And what I want to see is progression within each individual’s life, not a population-level correlation with age.
I think I agree that this is a better criterion, yeah. I’m not prepared to be sure about this without thinking about it some more, but I definitely lean toward being convinced.
I don’t think I care whether the characteristics in question all pertain to a single “domain” in any sense
I don’t necessarily care about that either, but clustering and progression that is parallel across multiple domains is an additional fact, which is not necessary to motivate a theory of the relevant sort. And treating domains separately is useful because we may well have, for example, a case where the data that indicates clustering/progression in one domain is weaker than the data which indicates it in another domain; we want to retain the ability to say “well, I’m not sure about the claim that people exhibit this pattern with respect to rock climbing skill and knitting skill and desire for broccoli, but at least the first one is clearly true, and so we’d like a theory that explains that even if it doesn’t also explain the other stuff”.
In general, there’s not really a good reason not to keep domains conceptually separate here; we can always decide later that a pattern that holds across domains requires a unified theory (or we can notice that a theory that explains the pattern in one domain also explains it in other domains). In the meantime, keeping our claims narrowly scoped seems prudent.
I think I agree that this is a better criterion, yeah. I’m not prepared to be sure about this without thinking about it some more, but I definitely lean toward being convinced.
I don’t necessarily care about that either, but clustering and progression that is parallel across multiple domains is an additional fact, which is not necessary to motivate a theory of the relevant sort. And treating domains separately is useful because we may well have, for example, a case where the data that indicates clustering/progression in one domain is weaker than the data which indicates it in another domain; we want to retain the ability to say “well, I’m not sure about the claim that people exhibit this pattern with respect to rock climbing skill and knitting skill and desire for broccoli, but at least the first one is clearly true, and so we’d like a theory that explains that even if it doesn’t also explain the other stuff”.
In general, there’s not really a good reason not to keep domains conceptually separate here; we can always decide later that a pattern that holds across domains requires a unified theory (or we can notice that a theory that explains the pattern in one domain also explains it in other domains). In the meantime, keeping our claims narrowly scoped seems prudent.