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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Matthen and Ariew argue that population-level statistical outcomes cannot be decomposed into individual-level causal processes without remainder.

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

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Population statistics ultimately derive from countable individuals; any 'remainder' reflects explanatory incompleteness, not ontological irreducibility.
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    • 2.Evolution operates through differential individual reproduction; denying individual-level causal sufficiency undermines the mechanism of natural selection itself.
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    • 3.Statistical descriptions and causal mechanisms describe the same phenomena differently; this explanatory gap doesn't prove decomposition is impossible.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Emergent statistical patterns (like mean fitness across populations) exhibit properties absent from individual organisms, requiring higher-level explanatory frameworks.
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    • 2.Individual causal chains involve contingencies that don't sum predictably; population-level regularities transcend these microscopic details.
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    • 3.Reductionism commits a mereological fallacy: properties of wholes needn't decompose into properties of parts without informational loss.
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