> 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.
> 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?
To you, perhaps, but my point is that this is not how species are defined in practice.
There is no consistent way to define species, whatever specialist working with it will define it however he sees fit at the moment with little consistency, and different specialists will come to different conclusions as to A) how many species there are among any population of organisms and B) what organisms should be placed under what species.
> 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.
Given the extremely common occurrence of horizontal gene transfer in actual reality, the concept of “evolutionary distance” itself is a nonsensical one.
Well, I'm 99% sure you're trolling at this point. So that this ad-hominen is allowed on this website I'll clarify to others why so that they might not fall into the same trap.
Your argument comes down to "one counter example proves I'm right". For those of you who want to see a quintesential source of this type of argument go look at the evolution of the newsgroup talk.origins. There you can see a plethora of examples just like this.
> Your argument comes down to "one counter example proves I'm right".
Not only would that be a valid reasoning, but the number of counter examples is far from one.
Horizontal gene transfer is not something that happens only rarely, it is extremely common among bacteria and your model is based upon the assumption that it not happen.
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.