Addendum (Striking a Balance)

[Thomas DiBenedetto]

-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Kinman [mailto:kinman at HOTMAIL.COM]
>... I think it is better to consciously examine your biases than it is to
>ignore them ...

Ken,
I think we would agree that, minimally, cladistics has forced upon
systematics a requirement that biases be made explicit. It is no longer
acceptable to say "I judge character X to be important enough to trump
whatever other data you throw at me, and besides, I have more experience
than you do". If one is to weight, then it must be done explicitly, and
numerically. But then we face a real implementation problem. I have never
seen anyone devise a coherent, well justified numerical weighting system. My
solution is rather simple I think. The justification for weighting a
character more than one is that your definition of the character encompasses
more than one independent transformation. Marshall your experience, your
special knowledge, your judgement, and apply it to the really crucial task,
which is character defintion (the result of biological investigation). If
you can "beak down" the character into several well justified
transformations, then it will recieve an effective weight greater than one.
But that will happen within a prodedural context in which each character
that you actually describe is weighted equally.
-tom