I support acceptance of the modification. The reason for modifying the definition of employed method requires a bit more explanation than was given. In the new second law, a theory may be accepted into the mosaic if its assessment is inconclusive. The old definition of employed method specifies that 'theories become accepted only when their acceptance is permitted by the method'. The new definition, which decouples the method from acceptance outcomes, is needed to avoid a contradiction for cases where assessment by the method is inconclusive, but the theory is accepted.
Since it is possible for a theory to satisfy the method of the time, yet remain unaccepted, there is a clear case in which theory acceptance is not causally connected to appraisal. Given the possible outcomes of theory assessment, this modification provides a much improved formulation of the 2nd law.
As the author of the previous formulation of the second law, I admit that it was far from perfect. For one, it sounded like a tautology which is not what the law of theory acceptance should do. Its second major flaw was that it didn't state how exactly a theory is evaluated by the method of the time and what happened as a result of that evaluation. Specifically, it said nothing about the relation between theory assessment outcomes and actual theory acceptance.
In that sense, the new formulation of the law is a great improvement. While the new formulation is much more verbose, it clearly states what happens to a theory under different assessment outcomes.
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Paul Patton
Jacob MacKinnon
Hakob Barseghyan