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> This is not to say that species richness is not declining, I continue to be baffled by how many take serious this rather arbitrary concept as though it actua

> This is not to say that species richness is not declining, I continue to be baffled by how many take serious this rather arbitrary concept as though it actually mean something. Apparently Clostridium botulinum as a species is purely defined by the ability to produce botulinum; many members of this species have acquired this trait by way of horizontal gene transfer and are otherwise vertically not specially related and vertically related strains that lost it recently are considered different species. The species of the neanderthal man has recently gone extinct, or not, depending on a sheer matter of semantics of whether it and the cro-magnon man are of the same species, or not. Similar arguments can of course be made for languages. A dialect with an army-and-a-navy being lost is a tragœdy; a dialect that lacks such being lost is inconsequential, — for the former is a separate language, and the latter merely a variant of another.

xipho 6y ago
Do you feel confident that you can apply an individual measure of meaning as to whether each of the 2 million + estimated species on Earth is "valuable"? If not, perhaps blanked statements might be of use. For example all species that produce food, perhaps useful. All species that are part of an ecosystem that decomposes dead things so that we are covered in filth - also useful. Species that cause viral death- extremely useful to know about. Species that produce oxygen for us to breath, I'm for them. Species that fix nitrogen so we can eat, count me. You get my drift, suggesting nothing matters/has meaning is a dead-end/non-starter argument.
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  You assume that these traits necessarily lie on the arbitrary lines men have drawn between so-called “species”. My point is that they do not, and that the line between different species indeed can be quite arbitrary, and can very often differ from one specialist to the other. Most of the earth's oxygen is produced by plankton, which is especially a place where some members of the same species produce said oxygen, and some do not.
  - xipho 6y ago
    Of course species are hypotheses, nobody is arguing that. Are you suggesting anything that is a hypothesis has no worth? It's trivial to show traits delimit useful species concepts, and indeed ample envidence can be used to show that species can be very robustly defined according to well defined species concepts (of which there are various). So I'm unclear as to what your point is. Are you suggesting that species concepts allow us to do no useful work?
    - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
      > Of course species are hypotheses, nobody is arguing that. Are you suggesting anything that is a hypothesis has no worth? I'm but merely arguing that your supposition of the value of a “species" is nonsensical. Value does not run across species lines is what I am saying. > It's trivial to show traits delimit useful species concepts, and indeed ample envidence can be used to show that species can be very robustly defined according to well defined species concepts (of which there are various). Yes, one can come with multiple arbitrary proposals of line in the sand, and there is no argument to be made that any of these arbitrary places to draw lines is more sound than the other. > So I'm unclear as to what your point is. Are you suggesting that species concepts allow us to do no useful work? I'm suggesting that decisions are made based on arbitrary semantics issues. I'm suggesting that a rose by any other name, still smelling as sweet, would be treated differently.
      - xipho 6y ago
        > I'm but merely arguing that your supposition of the value of a “species" is nonsensical. But of course it's not. This is straightforward to demonstrate. If you are to converve a set of traits, as you would like to think, (to me = proxy for species), so they will not disappear (= go extinct) how will you define this set? You will gather the sets of traits (= species concepts), and figure out which set to preserve. The cutting edge way of doing this is to look at the evolutionary distance between species and weight those species (sorry, sets of traits), that contain unique evolutionary tradjectories higher. You'll look at what is actually possible, consider geographic and geopolitical constraints, and make a decision. Now, you can't preserve just one trait, because, and here's the problem with your "only traits matter" arguement ... they come bundled with others. Now you have an optimization problem, that can only really be tackled by understanding the sets, i.e. species concepts. Use whatever words you want, semantics are that species concepts are extremely useful, because they are conceptual boundaries/limits that must be understood if we are to act in `some` useful ways. Note I do not say in `all` ways (you would coutner-point glowing fish with jellyfish genes), I only have to prove the `some` case. At the end of the day definitions matter if they can be used to do meaningful work with them, regardless of wether other definitions can refute them, or point us in other directions towards other conceptual playgrounds. I hope you see that species definitions fall into the category of enabling meaningful work.

xipho 6y ago

Do you feel confident that you can apply an individual measure of meaning as to whether each of the 2 million + estimated species on Earth is "valuable"? If not, perhaps blanked statements might be of use. For example all species that produce food, perhaps useful. All species that are part of an ecosystem that decomposes dead things so that we are covered in filth - also useful. Species that cause viral death- extremely useful to know about. Species that produce oxygen for us to breath, I'm for them. Species that fix nitrogen so we can eat, count me. You get my drift, suggesting nothing matters/has meaning is a dead-end/non-starter argument.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago
You assume that these traits necessarily lie on the arbitrary lines men have drawn between so-called “species”. My point is that they do not, and that the line between different species indeed can be quite arbitrary, and can very often differ from one specialist to the other. Most of the earth's oxygen is produced by plankton, which is especially a place where some members of the same species produce said oxygen, and some do not.
- xipho 6y ago
  Of course species are hypotheses, nobody is arguing that. Are you suggesting anything that is a hypothesis has no worth? It's trivial to show traits delimit useful species concepts, and indeed ample envidence can be used to show that species can be very robustly defined according to well defined species concepts (of which there are various). So I'm unclear as to what your point is. Are you suggesting that species concepts allow us to do no useful work?
  - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
    > Of course species are hypotheses, nobody is arguing that. Are you suggesting anything that is a hypothesis has no worth? I'm but merely arguing that your supposition of the value of a “species" is nonsensical. Value does not run across species lines is what I am saying. > It's trivial to show traits delimit useful species concepts, and indeed ample envidence can be used to show that species can be very robustly defined according to well defined species concepts (of which there are various). Yes, one can come with multiple arbitrary proposals of line in the sand, and there is no argument to be made that any of these arbitrary places to draw lines is more sound than the other. > So I'm unclear as to what your point is. Are you suggesting that species concepts allow us to do no useful work? I'm suggesting that decisions are made based on arbitrary semantics issues. I'm suggesting that a rose by any other name, still smelling as sweet, would be treated differently.
    - xipho 6y ago
      > I'm but merely arguing that your supposition of the value of a “species" is nonsensical. But of course it's not. This is straightforward to demonstrate. If you are to converve a set of traits, as you would like to think, (to me = proxy for species), so they will not disappear (= go extinct) how will you define this set? You will gather the sets of traits (= species concepts), and figure out which set to preserve. The cutting edge way of doing this is to look at the evolutionary distance between species and weight those species (sorry, sets of traits), that contain unique evolutionary tradjectories higher. You'll look at what is actually possible, consider geographic and geopolitical constraints, and make a decision. Now, you can't preserve just one trait, because, and here's the problem with your "only traits matter" arguement ... they come bundled with others. Now you have an optimization problem, that can only really be tackled by understanding the sets, i.e. species concepts. Use whatever words you want, semantics are that species concepts are extremely useful, because they are conceptual boundaries/limits that must be understood if we are to act in `some` useful ways. Note I do not say in `all` ways (you would coutner-point glowing fish with jellyfish genes), I only have to prove the `some` case. At the end of the day definitions matter if they can be used to do meaningful work with them, regardless of wether other definitions can refute them, or point us in other directions towards other conceptual playgrounds. I hope you see that species definitions fall into the category of enabling meaningful work.