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    Carmelics

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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Drift is a force, though less force-like than selection, mutation, and migration

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Forces require a determinate magnitude and direction at each instant, as established in classical mechanics (Newton, Bigelow et al. 1988).
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    • 2.Drift is constitutively indeterminate in both magnitude and direction, being defined precisely by the absence of systematic directional tendency.
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    • 3.An entity that lacks the defining quantitative properties of forces cannot be a force, even in a weakened or analogical sense.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Matthen and Ariew (2002) argue that population-level statistical outcomes like drift are not causes but mathematical summaries of individual causal histories.
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    • 2.If drift is merely a bookkeeping description of sampling variance rather than a productive cause, it cannot instantiate even a weakened force concept.
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    • 3.Admitting 'less force-like' forces collapses the force/description distinction that gives the forces framework its explanatory content.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.A more elaborated account of what a force is (drawing on Bigelow et al. 1988) allows for forces with less specific directional information
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    • 2.Drift gives some directional information even if less specific than selection, mutation, and migration
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