Epistemic Agents
Who can be a bearer of a mosaic? Can a community be a bearer of a mosaic? Can an individual be a bearer of a mosaic? Can an instrument' be a bearer of a mosaic?
An agent is defined as an entity with a capacity to act. 1 The actions in question for an epistemic agent are epistemic actions such as taking stances towards epistemic elements or being the bearer of a scientific mosaic. The question at issue is who or what can be an epistemic agent. Can individuals be epistemic agents, or communities, or perhaps artificial systems such as databases or instruments? For example, consider a community that delegates authority over a certain topic to its sub-community. Then this sub-community delegates authority over a sub-topic of this topic to its sub-sub-community. Finally, this sub-sub-community delegates one very specific question to a single expert. Does this mean that an individual scientist can be an epistemic agent?
In the scientonomic context, this question was first formulated by Hakob Barseghyan in 2018. The question is currently accepted as a legitimate topic for discussion by Scientonomy community.
In Scientonomy, the accepted answers to the question can be summarized as follows:
- The subtypes of epistemic agent are epistemic community and individual epistemic agent.
Contents
Broader History
For most of the history of western science and philosophy, human individuals were treated as the primary epistemic agents. Exceptions include discussions of when one should accept the testimony of others in the works of David Hume (1711-1776) and Thomas Reid (1710-1796). 2
In the nineteenth century, the British philosopher and political economist John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) argued, in a political essay called On Liberty, 3 that because individual human knowers are fallible, the critical discussion of ideas is necessary to help individuals avoid the falsity or partiality of beliefs framed in the context of only one point of view. The achievement of knowledge is thus a social rather than an individual matter. 4 The American philosopher and logician Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) emphasized the instigation of doubt and critical interaction within a community as means to knowledge. He formulated a consensual theory of truth, in which the acceptance of the truth of a proposition depends on the agreement of a community of inquirers. For Peirce then, communities are epistemic agents that can take stances towards propositions. 54
The epidemiologist Ludwig Fleck(1896-1961) made one of the earliest attempts to understand scientific change, specifically, as a social process involving communities as epistemic agents. In Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (1935) 6, he argued that cognition was necessarily a collective social activity, since it depends on prior knowledge obtained from other people. New ideas arise within collective epistemic agents which he called thought collectives; groups of people who participate in the mutual exchange of ideas. As an emergent consequence of mutual understandings and misunderstandings within such a group, a particular thought style arises, which determines how individual members of the thought collective think and perceive within the relevant domain. Scientific facts are socially constructed by thought collectives interacting with the world through observation and experiment, and can be revised or abandoned based on these interactions. 67
Scientonomic History
Acceptance Record of the Question
Community | Accepted From | Acceptance Indicators | Still Accepted | Accepted Until | Rejection Indicators |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Scientonomy | 8 October 2018 | The question of Subtypes of Epistemic Agent became accepted by virtue of the acceptance of Epistemic Agent. The publication of Barseghyan (2018) is an indication of the acceptance of the term. | Yes |
All Direct Answers
Theory | Formulation | Formulated In |
---|---|---|
Epistemic Community Is a Subtype of Epistemic Agent (Barseghyan-2018) | Epistemic Community is a subtype of Epistemic Agent, i.e. epistemic agent is a supertype of epistemic community. | 2018 |
Individual Epistemic Agent Is a Subtype of Epistemic Agent (Patton-2019) | Individual Epistemic Agent is a subtype of Epistemic Agent, i.e. epistemic agent is a supertype of individual epistemic agent. | 2019 |
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Accepted Direct Answers
Community | Theory | Formulation | Accepted From | Accepted Until |
---|---|---|---|---|
Scientonomy | Epistemic Community Is a Subtype of Epistemic Agent (Barseghyan-2018) | Epistemic Community is a subtype of Epistemic Agent, i.e. epistemic agent is a supertype of epistemic community. | 8 October 2018 | |
Scientonomy | Individual Epistemic Agent Is a Subtype of Epistemic Agent (Patton-2019) | Individual Epistemic Agent is a subtype of Epistemic Agent, i.e. epistemic agent is a supertype of individual epistemic agent. | 10 January 2022 |
Suggested Modifications
Modification | Community | Date Suggested | Summary | Date Assessed | Verdict | Verdict Rationale |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Sciento-2019-0015 | Scientonomy | 26 December 2019 | Accept that there are two types of epistemic agents – individual and communal. Also accept the question of applicability of the laws of scientific change to individuals as a legitimate topic of scientonomic inquiry. | 10 January 2022 | Accepted | It was agreed during seminar discussions that the "modification aims to codify our de facto communal stance towards the ontology of epistemic agents".c1 This is confirmed by the fact that several recent articles take this ontology of epistemic agents for granted (e.g., Barseghyan and Levesley (2021), Machado-Marques and Patton (2021)).89 Even as early as 2017, several of Loiselle's examples of authority delegation concern individual experts (see Loiselle (2017)).10 |
Current View
In Scientonomy, the accepted answers to the question are Epistemic Community Is a Subtype of Epistemic Agent (Barseghyan-2018) and Individual Epistemic Agent Is a Subtype of Epistemic Agent (Patton-2019).
Epistemic Community Is a Subtype of Epistemic Agent (Barseghyan-2018) states: "Epistemic Community is a subtype of Epistemic Agent, i.e. epistemic agent is a supertype of epistemic community."
According to Barseghyan, epistemic community is an epistemic agent, i.e. it is capable of taking epistemic stances towards epistemic elements.11
Individual Epistemic Agent Is a Subtype of Epistemic Agent (Patton-2019) states: "Individual Epistemic Agent is a subtype of Epistemic Agent, i.e. epistemic agent is a supertype of individual epistemic agent."
According to Patton, individuals are "capable of taking epistemic stances towards epistemic elements, with reason, based on a semantic understanding of the elements and their available alternatives, and with the goal of producing knowledge".12
Related Topics
This question is a subquestion of Ontology of Scientific Change.
References
- ^ Schlosser, Markus. (2015) Agency. In Zalta (Ed.) (2016). Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/agency/.
- ^ Goldman (2015)
- ^ Mill (1859)
- a b Longino (2016)
- ^ Peirce, Charles Sanders. (1878) How to Make Our Ideas Clear. Popular Science Monthly 12, 286-302.
- a b Fleck, Ludwik. (1979) Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. University of Chicago Press.
- ^ Wojciech (2016)
- ^ Barseghyan, Hakob and Levesley, Nichole. (2021) Question Dynamics. Scientonomy 4, 1-19. Retrieved from https://scientojournal.com/index.php/scientonomy/article/view/37120.
- ^ Machado-Marques, Sarah and Patton, Paul. (2021) Scientific Error and Error Handling. Scientonomy 4, 21-39. Retrieved from https://scientojournal.com/index.php/scientonomy/article/view/37121.
- ^ Loiselle, Mirka. (2017) Multiple Authority Delegation in Art Authentication. Scientonomy 1, 41-53. Retrieved from https://www.scientojournal.com/index.php/scientonomy/article/view/28233.
- ^ Barseghyan, Hakob. (2018) Redrafting the Ontology of Scientific Change. Scientonomy 2, 13-38. Retrieved from https://scientojournal.com/index.php/scientonomy/article/view/31032.
- ^ Patton, Paul. (2019) Epistemic Tools and Epistemic Agents in Scientonomy. Scientonomy 3, 63-89. Retrieved from https://scientojournal.com/index.php/scientonomy/article/view/33621.