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    If 'tiger' can be legitimately individuated by ecological... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→Being mammalian is necessarily a necessary condition for being a tiger, but not a sufficient condition for being a tiger.

    If 'tiger' can be legitimately individuated by ecological role, morphology, or genomic criteria depending on context, then 'being mammalian' carries no context-independent modal status as a necessary condition.

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    1 reason for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Individuation criteria are pragmatically selected based on explanatory goals, suggesting no single criterion enjoys metaphysical priority.
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    • 2.If context-dependence applies to identity conditions, it should apply equally to modal properties derived from identity.
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    • 3.Biologists successfully classify organisms using incompatible criteria (phylogenetic vs. ecological), indicating mammalian status lacks fixed necessity.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Context-dependent individuation of tigers doesn't entail context-dependence of their intrinsic modal properties once individuated.
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    • 2.Being mammalian could be necessary for tigers despite multiple valid individuation routes, since all routes converge on mammals.
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    • 3.The argument confuses epistemic accessibility of criteria with metaphysical status of necessity conditions.
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    Key Terms

    Modal status(as used in metaphysics and logic)
    Whether something is necessary (must be true), possible (could be true), or contingent (just happens to be true). 'Modal' refers to these kinds of distinctions about how things *could be* versus how they actually are.
    context-independent(another characteristic of neo-Russellian theory)
    Meaning that doesn't change based on who's speaking, when they're speaking, or where they are—it stays the same in every situation.
    ecological role(as used in philosophy of biology)
    The specific job or function something plays in its environment—like being a predator in the food chain.
    genomic criteria(as used in philosophy of biology)
    Using DNA and genetic information as the basis for deciding what something is.
    individuated(Chodorow's account of boys' psychological development)
    Feeling oneself to be separate or distinct from others, as a result of identifying with an absent parent
    morphology(Linguistic analysis of syntactic components)
    The form of words, as distinguished by linguists following Sapir and Bloomfield
    necessary condition(Counterfactual analysis of causation; Mackie 1965, 1974)
    A condition C is necessary for event E if E would not have occurred in the absence of C

    Connections

    2 topics

    Modality & Possibility1 linkedPhilosophy of Language1 linked

    Related

    Being mammalian could be necessary for tigers despite multiple valid individuati...Being mammalian is necessarily a necessary condition for being a tiger, but not ...

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    2 (1 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit
    Biologists successfully classify organisms using incompatible criteria (phylogen...
    Context-dependent individuation of tigers doesn't entail context-dependence of t...
    +3 moreShow less
    If context-dependence applies to identity conditions, it should apply equally to...Individuation criteria are pragmatically selected based on explanatory goals, su...The argument confuses epistemic accessibility of criteria with metaphysical stat...