The Tradëscan Codex

If I say "everything is made up of atoms" does that mean "made up of atoms" is a meaningless category?

Since the statement 'everything is made up of atoms' is false for the commonly defined meaning of 'everything', it could be concluded that 'made up of atoms' has become a meaningfull category since it is in fact the limiting factor rather than the 'everything'. So what you have just said is 'everything that is made up of atoms is made up of atoms' hence it is a tautology and rather un-useful information, which could well be what people mean when they say 'meaningless'.

In the unlikely event that you can come up with a true statement that everything is X for the normal definitions of 'X' and 'everything' then no, it does not preclude that some things will be more X than others. However, this could probably only occur in the course of a discussion in which 'everything' has already been delimited and defined quite narrowly into a sense other than the general 'everything'. Hence it is possible that your problem (I'm assuming you are having a misunderstanding with someone) arises because you are in fact working from two different definitions of 'everything' and are not aware of it.

I think it is unlikely you are insane, but I am not a qualified medical practitioner ;o)

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So to address your specific instance.

You seem to be starting with the definition 'a text is something that can be analysed with the specific tools X, Y and Z'. You have then said 'Everything in the world can be analysed with the tools X, Y and Z' and hence you have made the conclusion 'therefore everything is a text'.

But the important fact is not that everything is text, it is that everything can be analysed with the tools X, Y and Z - that does not change the definition of 'text', it just shows that the original statement was not the accurate definition of 'text', but merely a fact about text. The proper definition of text is 'a text is something that can be analysed with tools X, Y and Z, but also has the defining properties L, M, and N.' So your next stage needs to be to find out what L, M and N are, otherwise you are left believing that everything in the world is a text, which is unlikely to be true. It might be true, nothing in the logic so far has disproved it, but it is unlikely.

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Well, no. The jargony definition of a text is "Anything which can be analyzed the way we analyze a non-jargony text." So RPF canon is a text even though it's just a bunch of stuff happening in the "real" world. When academics say that everything is a text, using this definition, they are making a meaningful statement.

The non-jargony definition of text is, I don't know, something written using alphanumeric characters? The non-jargony definition, like all word usages, is fuzzy enough that the academic definition grows out of it rather than being wholly separate. (Although really, who talks about "texts" other than academics?).Someone who reads an academic saying that the world consists only of alphanumeric characters is misreading, plain and simple.

There's been a lot of misreading going on lately.

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The jargony definition of a text is "Anything which can be analyzed the way we analyze a non-jargony text." ... When academics say that everything is a text, using this definition, they are making a meaningful statement.

It is only a meaningful statement if it is really true that everything can be analysed in that way. That is what I was saying in my comment above. Now I'm not what you call an academic, I have no idea what the tools X, Y and Z are or if they are indeed universally applicable. I rather doubt they are universally applicable, but if you say they are then I will take your word for it. In that case, if the entirety of the definition of a text is that it can be analysed with those tools then it would indeed be logically correct to call everything a text. If someone can come up with a single thing that cannot be analysed with the tools then your statement has been proved false.

That is about as far as logic can take us.

How did this discussion start? I am imagining a scenario in which someone tried to define a text and you offered the academic definition that you are used to. In which case I would assume that by saying your definition was 'meaningless' they in fact meant 'too broad for my current purpose'.

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The discussion quoted above, between

jadelennox and me, started when someone objected to the term "original work" since RPF doesn't respond to "original works." I pointed out that "source text" is better but too academic-y when OTW already has a reputation as being too acafannish.

But it's an example. In the conversations going on more recently in which I've seen (several) people making "If everything is X, then X is meaningless" arguments, the X has been "queer." Those portions of the conversations I have stayed out of myself, as I mention below, (although I've engaged in other portions) because they are made in the context of other arguments about appropriation which demand respectful listening in my opinion, and to make this argument there would, IMHO, derail the discussion.

One of the things I like about having you as a flister is that when I talk about an issue in the abstract like this, divorcing it from context on the assumption that the people who know the context will understand what prompted it, you'll tackle it in the abstract head-on and we're start talking about the actual underlying meaty issues that everyone else was talking around by focusing on the specifics. Because I think the underlying disagreements tend to be not so much political as philosophical.

It is only a meaningful statement if it is really true that everything can be analysed in that way. That is what I was saying in my comment above. Now I'm not what you call an academic, I have no idea what the tools X, Y and Z are or if they are indeed universally applicable. I rather doubt they are universally applicable, but if you say they are then I will take your word for it.

Talk to a Freudian, and she'll be convinced that you want to sleep with your mother. (Not really, but capturing the nuances of Freud isn't the point here.) Whatever you say, she'll be able to create an explanation how all that is motivated by her initial premise. So in a sense she has tools universally applicable to analyze all of human behavior. (Hell, there's really nothing to stop from applying Freud to gods or astrological bodies, either.)

That's not quite an empirical fact about the universe or human behavior.

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One of the things I like about having you as a flister is that when I talk about an issue in the abstract like this ... you'll tackle it in the abstract head-on

Hah!

I once was set a question on a maths exam asking for the height of a tent pole given a certain width of tent, I responded with two pages, closely written, considering all the different possible shapes of tent and laying out the different geometrical calculations required for each one. The teacher claimed afterwards that it was obvious what shape of tent had been intended. Some people are just incapable of seeing the wood for the nearest tree.

Because I think the underlying disagreements tend to be not so much political as philosophical.

I absolutely agree. I happen to have seen some of the discussions about appropriation of the term 'queer' and they are all balancing at the top of such a huge pile of assumptions, preconceptions and general guff that it is very hard to make much sense of them beyond picking up a general impression that some people have clearly had their feelings hurt. As luck would have it I do have the necessary personal qualification that allows me to know why they were hurt, but those discussions are no place for logic. And as with all discussions of that nature they will be very unpleasant experiences for anyone rash enough to join in without the necessary qualification. You are wise to keep quiet.

In that context I think 'meaningless' means 'does not provide me with the necessary self-identification that I am used to having from the word'. I do not think you need to look for any deeper intention than that.

So in a sense she has tools universally applicable to analyze all of human behavior. (Hell, there's really nothing to stop from applying Freud to gods or astrological bodies, either.)
Granted. But she will not be able to use that tool to analyse the wave form of a beam of light. She can analyse the human reaction to such a wave form, but not the wave form itself. Hence her tool can not analyse everything. In the same way, not everything can be a text because somewhere there is something that cannot be analysed with the tools that define what a text is. The only way to incorporate absolutely everything into the definition of text is by making that definition so loose that nothing is excluded. Then you are saying everything = everything, which is meaningless because it provides no useful information. Of course everything = everything. If you redefine 'text' as everything then 'text' becomes redundant as a word. But in truth you do not wish to redefine text or queer or any other word to mean everything, you simply wish to redefine it with a wider meaning than the current one. Your academic definition of text is very broad - excitingly broad - but it does not include everything. If it did, it would indeed be meaningless.

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And come to think of it, a Freudian would probably have a field day with the human reaction to the wave form of a beam of light!

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I'm not convinced the Freudian analyst can't analyze the beam of light. From my perspective any such analysis would be silly and even possibly stupid or insane, but not necessarily self-contradictory.

That's why it is ideological, because yes, it is rooted in tautologies. But it would be wrong, imho, to say that these tautologies provide no useful information, because they have consequences.

Hmm. If I say "Everything can have a poem written about it," that seems to actually encompass everything, doesn't it?

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Hmm. If I say "Everything can have a poem written about it," that seems to actually encompass everything, doesn't it?

Nope. Writing a poem about something pretty much means 'describing' so then you run into Schroedinger's cat and the uncertainty principle and that sort of thing. Or to give a simple exception, you couldn't write a poem about an idea that has not been expressed yet, or a phenomenon that has not yet been observed.

There are probably plenty of other exceptions. Everything is just too broad a concept :o)

Besides, why aim for everything? Half the fun is in defining.

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Well, the problem of that which transcends language is something 20th century philosophy, especially continental philosophy, fixates on, so I'm not unaware of the problem.

You seem to be operating from the assumption that everything is sitting out there waiting to be named--so that "Idea that has not been expressed yet, You'll be great I bet" isn't actually about the referent you had in mind. And that's an ideological assumption--as all statements about everything inevitably are.

And that's why everything-statements are useful and meaningful: they provide the premises from which everything follows. (OMG, I just resurrected the synthetic a priori, didn't I?) (Just kidding. It was never dead for me. Just . . . contingent.)

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OMG, I just resurrected the synthetic a priori, didn't I?

You did, and it's a load of old Kant ;o)

I am not saying that there are not meaningful statements that can be applied to 'everything that can be described', and that would indeed be an important part of the definition and description of 'everything that can be described'. Given time and a patient audience one could probably say quite a lot that was meaningful about 'everything that can be described'. But there is a significant difference between 'everything that can be described' and 'everything'. So that even if those parts of 'everything' that cannot currently be described would indeed behave as predicted when they became describable, at the present moment in time - which is what matters to us - since they are not describable they are not encompassed by any other description than 'everything'. That, I think, is the difference between what you are saying and Kant - he was focussing on prediction, you are trying to find universal statements that do not allow the leeway of prediction but are genuinely universal.

Hence...
And that's why everything-statements are useful and meaningful: they provide the premises from which everything follows.
The problem with such a statement is that it is only provable if you can come up with such a non-trivial everything statement. Can you?

Certainly 'everything is text' is not one. Something that is not describable cannot be a text, even if we can predict that it will become a text if it ever does become describable. (And it is beyond laughable to suggest that 'everything is queer' is one!)

Which of course is why people start to reach for meta-physics at this point...

Have I mentioned that I dislike philosophy intensely?

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But there is a significant difference between 'everything that can be described' and 'everything'.

Again, that's a prior ideological commitment flavoring one's definition of "everything." Which is inevitable--but the results are not self-evident until one has already accepted the definition.

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Again, that's a prior ideological commitment flavoring one's definition of "everything."

True. Which adds to the charge that the phrase 'Everything is X' is meaningless, if you are using 'X' not to describe 'everything' but merely to define 'everything', it either takes you away from the current definition of everything or it expands the definition of 'X' until it is worthless and the statement becomes a tautology.

At which point I think I want my lunch.

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I'd agree that it functions primarily as a theoreticall statement. I think "everything is made up of atoms" functions the same way; atoms are defined as those things out of which everything else is made uip. IT's not as if atoms and everything are floating in some real world somewhere, and we already have the concepts 'atom' and 'everything' in our head, and we go to the real world to see how they hook up. It's a statement of scientific theory, not scientific empiricism.

But it's still not meaningless. (Again, the synthetic a priori, but instead of one permanently fixed into our conceptual catefories, one which is contingent and arbitrary.)

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Ah, I think I may have got it. everything is made up of atoms is not meaningless because the statement by its very existence defines what you mean by 'everything'. There are after all plenty of things that are not made up of atoms - subatomic particles, energy in all its various forms, time - a physicist could doubtless list others, and I know that you know this because you said do up above. So the statement has defined what you personally mean by 'everything' for the purpose of this conversation. You have narrowed your 'everything' down to a very specific subset of the available interpretations. That, I agree, is frequently a very useful thing to do. It provides the boundaries for the discussion, tells me something about yourself and how you think, and has value in a conversational sense. Is that what you meant by 'not meaningless'?

I have just realised that the above argument is dependent on the scientific definition of atoms and it is possible that you meant the philosophical definition. I am assuming however that you meant the scientific because of your statement that it was scientific theory not scientific empiricism. If you meant the philosophical definition then as far as I can see we are back to a tautology and you will have to try to explain again, preferably using smaller words and plenty of pictures :oD

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(Just kidding. It was never dead for me. Just . . . contingent.)

It always saddens me that you are not an atheist or an agnostic. You would make such a good agnostic.

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Well, in terms of belief, as opposed to faith, I am an agnostic.

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That is one of the most revealing remarks I have ever seen you make. (I don't mean that in a bad way.) I am going to try to bear that in mind because it explains an awful lot about where you are coming from and why.

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Admittedly leptons and quarks are not made up of atoms. From a not-stupid perspective, however, justice and freedom are made up of atoms, since any manifestation of freedom and justice will exist in the physical world on a super-atomic level. Someone who is not physicalist would no doubt object to the ideological underpinnings of that analysis.

That there would be ideological assumptions behind what eveything was and how it would be percieved seems to go without saying. How could there not be? I'm not sure what "the commonly defined meaning of everything" is, though, or that our usage is stable enough to be able talk about something being true "for the normal definitions of 'X'."

I'm largely staying out of the portions of the discussion where the "if everything is X, then X is meaningless" arguments are brought up, but I've been seeing it enough that I'm starting to headdesk.

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Admittedly leptons and quarks are not made up of atoms. From a not-stupid perspective, however

That, right there, is your problem. When you use the phrase 'from a not-stupid perspective' you are revealing that you in fact expect everyone to have the same understanding of the word 'everything' that you have - that is a presumption, and people being the wonderfully varied things they are it will be a false one. Especially if, as you say, you are not sure what the commonly defined meaning of everything is. You cannot assume that everyone else has adopted the same assumption of what comprises everything - hence any statement about 'everything' is meaningless. You have got to define your terms.

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I think you misunderstood me. I don't think freedom is made up of atoms. But I don't think the perspective that it is one which can be discounted, which is all I meant by not-stupid. A not-stupid perspective, for me, is one which, while not necessarily correct, cannot simply be discounted.

Did you think I was implying that any perspective which held that freedom wasn't made up of atoms was stupid? Because I didn't mean that at all.

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No, I thought that by saying 'not-stupid' you were saying that your original example of 'everything is made up of atoms' had in fact been chosen fairly casually as a quick example to serve your own purposes, and that whilst you acknowledge that there are indeed things that are not made up of atoms you wished the logic of the example to stand by means of you and I politely agreeing to ignore all the things that are not made up of atoms in our mutual definition of 'everything'. So by 'not-stupid' I assumed you meant something approximating to 'not-nitpicking'.

So yes, I was misunderstanding how you use the term 'not-stupid'.

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to me, if I say "everything is made up of atoms" that does not mean "made up of atoms" is a meaningless category, but it does mean that "everything NOT made up of atoms, that which is atomless" is a meaningless category.

also, having been in an rpf fandom, it is true that there is no "original text" in the same way that SG-1 the show is the original text for my fanfic. but there is SOMETHING there that the rpf writer are riffing off of. it's just not as easily collected and pointed to. i don't have any dvd boxes for my source text for Lotrips, but it was definitely there.

personally, not meaning to start something here, but i saw no problem with RPF fandoms being included in a definition of "transformative works" but I'm certainly not up to date on the OTW's definition of what it is they are wanting to include in the definition of "media fandom".

hi!

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Yes, "everything is X" certainly entails "there is no not-X"--and

_peasant's comments above underscore for me that what we mean by "is" there will have ideological anti/foundations and implications. Il n'ya a pas de hors-texte.

My experience with the RPF I've written (and read) is very similar to yours. Although I could rip the audio files of the commentaries of some of my favorite episodes and put that in a box and design box art if I wanted to.

it's just not as easily collected and pointed to.

Like comics fandom, or Doctor Who? Even that isn't unique to RPF! And as extratextuality goes mainstream, is likely to seem less and a meaningful difference as time goes on. Canons are always constructed and negotiated by fen; I don't treat the Buffy season 8 comics as canon, but some do.

i saw no problem with RPF fandoms being included in a definition of "transformative works" but I'm certainly not up to date on the OTW's definition of what it is they are wanting to include in the definition of "media fandom".

We're in agreement here; indeed, I get very frustrated by the insistence rising out of that discussion that RPF is always(-already? it seems so, although

hector_rashbaum would never put it that way) separated from FPF media fandom. That portions of it developed independenttly, I can well believe, but Jensen/Jared, or my Jossverse RPF? I don't think so. And I certainly think that RPF is transformative. (But then, I think everything is transformative, and that "transformative" nonetheless remains a meaningful category.)

I don't think anyone is up to date on what OTW's definition is.

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hee hee.

i patiently await the OTW new FAQs. I think we can count on them being organized and thorough, with regard to definitions not least.

i do know they are hip to the RPF issues, not least because some of the movers and shakers in the group did indeed write in RPS fandoms.

happy tautologizing.

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What I'm really looking forward to is the first OTW FAQ fic.

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lol!

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tacky-tramp.livejournal.com

I don't think anyone is up to date on what OTW's definition is.

Seriously. I've asked them how they're defining "fandom," and Naomi (I think) dismissed the question out of hand. Um, okay.

I was pleased to see that the FAQ apparently includes mention of machinima. Though that transformative fan practice has a decided unfemale history.

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i'm just on the very edges of the OTW thing, but it's my impression that the definition/name issue is/was actually being discussed. i think it's worth trying to define, beyond the band fic discussion.

i know they picked "transformative" because of some very specific legal language in copyright law, but the edges of the definitions are always trickiest, yes? hence this very thread...

*cheers*

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tacky-tramp.livejournal.com

If I say, "The hue of these cars is red," I am saying, "The hue of these cars is not blue or green or yellow or brown or black or white or etc." I'm differentiating one hue from other hues. Now, I might still be using "red" to cover a narrow spectrum of possible hues -- perhaps crimson and burgundy and candy-apple are all "red." But I have decided that the commonality among those colors is stronger than the differences among them; lumping them together is fine. And I think most people will accept "red" for both "burgundy" and "crimson" in a sentence like "I'll be driving a red car."

But what if I say, "The hue of all cars is red"? I've widened the spectrum that "red" can encompass dramatically. Now, if I tell you, "I'll be driving a red car," I have given you no useful information. Which is not the same as not meaning anything. But in situations where distinctions are materially important to someone, blurring or removing those distinctions causes problems.

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youngest-one.livejournal.com

I don't think that lumping everything in one category makes that category meaningless, but I do think that it oversimplifies and tries to make connections between two things which are either tenuous or non - existent. I mean, you could say that everything anybody does creatively is driven by a buried sex drive, but that would be ignoring a whole range of possible motivations for the creative act, in my opinion.

Also, I don't think RPF has a source text in the same way other media fandoms do. Those fandoms operate of sources that were created by one or more people as explicitly fictional, while RPF builds off real life events to a greater or lesser extent.

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I don't think that lumping everything in one category makes that category meaningless, but I do think that it oversimplifies and tries to make connections between two things which are either tenuous or non - existent. I mean, you could say that everything anybody does creatively is driven by a buried sex drive, but that would be ignoring a whole range of possible motivations for the creative act, in my opinion.

Well, it wouldn't be ignoring them so much as reducing them to really being about a buried sex drive. I think the sex drive way of looking at it is silly and not really useful, but it's self-consistent and doesn't seem to contradict reality. (How could it? It's ultimately tautologous.)

Also, I don't think RPF has a source text in the same way other media fandoms do. Those fandoms operate of sources that were created by one or more people as explicitly fictional, while RPF builds off real life events to a greater or lesser extent.

Well, RPF is about real (for a given social construction of "real"; Buffy Summers won't be found in any SoCal phonebook) people and FPF is about fictional people. While that distinction can be problematized, I'm not really about to disagree with that claim; it's pretty much part of the definition of what RPF and FPF are.

The main thing I can parse your comment as saying something that goes beyond that is that RPF source texts, in addition to being "real," lack intentionality; they're not created. That premise I would argue with; since I do think that our decisions we make in the "real world" are parts of deliberately fabricated constructions, even when we are with the people with whom we are the most comfortable.

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youngest-one.livejournal.com

(How could it? It's ultimately tautologous.)

Which is my problem with those kind of statements.

The main thing I can parse your comment as saying something that goes beyond that is that RPF source texts, in addition to being "real," lack intentionality; they're not created. That premise I would argue with; since I do think that our decisions we make in the "real world" are parts of deliberately fabricated constructions, even when we are with the people with whom we are the most comfortable.

And I stand by my definition. RPF isn't based on the fictional texts celebrities create, they're based on reports of those celebrities' lives. There's a big difference, I think, between fictional events which are purposefully created to be consumed and interpreted by an audience and private lives which - aren't. I'm not trying to imply that RPF is less valid than other forms of fanfic, because writing about real people is just as valid as writing about fictional ones and celebrities wind up creating public personas through there public actions, but I still think they're operating from two different kinds of sources.

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