Redefining Epistemic Stances

Epistemic stances play a foundational role in scientonomy’s explanatory framework, yet several of their currently accepted definitions fail to capture the concepts they are intended to explicate. This paper undertakes a systematic reassessment of epistemic stances, motivated by a series of conceptual ambiguities and inconsistencies that have emerged in recent theoretical and observational work. We begin by distinguishing epistemic stances understood as states from the transitions that initiate and terminate them, drawing on insights from formal ontology and related literatures. This distinction allows for a clearer formulation of scientonomic questions concerning the dynamics of scientific change. We then propose revised definitions of several core epistemic stances. In particular, we redefine theory acceptance in a way that permits suspension of judgment, multiple accepted answers, and theories answering multiple questions. We reconceptualize question acceptance as taking a question to be sound and introduce question answerability as a distinct epistemic stance. Norm employment is redefined as a dispositional state to act in accordance with a norm. Finally, we disambiguate norm rejection by differentiating transitions from norm acceptance to unacceptance and transitions from norm employment to unemployment; we suggest that the latter should be referred to as norm unemployment. We then outline corresponding revisions to scientonomic laws, theorems, and encyclopedia structure. Together, these revisions bring scientonomy’s explicit definitions of epistemic stances into closer alignment with our intuitive concepts and improve the coherence of our ontology.