Further Analysis
Raimo Siltala has analysed the demarcation problem using the scientific method as the measure (Siltala 2003, 475). Siltala makes a distinction between the context of discovery and that of justification.
The former contains, among others, the following minimum criteria of the scientific method:1. Prohibition of triviality, meaning the requirement of significance set for the results of research, and
2. Prohibition of identity, or the requirement for the research to be uncompelled, which means that one could describe the study as having its own individual identity.
The most important requirements for the scientific method, however, concern the scientific justification, which is always a communal matter. In this regard, Siltala lists the following minimum requirements:
3. The results have to receive communal approval, which fully concerns the results of legal research as well, since law is a thoroughly social phenomenon.
4. The requirement of rational justification rules out arbitrariness and contingency.
5. The research has to be temporally continuous, which is guaranteed by the long duration of the methodical tradition, which, in turn, has a significance that enhances predictability.
6. The degree of exactness of scientific statements has to make scientific communication possible and exclude the anarchism that ruins research.
7. In general, research has to have some kind of method, since methodical nihilism of all kinds makes science and scientific discourse impossible.
8. The concepts used in science have to be identifiable, in addition to which the method has to be cleared of any such complexity that may ruin its generality (methodical application of Occam's razor).