4.7 What would count against the hypothesis?

A useful categorical theory must state its negative evidence. The proposed core doctrine would be weakened if:

1. the declared invariances fail to match stable infant discriminations;

2. a substantially weaker, untyped hypothesis class identifies the same queries from the same presentations;

3. cross-system judgments vary freely rather than satisfying coherent overlap conditions;

4. observed developmental repairs routinely cross boundaries that the doctrine declares fixed; or

5. multiple inequivalent core realizations remain observationally indistinguishable even under the interactions available to the learner.

No one failure refutes all categorical modeling. It identifies which claimed fragment, observer, or universal property lacks empirical support. This is why the layered prior of Chapter 2 is essential: typing commitments, observational invariants, structural hypotheses, and doctrinal commitments should not all be protected equally from revision.