 OK, great. Thanks. I'd like to see Dr. Euflis. So just to introduce Robert, he's the first visiting researcher of this year. He's been here for two months, and there's one more month left. And so he's doing speedy-pea in the philosophy of ecology and bed effect, and working on epistemological and metaphysical questions on biodiversity in theory and in conservation. So there's also this thing he has that's interested in bridging gaps within philosophers and scientists. And I think he's going to talk to us today a bit about these topics. So thanks, Robert. Thanks. Thank you for the introduction, to give a talk here. So I will not talk in French, as I think it's most beneficial to all of us. So the title of the talk is Defending a Multidimensional Concept of Biodiversity. And it should also be a wrap-up or a description of the problem situation of biodiversity and then adventuring into one specific problem. Now, in hindsight, I would have better called it Exploring a Multidimensional Concept, because the more I think about it, the less I am convinced of that it is actually a defendable position. But maybe you can help me out. That's why it's the Work in Progress talk, is it? Yeah. I also have highlighted the Work in Progress parts, just to make sure. So let me jump right in to a general description of the problem situation of biodiversity from a philosophical perspective. So on the one hand, biodiversity is, of course, has earned a very prominent place in a very short time. So there's the UN Convention on Biological Diversity from 92. We have the IG Biodiversity targets, although they have partially failed by 2020. There is the Intergovernmental Science and Policy Platform, so very much like it's all across in the IPCC. And of course, currently, they are in negotiations for the new global biodiversity framework, which are all policies developed at a global level. But the concept of biodiversity has also gained traction in the scientific context. So while the roots of the diversity concepts may be traced to theoretical ecology in the 1950s anyway, this new term, biodiversity, then also a quickly gained traction in the scientific literature. So specifically in community ecology, many of the key questions, so what drives community structures, how does anthropogenic or other environmental influences change community structure are framed in terms of questions of what are the drivers and consequences of changes in biodiversity. And besides that, of course, it is also very prominent in taxonomy and systematics and in evolutionary biology, and of course as well in conservation biology. So at first glance, it might seem that the biodiversity concept because it is so widely used in many different contexts is a reasonably successful and powerful concept that is able to connect the scientific and the political users and also contributes to providing an evidential basis for conservation decision making, not only at the national, but of course for most at the global level. Despite these periods however, or maybe precisely because of it, the concept of biodiversity is also notoriously controversial. So I want to distinguish at least three reasons or three problem areas why we might think that biodiversity is problematic. So first of course, we are lacking still a consistent definition. We have considerable philosophical controversy not only to definitional issues, but concerning the value nature of the concept. And then we'll also distinguish two forms of conceptual uncertainty that also contributes to epistemic and as a consequence also ethical risk with respect to the concept. So concerning the first point, as I already said, a unifying and universally accepted definition of biodiversity is still absent and also given the state of discussion unlikely to appear on the horizon anytime soon. So while it is most generally and broadly defined just as the variety of life at multiple levels of organization, it has repeatedly been pointed out that this definition is unsuitable because it would essentially collapse the concept of biodiversity with the totality of biological entities and that furthermore, it is impossible to operationalize in conservation practice, but also in a scientific context. So because it seems fundamentally impossible just to have a complete assessment of biodiversity of any place if biodiversity is understood thus broadly, the concept seems to me, seems to lose any practical or even theoretical significance. So in practice, therefore, definitions of biodiversity are then oftentimes restricted by explicitly limiting them to specific dimensions or levels of organizations. So the most prominent and well-known such restriction is the definition that is given in the UN Convention of 1992 in article two, which reads, biological diversity meets the variability among living organisms from all sources, including the Alia terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part. So this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems. So this is most commonly used, a restriction to genetic variability, taxonomic diversity and diversity of ecosystems basically. However, even this conventional restriction of the definition is by no means universally shared. So there are many different such specific definitions around, I think in the 1990s, they long counted at least over 80. I think it was 86 different ones of them in the literature. And so far, they also does not seem to have emerged really abroad consensus. But this is not only an exercise in conceptual and linguistic regimentation. It is argued that these oftentimes subtle differences between these definitions can be problematic in specific contexts. So it has been pointed out that reaching agreement on conservation programs, which is already a fully issue for various reasons, is systematically impaired if there is no consensus on definitions or otherwise conceptual uncertainty concerning the goals and aims of the conservation effort. And likewise, there is the worry that different definitions of biodiversity if they are not made explicit could also seriously hamper or undermine conservation programs or impede the conservation programs by essentially hiding differences and incompatibilities between different approaches under the general and then clearly understood umbrella concept of biodiversity. So it is no wonder then that the concept of biodiversity has also provoked philosophically controversy and critique. There are currently several different philosophically approaches to the concept of biodiversity. So I only want to mention three of them just briefly here. One of the earliest is perhaps the proposal by Sahar al-Qasaka to be deflationary with respect to the concept of biodiversity a position that he argued and developed over a series of papers and books. So and according to this view, we should give up on the project of trying to explicitly define biodiversity anyway because if there is such a definition, biodiversity can only be implicitly defined as the outcome of the process of systematic conservation planning. So systematic conservation planning is a somewhat formalized procedure that covers many steps that also include decision theory and multiple criteria analysis. But the biodiversity part of it, the idea is basically that an area of concern is represented in the geographical map. And then we have a grid layer over the geographical map and we start by finding out the biodiversity content or representation of each of these individual grids based on surrogate choices that we make based on values, conventions or norms or whatever. So this may be the representation of a particular species. It may be the species richness insofar as we have the data, but it may also be based on a notion of habitat diversity. And we then have algorithmic procedures by which we can maximize the total representation of biodiversity based on the rule of complementarity and our initial choice of surrogates. So this is the basic idea of this process. And the suggestion by Saka is then, well, that this process and the algorithms that determine the choice of the grids implicitly define the concept of biodiversity. So this is a very fully worked out suggestion. So the process of systematic conservation planning is, by the idea that this is an implicit definition of biodiversity is, I think, problematic for several reasons. So first of all, as a consequence, this would restrict legitimate uses of the concept of biodiversity to conservation biology. And Saka is also very explicit about this point and emphasizes it frequently that it should only does be used. However, I think given the centrality of the biodiversity concept in community ecology and the importance of this research for the biodiversity and ecosystem function, on debate, it seems to be unreasonable to restrict the use of the concept of biodiversity in such a way. Apart from the question of whether such large scale regimentation of the usage is even possible. But even more problematic is the use of the concept of implicit definition in this context. So I think Saka really intends this use of implicit definition to be analogous to what Hilbert, David Hilbert does in the Foundations of Geometry. So in the sense, we have an exometric definition of the concept of point, plane, and line in the sense that everything that satisfies the axioms counts as point, plane, or line. But it's easy to see that this analogy and quickly breaks down because the algorithms that are used in systematic conservation planning do not exonatize the field of conservation biology. Also, geometry is a highly formalized field whereas conservation biology is of course empirical and it is not really clear how without an incorporation into a coherent formalized system, these algorithms could be interpreted as providing an implicit definition of the concept of biodiversity. And lastly, also there is this point made by Justus, by Jack Justus recently, that axioms and algorithms are just logically distinct categories of statements of sentences. So while axioms are assertions that are true functionals, the algorithms are generally of the form if x, then do epsilon. And it is not clear how such a statement can be too functional or can confer meaning on a concept. So yeah, while I think this idea of implicitly defining biodiversity may have some intuitive appeal, I think that actually as a theory of how the concept of biodiversity should be defined, it doesn't really work. So but Saka did also move towards a more normativist position in recent years. So this would be the second type of approach to the philosophy of biodiversity that I would want to discuss. This is normativism. So the idea is, well, if we already have so many differences in defining the concept, maybe the reason for this is that biodiversity itself is somehow normative or regulating. And consequently, that it must be defined with recourse to non-epistemic values or value judgments. And this, of course, this idea that biodiversity is somehow evaluating or normative at the end, this has been floating around since the 1980s when the concept came up. But it has never really been explicitly defined or explicated what this could mean. One somewhat systematically, an exposition of this idea is by Brian Lawton who argues that biodiversity should refer to those aspects of natural variety that are socially important enough to obligate protection of those aspects for future generations. So this is a proposal for a normative definition based on a descriptive criterion. So it exemplifies natural variety and the specific normative criterion that it warrants protection for future generations. And we can see why people might think that such a definition is appropriate in defining biodiversity as the normative goal of conservation biology if one assumes that this should be the primary function of the biodiversity concept. But of course, this approach also simultaneously seems to solve the definition and problem of biodiversity in navigating the generality of the concept and then the specificity that we need in order to make it operational. So Lawton's definition is very general in the sense that it builds off of this notion of biological variety, but it is also very specific in that it only includes elements that satisfy this normative criterion. And for Lawton, this seems to follow directly from the nature of the concept. So what he writes is when we think about apparently scientific concepts of biodiversity in the conservation context, we are forced to conclude that we cannot know what we mean until we know what we care about. So it's the reasoning goals since we will never find the correct unifying definition of biodiversity anyway because of the very nature of the concept. We might as well shift our conceptual attempts towards coming up with a definition that satisfies practical needs, that helps us to achieve practical goals with nature conservation. So these normative proposals to approach us to define biodiversity have some similarity to discussions of the concept of health and the philosophy of medicine. And in the sense that they incorporate descriptive and normative elements, they might also be labored hybrid approaches in this respect. But yeah, there is also I'm aware of just one approach that also defines biodiversity as a thick concept in which this descriptive and normative element are more intricately intertwined and cannot be separated. But I don't think that it is a very prominent position in the literature. So if the analogy to the concept of health holds and there are normative and hybrid approaches to the concept, there must also be counterparts to a naturalistic conception. And the prime example for this would be James McLauren and Kim Sternelli who have sought to defend the idea that biodiversity is a scientifically useful concept by emphasizing that it represents a cause that is salient or relevant property of natural systems. So they see species richness as a reasonably good or purpose measure of biodiversity that must be further specified or supplemented in specific context either by consideration of functional diversity in the context of community ecology, for instance. Okay, and lastly, so I want to point out that there is also, there are also problems with conceptual uncertainty with respect to biodiversity. So I want to distinguish here two levels. The low level uncertainty concerns the taxonomic categories on which biodiversity measurements are based. And of course I do not know, I know that I don't have to tell you guys about this problem given the biodiversity project here, but I just mentioned it briefly for the sake of completeness and the high level uncertainty concerning the relative importance of different dimensions of biodiversity. So of course the low level uncertainty concerns the problem that in so far there is no consensus on the definition of the species concept. This will translate into a similar ambiguity in the concept of measurement of biodiversity. And of course this is problematic because the choice of a taxonomic classification system may be directly linked to the outcome that does effectiveness of conservation policies. So if the wrong classification is chosen, we might risk the, run the risk of potentially excluding valuable or endangered units from conservation priorities, subjecting them to extinction in the worst case. And furthermore, as Gaston has pointed out, a similar problem reappears at the ecosystem level when defining discrete countable units out of essentially continuous phenomena, likewise requires some arbitrary rules and conventions on how to break up naturally occurring and continuous ecosystems into biotypes or other categories. So there is a different form of conceptual uncertainty at the higher level and this concerns the selection of the relevant aspect or dimension of biodiversity. So we have seen it has been recognized somewhat from the beginning that biodiversity is a multidimensional concept as it encompasses several dimensions and facets of reliability. So genetic diversity, phylogenetic, taxonomic or functional diversity, which I think are just about the most commonly discussed but by no means exhaustive. And the differences among these dimensions can also be very consequential, not only for understanding community dynamics, but also for the success or failure of conservation programs. So for example in area that is like taxonomic diversity in measure the species richness may result in high biodiversity scores for a site even though the elements they are phylogenetically very similar or functionally poorly differentiated. And therefore maybe not a prime conservation priority from an ecological aspect. So this raises of course the question what exactly the relevant weight, the relative weight of these different dimensions of biodiversity is supposed to be whether they are all equally relevant in different contexts and how prioritization decisions between them should be made. Okay, so all in all to sum that up it seems pretty bad. So we have no clear definition. We have fundamental philosophical disagreement about the nature of the concept. Although to be fair we probably would have philosophical disagreement anyway. And we have conceptual uncertainty at several levels and also the situation of epistemic risk that in conservation conflicts not also really to translate into ethical risk. So this is probably the reason why Carlos Santana and Jack Chastas and others have recently argued for eliminating the concept of biodiversity all together on the grounds that where conservation biology would be better off without it. So for Santana, biodiversity neither gives us a coherent and comparable measure of a unitary natural property, not asset or species richness for that matter always track environmental or biological value. And Jack Chastas has wonderfully put it in his recent book despite our different backgrounds sometimes we have to come together and recognize that a creature by which of course he means the concept of biodiversity is a monster and eliminated. Which I think is a nice phrasing for if you're also talking about ecology. So after describing this problem situation for the rest of this talk I want to pick out a particular issue and address the question further of what I have called this high level conceptual uncertainty. So it seems to me that one fundamental question for a philosophical understanding of the biodiversity concept concerns this relation of its many different dimensions and facets to each other and to the general concept. So to put the question very succinctly is biodiversity a single natural property that stands in explanatory relations in ecology and that is multidimensional just in the sense that there is a reality of different indicators for it or other dimensions of biodiversity really independent from each other and that term biodiversity is merely a labor that is put on maybe superficially similar but essentially disparate dimensions of natural systems. So in the following I want to begin answering this question. I have two hypothesis. So first there are good reasons to further explore the multidimensional conception. So that is the idea that biodiversity is a unitary concept representing a particular property of natural systems but one that can be observed in multiple different ways. And of course there is also a metaphysical question to that. I have not included that into the talk today but maybe in the discussion session we can go a little bit further into that. So of course the question would be well if this is the case then what kind of kind is biodiversity. So homeostatic property cluster comes to mind, multiple realizability comes to mind and questions like that. And the second hypothesis is well if you think of it there are many multidimensional concepts in ecology and I think so the most prominent one and also the one that has received a lot of philosophical attention is the concept of stability which likewise covers dimensions of resilience, resistance and tolerance. So the idea here is that since this multifacetedness seems to be common among theoretical concepts in ecology maybe there would also be an opportunity for a different approach of analyzing these concepts apart from well eliminating them. So I will start with a discussion of this multidimensional biodiversity and the role that it potentially plays in explanation. This there was an argument recently brought forward by Birch Brown and Archer to which Carlos Santana then skeptically responded so I will kind of revisit this debate. Then in the third section which is specifically marked as Work in Progress I will have a look at how multidimensional constructs generally and of biodiversity in particular are used in structural equation models in ecology. And then in the last section I also want to critically say a few words about the question of whether biodiversity should correspond to biological or environmental value. And the conclusion is of course just the conclusion. So we have seen that very early on this biodiversity was interpreted as a multidimensional concept in the sense that it was recognized that it is present at many levels of organization but also that specific types or kinds of biodiversity were added into the research. So genetic diversity was there from the beginning but later on there was the recognition that the evolutionary relatedness might also be relevant or that the functional differentiation of species might also be relevant. So it seems that just further layers to the concept we are getting at it. So all those species richness may be a suitable overall purpose measure for several reasons. It is also clear that for most species richness is taken to be as a surrogate or proxy for general biodiversity but not necessarily as an exhaustive characterization of the total meaning of the concept. The multidimensional biodiversity concept so I'm sorry I started again. So the distinction, so there are several further dimensions of biodiversity that are distinguished but a point that is frequently made by Santana is that in empirical studies on biodiversity and its relation to ecosystem functions, it is typically only one such dimension that is researched. So most commonly species richness or taxonomic diversity. So a cornerstone of research where the concept of biodiversity is supposed to play some explanatory role is the relation between biodiversity and ecosystem functions. So in this biodiversity ecosystem function research there's also some consensus that biodiversity and ecosystem functions are positively related. So at least the Cardinale review that was published in 2012 states several consensus statements on this debate and one of which is that there is mounting evidence that biodiversity increases the stability of ecosystem functions through time and furthermore the state that meta-analysis published since 2005 have shown that there's a general rule with actions in the number of genes, species and functional groups of organisms reduce the efficiency by which whole communities capture biologically essential resources, nutrients, water, light, prey and convert those resources into biomass. Disconsistency indicates that there are... Can I ask just a question of precision? What do you mean exactly by stability of ecosystem? As you said, biodiversity increased the ecosystem stability. But what does it mean? I think in this case they do not really mean the stability of ecosystem but the stability of ecosystem functions through time. So the provision of basic ecosystem functions slash services. So I think in this, and I'm not 100% sure but I think in this the functions that they look at is primary productivity, nutrient cycling and what is it in English? So the breaking up of materials. But I would have to look at the paper. So... And they also stated that this meta-analysis have shown that as a general rule with actions in the number of genes, species and functional groups of organisms reduce the efficiency by which whole communities capture biologically essential resources and convert those resources into biomass. Disconsistency indicates that there are general underlying principles that dictate how the organization of communities influences the functioning of ecosystems. So based on these consensus statements, Birch Brown and Archer have recently tried to argue that it is really the high level that is the multi-dimensional biodiversity concept itself that performs an explanatorily relevant function in this respect and therefore should not be eliminated. So they interpret these results in the following way. Emphasizing that their studies or they refer to the quote before has compared findings concerning genetics, species and functional measures of diversity. They argue that findings support the view that there are general underlying principles that dictate how the organization of communities influences the functioning of ecosystems. In other words, they attempt to argue that it is not just diversity in any given dimension but also overall heterogeneity that is of ecological importance. So I think their idea goes something like this. We have the higher level of biodiversity that comprises several dimensions, so the genetic, the species and the functional diversity that each are measured in a specific way. So I've only included one measure here but in principle they're measured in a different way. And their claim is that this higher level concept allows a level of explanation that would not be achievable by any one of these dimensions in isolation. So if this is true, this would be, at least in their interpretation, a strong argument for the multidimensional conception of biodiversity because if it can be shown that operationally replacing the concept by any one dimension will fall short of capturing ecologically important processes while there's a good reason to keep the high level concept of biodiversity there. So this would be very nice of course but I think unfortunately the Burge-Brown and Archer do not really provide a good argument for this. So confronted with the problem that the individual dimensions of biodiversity do not tightly correlate with each other and for this reason might raise suspicion that they really collectively form a cause of development property. They argue, they weaken the claim somewhat and argue that the probabilist or multidimensionalist view does not depend on the dimensions of biodiversity correlating with one another. Why are they contained that a higher level concept might be useful because it summarizes the interaction of many underlying mediating variables whose relationships would otherwise be too complex to capture easily. But of course this notion that the higher level concept merely summarizes the interaction of underlying mediating variables is somewhat weak. So this would fall back on the position that where biodiversity is a labor that we attach to essentially different dimensions of natural systems. And I think this is exactly the point that eliminativist like Carlos Santana then would make who of course disagreed with this position. So what he would point out is that already the formulation of the central hypothesis of biodiversity ecosystem function research which utilizes this higher level concepts biodiversity and ecosystem function. So both of these concepts actually we have to break them down to make them operational in experimental research. So typically in empirical studies biodiversity will be operationalized as species richness and ecosystem function as primary production, neutron cycling or others. And this of course leaves the role of the multi-dimensional higher level concept to be somewhat insubstantial. What this research really shows according to Santana is the importance of species richness or of taxonomic diversity but not the relevance of multi-dimensional biodiversity overall. So he also claims that even if we investigate multiple dimensions of biodiversity so like in the case before where we have the genetic, the species and the functional diversity he claims that well if these dimensions are collectively relevant to the ecosystem processes they will do so through each through different mechanisms and not through one single mechanism of overall biodiversity. So for him in his interpretation when we operationalize biodiversity as species richness or measure it through an index what we really do is that we break down biodiversity into distinct components, research the causal relevance of these distinct components and then put the biodiversity label on for the headline of the paper but as a matter of fact it is very insubstantial. So this is the claim. To the extent that other dimensions of biodiversity play a role in explaining productivity so others than species richness they will do so through independent causal factors not through some unitary mechanism involving all the different dimensions of biodiversity. And so for him this is a very strong argument because these different dimensions of biodiversity also refer to different elements and it is therefore very hard to understand how a unitary mechanism could relate these very different kinds of elements in a way that provides a substantial concept of overall heterogeneity as Birch Brown and Dr. Cleen. So as they stand I think these arguments are very compelling. The understanding that we achieve in biodiversity ecosystem function research is an understanding mostly of a single dimension of biodiversity depending on the study design. But generally we are used to treat species richness as the prime surrogate or proxy or operationalization or measure for biodiversity. Although the extent to which this is plausible is of course also subject to debate. So it might look pretty bad for this multi-dimensional biodiversity thing. So I thought well maybe there is maybe at least something more can be said of it. So one thing is that of course it may not be possible to devise a biodiversity construct that encompasses all biodiversity dimensions that we can cover at least some. So this is also one of Santana's criticism saying that well if multi-dimensional approaches were taken they usually they focus on taxonomic diversity and functional diversity but not on all of the biodiversity dimensions. But granted, but of course we could always say well we want to explore a weaker notion of multi-dimensional biodiversity and just be content with explaining the joint effect of three dimensions. So we do not really have to commit to the claim that multi-dimensional biodiversity makes sense only if all of its dimensions are covered simultaneously all the time. So one example that Santana himself gives in the discussion is that research on the diversity productivity relationship does sometimes appeal to more than one dimension. So one explanatory hypothesis for this relation or one mechanism that is approached that is suggested for this relation is niche differentiation or complementarity. So the idea that different species that belong to different functional groups will more effectively partition the available resource base and thereby increase ecosystem function. And it seems plausible to claim that well this is a proposed mechanism that makes use of taxonomic and functional diversity. So although this is far short from really the grand claim of multi-dimensional biodiversity this would still at least be one example where we can productively incorporate several dimensions of biodiversity also into an explanatory scheme. Also we could say that Santana treats this multi-dimensionality as an all or nothing concept so either we achieve a full integration or the concept of biodiversity should be eliminated which might of course be exaggerated and we can interpret this multi-dimensionality criteria in just a week. So in the following section then I want to have a look at current proposals to do multi-dimensional biodiversity research and then begin to evaluate the extent to which they might help us also in the philosophical understanding of this idea that this is a unitary property or a theme but with multiple facets or dimensions. So as I already said many theoretical constructs are multi-dimensional and multi-faceted the diversity stability hypothesis is a case in point where stability also was and is interpreted as consisting of several different ideas. And of course there is also this long philosophical controversy about the weakness of the concept and its correct understanding. So I think that maybe this just warrants a different philosophical approach to understanding and analyzing these concepts. So one suggestion that was put forth by ecologists for some years is to use the structural equation modeling because this will provide a convenient way of linking theoretical concepts or what are in the models interpreted as latent variables to observable or manifest variables. So in this case the variable in the context in the circle is interpreted as a theoretical construct and the variables in the squares are indicators. So observable, measurable indicators and it is assumed or the theoretical construct is explained as having a causal effect on the observable variables. So Naim and colleagues in the paper from 2016 what they suggested was that this general approach of modeling causal interactions in complex systems could be used to capture multidimensional biodiversity in research approaches. So for experimental and observational studies. So their paper starts with a clear statement of this multidimensional conception of biodiversity. So we know that now. But they also really seem to think or point out that so then biodiversity is still a unitary property. So what they state is that biodiversity has its lowest non-zero value when an ecosystem contains a single recently evolved species consisting of one genetically homogeneous population that is small in its geographically extended narrower in its range of habitats and it has its highest value when there are many species that represent a broad texonomic range with some species recently both others ancient and all made up of many genetically heterogeneous populations that furthermore exhibit interactions within and the more other populations across the landscape through immigration and immigration and furthermore describe a complex interaction that work with many lots and many species. So this is one huge list of criteria to include and it is of course not at all obvious how such a concept could be made practical but still they think this is reflective of the theoretical meaning of the concept. So of the conceptual core so to speak. So if we limited to just three dimensions for the sake of understanding. So it seems what they have in mind would be to view biodiversity as something like a hyper-dimensional space in which each dimension represents one element of life diversity and then we can also locate the lowest value and the highest value. So I assume that this refers to a more or less closed system. The idea, this idea is of course not unproblematic because it assumes that these biodeversities dimensions are orthogonal to each other and it is not really clear that they are but I think this is an ambiguity that isn't the paper itself. It's not clear that the obvious he can relate it so we cannot be our program. So I don't understand you. You should put the objection much stronger. Yeah, I'll go into the next time. So of course this hyper-volume idea is, I don't know, it may give an intuitive, idea but it is of course problematic. So what they claim is that these usual studies that have focused on a single dimension of biodiversity so leads come to show different things than studies which are done in a multidimensional framework. So multidimensional frameworks they claim can provide greater insight into the mechanisms of underpinning biodeversities influence on ecosystem properties than unidimensional studies. So what they then present is a general framework to this respect. So the case study they discuss is the following. So they ask to what extent anthropogenic drivers lead to biodiversity change, lead to a change in ecosystem function. The anthropogenic driver is increased here by the very worry which is thought to result of the removal of apex predators from like wolves from ecosystems who up to now serve as population control. Biodiversity is interpreted as taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity in ecosystem function as total vegetation cover. So the general framework would then for this multidimensional biodiversity would then look like this. The number of taxa, so species richness is considered to be a correlate of the biodiversity dimensions not the biodiversity dimension itself. Every biodiversity dimension is measured by different indices so Shannon, Simpson or whatever. And we have basically lines, so arrows, double-headed arrows represent co-variation and single-headed arrows represent causal paths. And in principle this could be extended indefinitely. So they discuss the framework before biodiversity dimensions but I skipped the fourth to put the picture on the, but in principle of course it is extendable. So what they claim that they can show based on this framework is that the stear heavy worry changes the relative weight of the individual dimensions. So in systems where there is no protection for this heavy worry, functional diversity is the dimension that has the strongest influence on ecosystem function. And in the protected blocks, taxonomic diversity has the strongest influence. So what they claim to be able to show is that the structure of the relationship between dimensions of biodiversity and ecosystem function is qualitatively different between treatments. So heavy worry may change the relationship among dimensions of biodiversity and ecosystem functions or services. So in this sense one could argue that multi-dimensional biodiversity studies or Saudi argument goals can reveal a deeper understanding of the underlying complexity of ecological processes and relationships and potentially thereby support more adequate conservation or restoration practices. But it can also reveal how biodiversity as a multi-dimensional construct is explanatorily relevant. Yeah, so I cannot go into a full discussion of the details of the approach here but well there are at least some open questions for now. I've already mentioned the issue of this idea that this is a multi-dimensional space when the dimensions obviously co-verify and are supposed to co-verify to make the causal model work. But there's also the issue that this thing is incredibly complex and even just covering these three biodiversity dimensions requires a lot of paths to be analyzed and a large amount of data. And there's also the thing that in this framework species richness plays a special role as universally co-variate of every biodiversity dimension which seems to point or to suggest that well biodiversity is really essentially to some extent species richness and we achieve contextual sensitivity but then further adding specific biodiversity dimensions. And there is nothing wrong with such a position but this is of course what McLaurin and Serenny have argued before. And so it is not clear what this framework adds to an understanding that we already had basically. So yeah, this is still an open question for me. But on the other hand I think that well it might also suggest that generally for philosophy the approach to analyzing multifaceted concepts not only in ecology but also in the social sciences or in ecology in terms of either cluster of properties or observable correlations might just be unsuitable for the particular function and work that these concepts do in particular explanations. So interpreting these concepts as theoretical constructs that are interpreted as causes of observable variables and connected through multiple pathways may work as a philosophical approach to better understand how these concepts work in specific fields. Yes, but this would have to be further explored. And based on this there would at least be some preliminary responses to Santana. So we can reasonably claim that the multidimensional biodiversity concept is very variable in the sense that explicit multidimensional studies increase our understanding generally of its relevance and of the relative importance of its dimensions to certain ecosystem processes. But we could also claim that Santana interprets these operationalizations of biodiversity really in a too strong way as literal eliminations or reductions of the concept that does not seem plausible just from a meta-theoretical perspective because these operationalizations do not really exhaust the meaning of the concept but only specify a particular aspect of its use for a particular purpose. So I guess that this, I guess that at least we could raise some criticism of how he uses this understanding of operationalization to support this strong, eliminativist conclusion. Okay, I have five more minutes, right? Sure. So just quickly, if we can substantiate this multidimensionalist conception, I think there would also be some consequences for normativity and conservation. So there are many, many desiderata for the concept of biodiversity. It should be measured where we wanted to be in some sense a cause of the salient property in order to be able to explain what role reductions in biodiversity would have for certain ecosystem functions but also very often it is interpreted, it is demanded that it serves as a means of prioritization in conservation in the sense that it directly denotes or represents biological or environmental value. Which is oftentimes also interpreted as the claim that the biodiversity concept is very related or normative. So there are different views that spell out this value-ladenness. So there's this idea that biodiversity is intrinsic in value ever and therefore the concept is, there is this other idea that where it serves as an agenda setting function and because of that it has normative content. There's the idea that it is a metaphor and also lastly the idea that there are positive connotations and associations with cultural and social diversity confer normative or value-laden normative meaning or value-ladenness on the concept. However, I think that none of these are really good arguments that claims to that effect. So the last two I think they generally confuse the difference between the concept and the term with which we refer to the concept. So the term biodiversity might have properties that the concept of biodiversity does not. And these metaphoric meaning or positive connotations they may apply to the labor or to the word by which we refer to the concept but they are insubstantial in really claiming that the concept biodiversity itself is normative. And for the first two I also think that some of these proposals just conflate the normativity of the concept with the evaluative significance of the things that are picked out by it. So objects, there are a variety of objects that are important for human interests but are not defined in terms of these interests. So to borrow the example from James McCloryn, climate is a central concept in current climate science. There might also be the sense in which we can say that it is a, it has an agenda setting function. And it is also crucial for human existence but it is ultimately not defined in terms of these interests. So very much like the gold, like gold as the substance with atomic number 79 is not normative and is not defined in terms of human interests despite obviously being very valuable in certain human societies. So to get a clearer idea on this issue, I suggest to define normativity of a concept as a normative statement as part of its definition clause which is here represented as the odd operator in the ontic logic. And furthermore that omitting this normative element will lead to a misidentification or an adequate characterization of the target phenomenon. So an example from the social sciences that I borrowed from Julia and Rises, the unemployment rate which is defined as the number of currently unemployed individuals over the total size of the labor force. And here normativity is clear because we know that we cannot find the number total size of the labor force by researching, empirically researching society. So the total labor force is indeterminate by empirical criteria. Defining this concept requires a decision that we have to make and that arguably would have to be based on epistemic and non-epistemic values because this also implies a value judgment about the permissibility of counting certain people to the labor force. And this, and of course this is a question that has to be made, so where is the cut off who should be counted to the labor force. And we can also see that omitting the normative element in determining the concept would lead to an adequate measure. So of course we could say that we do not count the total size of the labor force but just the total population, so not to have them to make that decision. But of course that would lead to a good measure because the total size of the labor force is a much more clear idea of what we want with this measure. So given this criterion that omitting the normative component in the definition that leads to misidentification and adequate characterization, so there are some concepts in the social sciences and psychology that I think clearly satisfy this criterion. But I would argue that the concept of biodiversity is in this respect very much unlike the concept of unemployment. So the broad notion or variety of biotic entities that structure a taxonomic inflection that versus just not underdetermined if we do not include the clause that these entities merit protection. And furthermore doing, so explicitly including this normative criterion might also be problematic because it makes it actually harder to ask empirically in which context, which aspects of biodiversity might turn out to be variable for whatever reasons. So what I suggest basically is that we can accept a weaker form of normativism. So in the sense there is no support for normativism in really defining the concept, but this is very different from the claim that wrong values and norms cannot play a role in operationalizations of biodiversity and conservation practice. But I would urge to distinguish these two different enterprises on the branch that despite that we are all aware that values can play various roles in various aspects of scientific research, we should still be precise at exactly where they come in, in order to assess the legitimacy. And I think that these multi-dimensional pluralist conception might also be helpful in this respect to support this point because it does not lock us too much into this position that we have to find a definition that is responsive to certain normative or evaluative considerations. So yes. I am very much over time, so this was a tour de force for the last slides. I leave you with a picture of Bielefeld's Toiterburg Forest, which is basically one of the only interesting things that you can find there. Thank you all very much for your attention. Thank you. The brakes are... Yeah. Sure. Is there a brake? Is there any question? I'm keeping an eye on YouTube when something comes in. We have had a few people watching. Really? Yeah. I think in the first part of your talk, you briefly asked a question like, what kind of kind is biodiversity in this multi-dimensionality of it? And I think you referred to the possibility of trying to understand it in terms of homostatic property clusters or multiple realizability. So I just wanted to hear a little bit more. Yeah. Very undecided on that. So I don't know. It seems to me that this idea that biodiversity in the sense might be a homostatic property cluster that's kind of the go-to solution. The first thing that comes to mind, oh well, if we have this kind of seeming and coherence, but still this intuitive idea that there is something underlying. But I think that, so this has been proposed in the literature and also been criticized on the grounds that it is just not clear what the underlying mechanism would be. Who serves this, keeps them homostatic. And as long as there is no explanation for that, I think it's that they would not be feasible. So the question is, of course, what could be some mechanism? And I don't know, the only suggestion that I can across would be to claim, well, natural selection. But natural selection does not act on all of the entities that the specific biodiversity dimensions refer to. So we could possibly claim that for taxonomic diversity and for genetic diversity, but it is probably already very hard to substantiate the idea for functional categories. So yeah, I'm not sure, I mean, maybe this deserves further exploration, but there are some reasons initially to doubt it. And when it comes to this multiple realizability idea, I think, so this is a problem for me because this seems very intuitive and very easily comprehensible. But so I'm just exploring the topic but from what I understand how this argument is really used specifically in the philosophy of mind, it is not at all clear that it may just be picked up and translated to the concept of biodiversity in its different dimensions. So I don't know, this would have to involve many arguments that the general biodiversity concept has a specific function that is realized by its different dimensions. And I do not really see how this works other than that this metaphor of high level and lower level seems appealing. I think there's not really a substance, but there may be. So I'm currently trying to figure it out. A third possibility that I was also thinking about that is very, very different actually comes from Alexander's book on the philosophy of well-being where she also discusses, but more on the philosophy of language perspective, how we can account for the fact that well-being is not a specific concept. And she mentions three possibilities. So one of them is that it is contextual, which is not very interesting in this context, but one other possibility that she mentions is differential realization, which is an idea that apparently has been discussed in the field of epistemology. And I think the idea is that, so the concept of knowledge has stable semantic meaning, but what makes knowledge assertions true, in particular instances, might vary. So stable semantic meaning, but different tooth makers in different contexts. And this could work for the biodiversity concept as well. So we might say, well, there is the stable semantic meaning, the theoretical concept is variability at multiple levels of organization, but what makes biodiversity claims true in different contexts are different things. That could be a possibility, I'm not very far yet. But I think one would have to give an answer to one, two. So I think this is also an instance where metaphysics can't be avoided. There would have to be some explanation. And of course, a further thing would also be to, so this was discussed by James McLauren in the paper, to even have a more, I don't know, the call it deflationary, but this Magnus theory of natural kinds, which ties kind membership more explicitly to pragmatic usefulness for its planetary purposes. So of course, if one subscribes to such a view of natural kinds, then it may be, then such an argument might also go through. But still, I would like to have a more substantial concept of kind. So, yeah. Yeah, thanks. Thanks a lot for the talk, this was really interesting. And I'm particularly interested in what you said in the last five minutes or so. You took more positions. And I'm at the same time attracted and also a bit puzzled by what you said about this trying not to conceive it as a normative or like avoid the normative is the greeting of the concept. And you said there, which I think is a good point that there's different between the concept and the words. While the words has these aspects, it doesn't have to be so that the concept is. But I mean, there is some, like you might want that. Like maybe in science, we need a good concept of biodiversity and we might indeed do need one that is not depending on social factors, on political factors. And then like this should be like the word that we invent for it. We might just use the word by about biodiversity anyway. Shouldn't be polluted by the political discussions that are associated to the words that we have now. But this is like something that we create. We still, I mean, you want it to be like that. You want to find this concept that does this non-normative thing. It doesn't have to correspond to the concept as we are using it right now, right? It seems like a goal of sort of meta science. A goal of where science has to go towards. We want to find a concept that is like almost a natural kind that would then not correspond not have the dirty associations with politics or so, most social things. So that seems like not something so much about the description or explanation of what happens in scientific communities now, but more like how you want the concept to be used in further scientific development. Is that correct? That would be the first part. And if it's not, if you want also to say about how something about how the concept is used right now, then I don't think it makes much sense. Maybe I'm too pragmatist to separate the word from the concept. I mean, this is almost platonistic and there is nothing beyond the words, you know? The word is what we are talking about. We are attracted to biodiversity as in this use by scientists, which is a word. We can translate that to other languages, but it's always related to the same sort of usages, which are always linguistic. We never go outside of language for that purpose and we can, of course, try to develop better words, which would then reflect another concept or something like that. We would want to change the meaning of our words, which is fine, but that's always an attempt to revision. The current practices are just what they are. In my opinion, it's very hard to distinguish words from concepts. But I mean, that's my opinion. I'm very pragmatist in these terms. You're pragmatist, they are. You're pragmatist, they are not. No, no, no, that's why I'm interested. So I want to see where we are misunderstanding each other or what are your philosophy of language positions come from. So to clearly explain the difference so my philosophy of language situations come very much from Kahnab. So I would have an explication approach back in mind. So I did not provide an explication of biodiversity, but this would be the general framework within which I am thinking. And I consider myself to be very, very progressive Kahnabian in the sense that I have no problem with including an evaluative component into an explication of a concept. If there are good reasons to do so, because we might claim that it has actual epistemological consequences if we don't. And so this was the, it is true to some extent. This seems very old school because it assumes that we can have the value of the thing and only in certain situations we have to accept that value influences come in. It is not meant really in that way, but rather it seems to me that if you look at different concepts, there are different arguments for different concepts of why and exactly where a normative or evaluative component really figures in to defining the object of study or how values play a role in assessing to what extent the concept is adequate. So as an example, there is Elizabeth Anderson's discussion about the concept of intelligence where she makes the claim that there is, it is fundamentally impossible to arrive at the definition of this concept without an idea of certain problem-solving capacities that we will be value or a similar argument was recently made on the attempt to provide a value-free theory of rational addiction in economics in which they also claimed where the attempt to give an explication in completely value-free terms somehow misses the target phenomenon that you were initially caring about and trying to find out. So, and given these claims and the fact that biodiversity is often portrayed or labored as a normative concept, but without ever giving a really clear explanation of why exactly where and how it works, I thought just to test the claim. Is it really normative? So, and based on this claim, I came to the conclusion where no, as a matter of fact, I think we can we can have a definition or an explication of the concept without having to introduce these normative elements and we would not have made our epistemological situation any worse. So we would still be concerned with the phenomenon that we want to talk about, but of course, that this is different from the claim that the concept can be made practically in conservation context. So, and I think one underlying issue is also that I think sometimes that it is that operationalizations and operational definitions are interpreted as really definitions, general definitions of a concept such that they exhaust the meaning of the concept. And I also think that it is necessary to keep these two dimensions better apart. So, yeah, I'm not really how it is actually used. This may be very different from what I have reconstructed, but of course, I would say, well, I'm not really that interested in how it is actually used but in the rational reconstruction of the concept. Thank you very much, Robert, for a very clear talk. And I have to say that it's been a long time that I'm jealous of someone, so I would really like to work on biodiversity because obviously it's a mess. And it's a mess by confused people. Because if the picture you gave us is reliable, there's like the question of Peter, that's an obvious question to ask. It's normative about what anything is normative. The language is normative. It's normative. They dislike political normative or they don't want that in science, but obviously it's a normative concept. It's used in explanation. It's not something like mass yet. So there's a lot of confusion. I have a lot of questions about possible confusion and I need more information if you don't mind. And you can stop me with the presentation. So when you're confused about what you measure in the history of science, we know historian wrote complete books about the fact that what you measure is strongly correlated to the evulsion techniques, like temperature, mass. We don't know what is mass until we have balance. We don't know what is temperature until we have reliable, stable thermometers. We don't know what is temperature. We can feel it, but we don't have temperature. It looks like biodiversity looks like lab. It's like, what is the history of the index, the techniques of measure? For example, to manage to differentiate diversity from a derogatory, like you said, this is not the same thing. This is not the same way to measure it. But it seems important in that case because we have this functional aspect, this localization aspect. And I would look at the history of measurements to see if there's such a thing as like a direction towards a concept. If not, you should eliminate it. So do you see in the literature an evolution of the techniques to measure this so-called biodiversity that seems to evolve somewhere in the direction or not? I don't know. Yeah, I think there is. So think about gene, for example. Genes took time to stabilize the technique of measurement to have a good concept of genes. Now there's more than one, but still there's no 25 now. We are two, three concepts of genes. So it's through the practice that progressively we It's not the theory that changes the practice. So do you see such a history for biodiversity? Like there certainly is. I'm not sure if I can tell you right now. So what there is an attempt recently to come up with unified measures, so a unified attribute measure that includes taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity. And I think what has evolved are the techniques of deriving a diversity index based on sample data. But I think there are always two different aspects to biodiversity measurements. Because one is the estimation techniques and how you arrive at the data in the first place. So either by counts and recounts or by linear transects of really going into the fields and counting species or certain traps. And there are also techniques that estimate vegetation cover based on satellite images. And of course, so there is this history of how data collection has improved and data processing has improved. And then there is the other thing of mathematical calculations of different diversity indexes. But these are, so I mean, these play a role mostly in theoretical ecology and in community ecology, I think. But they converge all these different measurement now towards something correct or understood. So I think this I don't know really but the suggestion of this universal attribute measure of diversity, so based on Chao Hill numbers, I think this is supposed to give a convergent unifying measure of biodiversity. But at this point, I cannot evaluate data just know that it exists. Because the sign that you are towards the right direction is when it's stabilized. What you measure is relatively stable towards different techniques. So until it's not like that, you know that you don't measure anything. Now I can give you the quality of universities. The ranking change every year, it's obviously completely useless measure. They didn't find the right techniques to have a phenomenon that you measure. Temperature, pretty good, pretty good. Thermometer, different thermometer, it goes pretty good. So when you have this addition of different factors to the index, does it increase the stability of measure for the same ecosystem? I don't know. Because if not, I would say, OK, interesting. But no kind, you're looking for a kind. You're very optimistic. You want to kind. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm not optimistic anymore, but. So I mean, this idea, like you would have convergent operationalizability, and so have a robust measure. I don't think that you can have that with biodiversity. So if there is a way of still arguing, well, that the concept serves some function or some purpose, it is not that. And I'm not sure. So I may be wrong, but because I really just don't know, but I think that also this method of this integrated measure. I'm just putting across. So technique one, no. OK. Second one. Can I? No. Well, I'm just trying to follow them. It's fine, it's fine, it's fine. Because I was also wondering about the temperature case. And we've been a long time since I read the book, but if you look at these two, it's not like the different thermometers converge. It's like one became more precise, and it interacts with bacteria and so on, and it will become dominant. And it's more like it's a form of subconversion of cases, but with the different substances they use all, and the points or anything like that. So I wonder if with biodiversity, you could have a similar process where there's currently they're measuring different things, actually. But there's one that works really well for what it's going to be, or it's very stable across different habitats, right? But it's similar for temperature. Yeah. No, no, it looks like biodiversity. Because at the beginning they don't know if they cannot separate pressure from temperature. So the same instrument seems to be too full. If there's a pressure change or a temperature change, it changes. So if you go to see a teriteli, you go to the Science Museum of Firenze, you can see the original instrument, and it looks like a thermometer. But progressively, oh, okay, there's two things that we think we measure, or three things. Oh, okay, maybe it's one. Okay, let's just isolate this one. Oh, okay, it's stabilized from, it's not just a linear thing. There's also a differentiated, the phenomenon is one phenomenon, multi-dimensional or unidimensional. And they don't see it to tear, they see it to evolution of techniques and stability. So it's more similar than you think it. I think this mess of biodiversity looks like temperature in the 16th century. That's what I agree with you, but my takeaway is actually the opposite. Like, it is very similar, but in temperature it also never was a case that they converged. So I don't think that should be the criteria. It's just if you have an interesting measure that's how it competes some of the others in ways that works well for us, then maybe it's that kind of a negotiator who could use and you see something like that in my papers. Like, are there certain measures that's maybe still a mess and they don't converge, but are there certain measures that are really useful for whatever goals that we're trying to achieve? Well, they are, but only for specific dimensions. So there are good indexes for taxonomic diversity. There's this phylogenetic measure that was introduced by Faith. It's a good measure for phylogenetic diversity and so on. But the question would of course be if we can integrate these different dimensions. And I think this is, so I just don't know. If I understand correctly what you're interested in is this logical reconstruction of the concept of biodiversity and whether we can find an actual kind. And even if we solve the problem of technology, be it by consensus or be it by technological progress, that we now really know how to measure species richness really well or genetic diversity very well, which I think we can do. I think genetic diversity is fairly consensualized on. Even with those things, we are not able to get to our conceptual definition, our biggest conceptual definition, right? That is what you would say that even in the face of technological consensus, you would not have necessarily conceptual consensus? Well, not with respect to the general concept. So, I mean the literary dimensions, this is fine and an approach to model the causal pathways or to approximate that because our model for this is initial and this can be done, but at least in principle model the pathways are in between these dimensions. This could also be done, but of course, so the question is if there is still a valid interpretation of the thing that this represents the theoretical biodiversity concept. And there, I think the, so this is just an open question, so. I have others, but I just have one, so I'm going to take my power. I always wondered when reading Santana, if okay, imagine, let's say we all agree that biodiversity is worthless, so we should get rid of it and we should stop. But what should we do? Should we just tell scientists to not write biodiversity in the title of the papers, but how does it actually play out? Like, how does the limit look like? That is a general question. Sort of general. How do we go about it? Yeah, that's the same question that I would, whatever that's asking. So, I mean, this is very, so I mean, I understand the arguments and of course I think they are very good arguments, but at the end, I mean these boils down to just regulating linguistic usage to some extent. And I also, yes, I also do not see how this is done. One could also gain, while there is still not every productive scientific concept has to be made operational. So, the argument that deserves, I don't know, as a labor or it organizes specific dimensions that we are interested in, this is a valuable purpose that the concept might serve. It is probably much less than some would have imagined, but it's just better than nothing. And so in this debate, we have this, we have this problem generally, that ecosystem function or biodiversity is just a stand-in for very different dimensions and we just have to make clear which particular dimensions we cover and we can still then make the argument that, well, all else being equal or generically biodiversity has an effect on ecosystem functions of kind of a summary of the high level. But yeah, so while this is always a possibility of claiming that, well, we can keep the concept around because for that reason, because it just serves to structure the field, I still would be, as I said, I think we'll just be interested in whether we can have still more out of it than that is. Yeah, I follow up actually to your question because you have the same problem in basically every debate about scientific concepts, like species, genes, whatever, there's always the, you know, the visits, there's the tourists, there's, and of course, nothing happens because it just falls for stalking. So I mean, I wanna say myself, if we can such a paper about natural kinds. So why do you, why do you say that you think about like your current view of how it should be used and so on and not how they actually use it? Wouldn't it be more useful to investigate how scientists actually use the concept and then go from there rather than do what, do it also first of all? I mean, I'm not, I'm not, because he's a biographer, he's not a sociologist, you know, that's unfair. Yeah, but why? That's an unfair question. Yeah, but why? That's a fair question. I mean, it would be very easy, if I had the money. You can answer. Yeah, but I mean also I think how I described it is pretty much how it is used by scientists. So typically, typically you would have a paper on biodiversity and ecosystem function or biodiversity and whatever and if you then go through how they describe the methods, it's a species richness, mesh of earth or some other index or something. So the concepts get further specified and further defined. So I think that the general idea is pretty much that it serves some organizing function. I don't know. I mean, there is, there is still the, there's of course the discussion whether this is legitimate to some extent. So surface claims that biodiversity is a concept of conservation biology and not of systematics, taxonomy or ecology is, I think, pretty much based on this observation that it is also used to promote research and together to get an interest on the research by using the labor biodiversity. And for this reason, it also seems to be aware that it should be restricted to its use in conservation biology for that reason. And there may be something to it. So the fact that uses of the concept proliferated certainly almost, it would be weird if it had nothing to do with the broad public attention of the concept. But still, this might be the sociological reason why it got used so much, but now that it is there, that it has been used for quite some time, one could say, well, in the meantime, it also has taken on other functions, so rather than gaining attention. And it has actually changed the actual scientific practice of disciplines that are not cultivation biology, right? I think that's already worth investigating what's happening in the continent, instead of saying that we should have not used, right? Peter? Yeah, so I'm a complete outsider and I'm not working in philosophy biology at all, so my question maybe might still be. But still about this normative aspect of the concept that seems to be there. So while I think it's interesting to look for a concept that does not have this content, and it may be possible even for biodiversity, what seems to me intuitively, but maybe I'm more aware of the general public usage of the word than the scientific usage of the word. But it seems to me that suppose, if I think of comparing it in temperature and so on, suppose that indeed there was some possibility to have a stable measure and it going towards a consensus, maybe some techniques to best measure it and so on, at a high temperature, and then, just like a hypothetical situation, we find that some ecosystem that has, according to this measure, should be counted as a very high bio-diverse environment, has some awful consequences, like just the way the system is clearly perceived intuitively as something that we wouldn't desire. I don't know, very disease, I don't know. It's very distraught, like it auto-destructs. Just imagine that the situation is horrible while the measure, unexpected, is surprisingly high in biodiversity. Maybe it's already crazy to think of just a measure such as temperature is going from zero to one or something like that, but suppose everything says good, like a very high bio-diversity, awful consequences, it seems like the intuition is that that is a good indicator for it being a bad measure for bio-diverse diversity. Like scientists, that's my intuition would look for, for the way, no, no, no, yeah, we've been measuring the wrong thing, like we thought that it would be like nicely stable and not be bad for us, nice to look at maybe even, something like that, and apparently due to the effects that it has, not due to the kindness behind it, but to the effect it has for us, we would not, we would think that maybe we've not touched on the right concept yet. In general, it works well, but for specific cases, you have these, because we've made it too precise, we get like contri-intuitive situations, and this would indicate that like it is normative if these sort of cases are conceivable, where because of it not being a pleasing outcome, we think we got on the wrong track. If that were the case, then I think it's clear that the concept, as we use it now, is normative. If not, if scientifically it's perfectly conceivable that we had to write very well-defined concept, definition of the notion that even if it had even some ecosystem turned out to be for us humans, very bad, but still very biodiverse, that it would be an indicator that maybe we should, the thing we are looking for is not normative in nature. But I could have the completely opposite intuition, so I could also, from this experience, I could also infer where maybe not every aspect of biodiversity is valuable, not every, not all of biodiversity is valuable. So since, by definition, it also encompasses microbial biodiversity, and of course, many microbial or cathogens, one could also make the claim that it does not, that it does not come at these cases, but I think that to me, this would be counter-intuitive. So the intuitive way would be where it measures everything, and then the question is which aspects are valuable for whatever reasons, and then maybe very different such reasons. So aesthetic valuation is a thing, but this of course is stakeholder-relative. There is option value, there is instrumental value, for some it's intrinsically valuable, which is also stakeholder-relative. So I think that these are just two different things. I don't see why the concept should surf on the purpose. Good. Thanks. To resist the suggestion of your colleague that it's okay, maybe it's, I will use only species diversity, or genetic diversity, it's what I need in the practice, and you still want to defend a multidisciplinary, multidimensionality of the concept. Probably the best way it's like you showed that a little bit, it's true explanation and causal modeling, because we could show. But one of the things that is important in that notion of causal modeling is that the information is not in the arrow, the information where there's no arrow. In causal modeling, functional or statistical, an arrow is a possible causal link, but it could be zero. The real information in the model is where there's no arrow, because it's the only place you say, I'm certain there's no relations in the model. An arrow in the model could be zero in the calculation, linear or non-linear. So what would be important, I suppose, in the model, the example of a predatory, when you act on the predators and you have an effect, is to be sure where there's no arrow, that there's none. And I suppose that in biological systems, it must be extremely difficult to establish a non-correlation or a non-coval link. A possible causal link, the strength of it, okay, we could defer a non-relation. Because in causal modeling, the information isn't when there's no arrow, but that's known, that's a mathematical basic notion. So how, so if you think about this, how do you think we could establish a biology, so my first question, these non-arrow, these non-dependent, to be able to graph your multidimensionality, and after that, the multidimensionality, you know, we were a little bit not nice to the researcher because you don't need the dimension to be or to normal to be real dimension, but you still have to show that they are non-colonair. You have to show, at least, partial independence between them, which I suppose is not easy also from species diversity to genetic diversity. It's something difficult to show. That's the reason why they do not include species, richness, as I've mentioned. So it's why they exclude that, but they still get the functional and the genetics. Yeah, they, phylogenetics. Okay, phylogenetics and, okay. Yeah, that's a very good point. I would like to take that as a comment. No, okay, but, I mean, but I think that it's just a suggestion to resist your coding here, that saying in practice, the only use one to do something, which is probably true, but if you want to say, oh, okay, but it's multidimensional, it's because of an explanation. You could integrate this aspect in a certain concept of causal role of this big biodiversity in explanation. Yeah, yeah, I mean. Oh, or your colleague could be right. There's no such thing. Yeah, I mean, that would be a hypothesis, right? That this might be the case, but I'm, as of yet, I'm just not sure what I... I think so, because I forgot your name, so I'm right. Substantially, it's the claim. Man, yeah. I want to piggyback on this too, though, because I think there's something kind of cool in here that I like and want to... This is gonna get something that I've thought about off and on for a long time, and I'm finally gonna write a paper on it soon, because I'm working with somebody who wants to think about this. One thing that I think is really interesting here is... So you have these... Part of what's going on in this debate, let me back up. Sorry, my brain is not highly functional this week. Part of what's going on in this debate, right? You have these two different bodies of work. There's this one body of work that you point to that seems pretty clearly to essentially always atomize the biodiversity concept, where I never really use capital D biodiversity for anything. You have this other kind of tantalizing idea, which I like that, like, maybe there are parts of biodiversity research that do seem to use, but one thing that's... There's a more general question here that I've always liked thinking about, and here I'm really just asking you wildly speculate and tell me what you think. Because part of what's at play then is when and how should we read things like the metaphysics of concepts off of these different kinds of biological research, right? When is it legitimate when somebody like... Jack Justice can look at that first pile of work and say, look, so just obviously, like, been this concept. You wanna push on the other pile of work and say, here's the other pile of work, maybe we don't bend the concept. How have you thought about how sort of what does an argument about that question look like for you? Cause I've always thought that's a really cool question, and this is, I mean, I'm saying this in part because I want to have a position on exactly how this kind of engagement should work, and I don't have one. So I'm just wondering what you've thought about because you're kind of dealing with a concrete instance of this kind of worry. I'm really encouraging wild speculation here, so. I honestly, I don't have a lot about that yet. I mean, I can clearly see that this is the question that I mean, the question raises itself. So, I don't know, I'm not pressed to say anything. I mean, if you're, so, because you mentioned Justice, so in his recent introduction to the philosophy of ecology, this book from 2021, he gives a very considerate discussion of the stability concept and of these different dimensions of stability, and so it's been a while since I've read it, but I thought that after reading that, well, maybe that's why I was wondering why he wouldn't have the same approach or a similar approach to his discussion of the biodiversity concept. So, there is. Interesting, so he keeps stability. He wants to keep stability in that intro. He doesn't argue, he's not an eliminativist about stability. I haven't read the book at all yet, I haven't picked it up yet. Right, I don't know. Okay, okay, yeah, I gotta go look at that because this is, yeah, this is just really, yeah, this is cool. I really like the structured equation case. I think it's a really cool case for this, for thinking more deeply about this. Yeah, but so it's a general rule, so the question would be when, in what cases, can we read off the metaphysics of the conceptual practice? So, I don't know what one could say that there are general principles for doing that. I mean, I really like the question concerning the measurement issue because I think I look at how to look much more deeply into that. So, this could also be a criterion for this. So, one way to look at it or approach the issue would be to look first at the measurement history and to see whether a stable measure has developed and to make that as a criterion whether we want to, yeah, sure. For example, but it's the only thing so on the top of my head that I could think right now. Sure, sure. I think in the biodiversity case, it was really just that I stumbled upon this name framework, but also that the ecologists were frequently pointing to how structural equation modeling is used in the social sciences and trying to make an argument that it should apply a similar approach to representing their theoretical constructs. And since I thought, well, this is interesting because some of them, they really make this all the same alternative approach to do their discipline and to treat the theoretical concept in the discipline to follow. So, I don't know, it might be the case that it is implausible in the case of biodiversity, but still this use of structural equation modeling could be interesting for all of the theoretical concepts. Cool. Actually, Juno Tsuka has played a little bit with this in selection and drift. So kind of causal equation, structural equation approaches to thinking about, yeah, selection and drift. So, yeah, that was also kind of using this to think about these kinds of relations is, yeah, is, I think it's really powerful. Yeah, I have to look that up. I can send you a thing. Remind me. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I think that's going to be the last question. Oh, someone else. Hey, so if everything fails. I said, most likely. There's the last point, the last thing you're saying. You go back to the, if biodiversity is not stable as a concept, you go back to the variety engine, the predictor of change. To see if the thing before produced something that is not stable, but you go back. So natural selection, drift, you look at what produce is possible diversity and you look there if there's some stable thing that produce unstable steam that are not a kind, but still you go back and there possibility there's something very stable among the five source of change. Five, is it five? It was five. Now I don't know. The five source of change in biology, you know, mutation, selection. Oh, yeah, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a blouse. And there's maybe something there that would, that would be what, that would have this use for defending politics. Yeah. But would be maybe a better, better concept scientifically. If, if biodiversity is, if you're unable to stabilize that, that thing. So you go back, you go in the source. That's why it's, biology is a historical science. You can always go back to see the, the engine of change. But you're assuming that is the natural selection that is causing the diversity that you could. There could be something else. You could have utilized the other way around but without diversity you also don't have anything to do like form. Maybe. I say the first thing, his first project is to find a value of diversity, possibly multi-dimensional to take account all the discourse that is a stable notion. But if it, if you cannot find any, he has to go somewhere if you want to get the same result. Or you could be wrong. I think we have now fully arrived at beer caliber questions. Yes. Sure. Thank you. Thanks.