Natural groups and conceptualism

The reason that cladists think that only holophyletic groups are “natural groups” is that they don’t understand that this kind of group is a class. The class includes (1) consecutive objects in a dichotomously branching process from at least two particular points and backwards along objects till they fuse in a single object, and (2) only those instances of this class that includes all objects from their point of origin. The problem to understand that it is a class resides in that the addition (2) restricts the number of members of each instance of the class from infinity to finity,  thus turning the combined definition into a distinction of finite groups within members of an infinite class. The definition does thus actually specify that there are certain numbers of members among existing objects in every classification of the objects, which is a truism. The class does thus distinguish “natural groups” by distinguishing a truism.        

The empirical problem with this class is that its members depends on the fundamental classification, in phylogenetics called “coding of properties into characters and character states”, because classification is inherently ambiguous by being orthogonal (i.e., each class consisting of two mutually exclusive classes), which thus also applies on  “coding of properties into characters and character states”. There simply is no unambiguous classification to be found per definition, that is, independently of reality. The truism that “there are certain numbers of members among existing objects in every classification of the objects” does thus not change the fact that there are several possible classifications of the objects, and thus also several different sets of members of the possible classes. The ambiguity does thus reside “below” the term all in the definition of holophyletic group. There are, of course, a certain number of members in every instance of a classification of objects, but there are several possible classifications of the objects per definition.

One may argue that there is only one set of classes, and thus only one set of members of these classes in a true dichotomously branching process. This argument do, however, rest on the assumption (i.e., axiom) that there are  dichotomously branching processes of classes, which is impossible per definition, since classes are ambiguous per definition. A class simply cannot originate, since it cannot exist.

The truism of holophyly does thus on a closer inspection show up to be a practical impossibility. It means that its “natural” appearance is a gate to belief, similar to all other self-confirming mind loops (i.e., fanatisms). Holophyletic groups (i.e., clades) are thus a gate to conceptual fanatism, that is, conceptualism, which also was applied by the racial institutes in, for example, Germany and Sweden, in the first half of the 20-ieth century (mayby typified by Dr. Mengele). The consequences of this -ism means that science has a responsability to fight it in whatever forms it appears. We have to clarify that concepts do not exist. Single objects do not unambiguously belong to any category. Categories are just tools we use to model reality in order to predict future. Conceptualism is a degenerate offshot of science.