A question that cladists can’t answer

How may lineages is a lineage?

This question is impossible to answer for a cladist, although the answer is one per definition (i.e., “a” = one).  

The reason is that the question nails the cladistic circular confusion of object and kind in lineages. “A” lineage is for a cladist his circular confusion of one and several itself. The question thus leads him into a loop between one and several that lacks an end, because it is his circular confusion of one and several itself.

The question for non-cladists is how we shall break this circular confusion. It may be directed towards the specific aims of curing cladists or hindering cladists from leading non-cladists into their confusion, or towards the generic aim of counteracting this tendency of falling into circular confusions in a general sense (i.e., -isms).

This circular confusion (i.e., cladism) as well as all circular confusions appear to be fueled by an inability to understand the situation. The original question has simply grew too complex: there are simply too many parameters to consider at the same time. In the absence of a generic principle to interpret the situation, interpretations deteriorate into an evidently erroneous interpretation, which is accepted in spite of its impossibility, because it liberates interpretations from the dead end of being ununderstandable. In other words, the answer to the original question deteriorates into inconsistency by the inability of the questioned to understand the situation.

The questioned stand like a herd of wilderbeasts at the bank of a river looking for the answer on the other side. On the other side there is, however, only a practical search for a thing that does not exist. The answer they’re searching is nowhere to be found. It is actually a circular confusion in their own minds, which they can’t let go, because it is what they’re searching.

In order to escape their circular confusion, cladists have to understand that kinds do not exist. It doesn’t matter if they define that kinds exist, they still don’t. They are wrong even if they define that they’re right.

Their problem is to answer the question: 

How may lineages is a lineage?