these rules to different types of propositions (true or quasi-true). In the empirical sciences, in which propositions are fallible and contingent, the thesis of fallibilism is assumed and paraconsistent logic is applied. Barseghyan suggests that the question as to whether methods change or not amounts to asking whether methods (both procedural and substantial) can be rejected or replaced, or if there are irreplaceable methods and concludes that TSC provides an answer to this question, expressed in the Dynamic Methods Theorem and the Static Procedural Methods Theorem.
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