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Indexically Structured Ecological Communities (Phil sci Published)

Lean, Christopher (2018) Indexically Structured Ecological Communities (Phil sci Published). [Preprint]

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Abstract

Ecological communities are seldom, if ever, biological individuals. They lack causal boundaries as the populations that constitute communities are not congruent and rarely have persistent functional roles regulating the communities’ higher-level properties. Instead we should represent ecological communities indexically, by identifying ecological communities via the network of weak causal interactions between populations that unfurl from a starting set of populations. This precisification of ecological communities helps identify how community properties remain invariant, and why they have robust characteristics. This is a more general framework than individuality, respecting the diversity and aggregational nature of these complex systems while still vindicating them as units worthy of investigation.


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Lean, Christopherchristopher.hunter.lean@gmail.com0000-0001-5722-6471
Keywords: Philosophy of Ecology; Communities; Explanation; Conservation; Causation; Metaphysics of Science
Subjects: General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics
Specific Sciences > Biology > Ecology/Conservation
Specific Sciences > Environmental Science
General Issues > Natural Kinds
Depositing User: Dr Christopher Lean
Date Deposited: 24 Oct 2019 02:25
Last Modified: 24 Oct 2019 02:25
Item ID: 16570
DOI or Unique Handle: https://doi.org/10.1086/697746
Subjects: General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics
Specific Sciences > Biology > Ecology/Conservation
Specific Sciences > Environmental Science
General Issues > Natural Kinds
Date: 2018
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/16570

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