 The intuitive appeal of the network model relies on the idea that standard conceptions of medical disease, with their separation of underlying condition and visible symptom, make no sense in psychiatry and are implausibly reductive (Borsboom et al 2019, Borsboom 2017). However, it has been argued in response that the (Bringmann and Eronen 2018) network and latent variable models are not so easy to distinguish, and that the choice between them is orthogonal to questions of reductionism. Further, although a disease such as depression cannot function as a part of the network, we can include in the network neurological or genetic processes that are taken to be part of the underlying state, so that the line between networks and traditional models is blurry. Bringmann and Eronen’s review of the literature suggests that model choice should not be made on the basis of background pictures of disease, but on the basis of other factors, especially the dynamic relations among variables stressed by network theorist. The philosophical appeal of a conception of mental illness by itself does not legitimate any choice of model.