The Pseudo-Demarcation of 'Pseudoscience'

The effort to discover some universal method whereby science may be distinguished from ‘pseudoscience’ is a long-standing problem within Philosophy of Science. However, no widely accepted or properly justified method has thus far been proposed. In this thesis, I demonstrate that none of the many extant demarcation proposals is successful, and argue that efforts to ‘demarcate pseudoscience’ cannot possibly succeed given the meaning of those terms and the nature of the topic. Nonetheless, the important objectives that motivate resolution of ‘The Demarcation Problem’ can be attained once it is recognised that the term ‘pseudoscience’ is an irrelevant distraction.