[MD] DuMB

[david buchanan]

dmb said:
I would defy anyone here to conceive of any thing in the universe that is 
not BOTH an individual and also part of larger, collective entity.

Squonk replied:
The whole static repertoire. The whole static repertoire may be conceived as 
a thing. The whole static repertoire (WSR) is an individual WSR composed of 
individual relationships not in a relationship with another WSR by 
definition. DQ is not a thing so it's outside the repertoire. ...You're a 
shit philosopher, but an excellent gobshite.

dmb says:
What's a gobshite? Anyway, I think that your hostility and confidence is 
wildly out of proportion here. The challenge was to think of "any thing in 
the universe" and it seems you think its cleaver to name the the whole 
static universe itself. But its pretty clear to me that this is easy to 
defeat. If the WSR is  being asserted literally, then I'd simply point out 
that there may be a series of big bangs and eventual collaspes or there may 
be parallel universes. If the WSR is asserted as a philosophical model it 
can be seen as one among many such models. Or we could simply think of the 
whole shebang in terms of what it was a second or a minute or a century ago 
and thereby fix it as a single stage in evolution.

Think of this notion in terms of the doctrine of co-dependent origination, 
where no thing has an inherent, essential existence but rather exists in a 
relationship with every other thing.

And of course the point was only to object to the idea that individuality is 
not a useful concept when it comes to making a distinction between the 
social and intellectual levels. The point was simply to demonstrate that 
individuals and collective systems exists at every level and are completey 
ubiquitous. This would seem to fit your definition of the WSR, which makes 
your hostility seem even more bizzare. I guess you're still sore about the 
fact that Ant's not into humiliating himself so - unless you'd like to offer 
a more serious relply, I'm just gonna dismiss this as misplaced anger.

dmb

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