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Record W3005260989 · doi:10.33137/js.v3i0.33621

Epistemic Tools and Epistemic Agents in Scientonomy

2019· article· en· W3005260989 on OpenAlex
Paul Patton

Why this work is in the frame

A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.

affAt least one author lists a Canadian institution in the pinned OpenAlex snapshot.
venuePublished in a venue whose home country is Canada.

Bibliographic record

VenueScientonomy Journal for the Science of Science · 2019
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldArts and Humanities
TopicPhilosophy and History of Science
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Toronto
Fundersnot available
KeywordsEpistemologyEpistemic communityOntologyEpistemic virtueEpistemic modal logicPhilosophy of scienceComputer sciencePhilosophyArtificial intelligencePolitical sciencePolitics

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

The only subtype of epistemic agent currently recognized within scientonomy is community. The place of both individuals and epistemic tools in the scientonomic ontology is yet to be clarified. This paper extends the scientonomic ontology to include epistemic agents and epistemic tools as well as their relationship to one another. Epistemic agent is defined as an agent capable of taking epistemic stances towards epistemic elements. These stances must be taken intentionally, that is, based on a semantic understanding of the epistemic element in question and its available alternatives, with reason, and for the purpose of acquiring knowledge. I argue that there can be both communal and individual epistemic agents. Epistemic agents are linked by relationships of authority delegation based on their differing areas of expertise. Having established the role of epistemic agents in the process of scientific change, I then turn to the role of epistemic tools, such as a thermometer, a text, or a particle accelerator in epistemic activities. I argue that epistemic tools play a different role in scientific change than do epistemic agents. This role is specified by an agent’s employed method. A physical object or system is an epistemic tool for some epistemic agent if there is a procedure by which the tool can provide an acceptable source of knowledge for answering some question under the employed method of the agent. An agent is said to rely on such a tool.
 Suggested Modifications
 [Sciento-2019-0014]: Accept the following definition of epistemic agent:
 
 Epsitemic Agent ≡ an agent capable of taking epistemic stances towards epistemic elements.
 
 [Sciento-2019-0015]: Accept that there are two types of epistemic agents – individual and communal. Also accept the following question as a legitimate topic of scientonomic inquiry:
 
 Applicability of the Laws of Scientific Change to Individuals: do the scientonomic laws apply to individual epistemic agents?
 
 [Sciento-2019-0016]: Accept the term epistemic tool, with the following definition:
 
 Epistemic Tool ≡ a physical object or system is an epistemic tool for an epistemic agent, when there is a procedure by which the tool can provide an acceptable source of knowledge for answering some question under the employed method of that agent.
 
 [Sciento-2019-0017]: Accept the following definition of authority delegation, which generalizes the currently accepted definition to apply to all epistemic agents:
 
 Authority Delegation ≡ epistemic agent A is said to be delegating authority over question x to epistemic agent B iff (1) agent A accepts that agent B is an expert on question x and (2) agent A will accept a theory answering question x if agent B says so.
 
 Also accept the following redefinitions of subtypes of authority delegation, including mutual authority delegation, one-sided authority delegation, singular authority delegation, multiple authority delegation, hierarchical authority delegation, and non-hierarchical authority delegation:
 
 Mutual Authority Delegation ≡ epistemic agents A and B are said to be in a relationship of mutual authority delegation iff A delegates authority over question x to B, and B delegates authority over question y to A.
 One-Sided Authority Delegation ≡ epistemic agents A and B are said to be in a relationship of one-sided authority delegation iff A delegates authority over question x to B, but B doesn’t delegate any authority to A.
 Singular Authority Delegation ≡ epistemic agent A is said to engage in a relationship of singular authority delegation over question x iff A delegates authority over question x to exactly one epistemic agent.
 Multiple Authority Delegation ≡ epistemic agent A is said to engage in a relationship of multiple authority delegation over question x iff A delegates authority over question x to more than one epistemic agents.
 Hierarchical Authority Delegation ≡ a sub-type of multiple authority delegation where different epistemic agents are delegated different degrees of authority over question x.
 Non-Hierarchical Authority Delegation ≡ a sub-type of multiple authority delegation where different epistemic agents are delegated the same degree of authority over question x.
 
 [Sciento-2019-0018]: Accept the relationship of tool reliance can obtain between epistemic agents and epistemic tools. Accept the following definition of tool reliance:
 
 Tool Reliance ≡ an epistemic agent is said to rely on an epistemic tool when there is a procedure through which the tool can provide an acceptable source of knowledge for answering some question under the employed method of that agent.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.012
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesScience and technology studies, Scholarly communication
Consensus categoriesScience and technology studies
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.461
Threshold uncertainty score0.999

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0120.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.002
Science and technology studies0.0040.035
Scholarly communication0.0020.006
Open science0.0040.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.095
GPT teacher head0.295
Teacher spread0.200 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it