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The problem of classification is deeply philosophical. The core problem is that the taxonomic classification of anything is arbitrary, proven only by consensus.

• ChainOfFools 5y ago
  neurons have multiple dendritic input sources but can only sum these to a single axon output signal. we are obligate compressors at any scale.
• dredmorbius 5y ago
  I've had a series of conversations elsewhere over the past several months on the question. My own view being that classifications are based on usefulness to the classifiers, and we have terms for things which we both 1) experience (there's much of the Universe we've yet failed to classify) and 2) based on our own interactions with those things. Ideas are interfaces. And interfaces provide utility. The very notion of "biological species" is based on the underlying notion of philosophical species, that specific classifications. Evolution turned this on its head by noting that species evolve (that is, change), over time. There is no such thing as an absolute species in the earlier philosophical sense. https://www.etymonline.com/word/species https://www.etymonline.com/word/species So the question becomes "where is it useful to define boundaries between species?", with various arbitrary boundaries proposed. The question isn't of their arbitraryness, but of their utility. And those definitions are ultimately a relationship between us and the universe we're attempting to define. You can drag in Wittgenstein and a whole bunch else. Knowing some of the philosophical background is useful, less so because a particular view is right, but more because virtually any argument or viewpoint proposed has been offered before, and many of the strengths and weaknesses discussed. Usually to great length.
  • marcus_holmes 5y ago
    If I understand you correctly, biological taxonomy, a thing we've had for hundreds of years, and over which huge intellectual battles have been fought, is basically all about making scientists happy, and has little to do with the actual reality of a vast population of living things that is constantly changing over time. Because, if I did understand you correctly, I completely agree with that.
    • dredmorbius 5y ago
      Not entirely, though there's a fair element of that. With gene sequencing and techniques such as molecular clocks we can determine evolutionary trees and the approximate time between mutations. This gives us a fairly clear understanding of what current species are placed where on the evolutionary tree --- where you draw the boundaries still has some ambiguity, but it's usually possible to at least say which of two specific samples is closer to or further from a third. We've also realised that genetic inheritance and transfer is not strictly along descendent lineages --- there's swapping of genetic material, espeically between living organisms and viruses, as well as amongst complex organisms and bacteria. Your mitochondria --- common to nearly all eukaruyotes --- is itself an entirely distinct organism which has become entirely symbiotic with you. So there's nearer and further, and indirect inheritance. But there remains a great deal of cases --- remember, 99.9% of all life forms on Earth have gone extinct --- where we simply do not know. Or where knowledge isn't sufficient to make a clear or unambiguous distinction or classification. Jainism has the concept of Anekantavada, "many-sidedness", exemplified in the fable of the blind men and the elephant. It's useful to recognise that our perceptions are arbitrary --- they're dependent on both the particular subset of reality we're observing, as well as the limited channels through which we're making that observation, and the conceptual frames by which we organise it. That said, many sidedness is not any sidedness --- all interpretations are not equivalently valid. That's the gist of a utility model of epistemology: usefulness is context-dependent, but also exists on a spectrum, from high usefulness (greater truth value) to low (likewise). Arbitrary is not indifferent. Mind as is usually the case I'm speaking of an area in which I have largely lay knowledge, though I think I'm not going too badly astray.
    • 3np 5y ago
      I also read it as utility an usefulness in a more practical sense. It's useful to differentiate between horses and donkeys, so we call them different species.
      • dredmorbius 5y ago
        Other cases might be the various organisms we classify as "trees" or "fish" or "crabs", which are valid from a functional or role-based sense, but which aren't robust when considered strictly based on genetic evolution. That is, there have been multiple convertent evolutionary paths which have arrived at similar forms, roles, and niches, despite having hearer relatives or ancestors which don't fall into that category.
• dr_dshiv 5y ago
  I like to half-jokingly claim that people who use the internet are a different species from people that don’t use the internet, since the two groups don’t interbreed.
  • number6 5y ago
    In the long run, you can become right