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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Classification of ecological phenomena is not theoretically innocent — the structure of phenomena is partly determined by the models used to represent them.

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    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Natural kinds in ecology (predation, competition, succession) exhibit mind-independent causal structures that constrain which classifications are empirically tractable.
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    • 2.The fact that models influence how phenomena are *distinguished* does not entail that models *constitute* the phenomena distinguished — a conflation of epistemic access with ontological structure.
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    • 3.Philosophers like Ian Hacking distinguish 'interactive' from 'indifferent' kinds: ecological entities like organisms are largely indifferent kinds, unresponsive to how we classify them, preserving realist classification.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.The argument from stochasticity conflates classificatory underdetermination with theoretical constitution: multiple models can track the same real phenomenon without that phenomenon being model-dependent.
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    • 2.Willard Quine's thesis of ontological relativity implies scheme-dependence of reference, yet even Quine maintained that empirical constraints from the world prune admissible theoretical schemes, preserving a substantive role for mind-independent reality in classification.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Whether a given event (e.g., a flood preventing a reptile from breeding) counts as environmental or demographic stochasticity depends on how it is modeled, not solely on intrinsic features of the event.
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    • 2.When a new discipline is being formed, the models chosen to represent phenomena partly determine how those phenomena are distinguished and classified.
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    • 3.If models determine classification, then classification is not a neutral, theory-free activity.
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