On the problem with “paraphyletic groups”

Ever since humans started conceptualizing reality, nominalists and class-realists have battled about whose logic that is consistent. Nominalism starts from objects and class-realism starts from classes, meaning that the assumption of one is the conclusion of the other.

Recently, however, class-realism made suicide by claiming that there is a single true tree of life, in contradiction to Russell’s paradox, by thereby creating the weird class it called “paraphyletic groups”. Such ”things” are real iff (if and only if) there indeed is a single true tree of life, in which case they at the same time ought not be real. The move thus disclosed class-realism’s logical flaw in the moment it claimed that it is consistent. Such “paraphyletic groups” are actually the back side of class-realism’s logical flaw: if class-realism is consistent, then “paraphyletic groups” are real, which they ought not be if class-realism is consistent. “Paraphyletic groups” thus disclosed that class-realism isn’t consistent (ie, is inconsistent).

However, class-realists did not understand the meaning of “paraphyletic groups” then and haven’t yet. Instead, they thought and still think that they can find “the true tree of life” by getting rid of “paraphyletic groups”, when fact is that they create new “paraphyletic groups” by every “paraphyletic group” they get rid of, because “paraphyletic groups” aren’t real, but a mind-ghost they create by their logical flaw. They thus try to get rid of something that they, themselves, actually create. “Paraphyletic groups” will thus not disappear until class-realists understand that they are a result of their logical flaw, which may be never.

The fact to understand is thus not what “paraphyletic groups” are, but that there isn’t any single true tree of life. If you do understand this fact, then “paraphyletic groups” disappear like a troll in daylight. If you can’t understand this fact, then you can only save yourself from falling into this class-realist trap by sticking to an orthogonal classification like the Linnean systematics. Where are the “paraphyletic groups” in such a classification?

The fundamental reason of why there isn’t any single true tree of life is that “groups” are not “entities”, but that there are instead two kinds of “groups”: finite and infinite, neither of which can change. It means that if we want to describe change in terms of “groups” (ie, generically), then there are several just as true descriptions of one and the same change. It is simply impossible to describe a single change unambiguously generically. Or, in a more generic sense: it is impossible to describe a singularity unambiguously generically (which sounds logically consistent), “Paraphyletic groups” are thus what we create if we inconsistently think that we can describe a singularity unambiguously generically.