"If it includes everything, it becomes meaningless."

[alixtii]

There is a claim I've seen being made a lot lately, in a lot of different places (but part of the same overall argument) by different people, that if a word applies to everything it becomes meaningless. Can anyone explain this claim to me?

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

I remember having a conversation on the OTW FAQ and the language it uses, referring to what I would call source texts as "original works" and thus inadvertently imply intentionality which isn't truly there in the case of many RPF canons, in the comments of this post, with jadelennox, in which she said:

The jargon term "text" encompasses the idea that all objects, experiences, encounters, etc. are analyzable under the same lens is we would use to analyze the non-jargon "texts". There really isn't any jargon-free way to say "I mean everything in the world, except everything in the world from the point of view that you can look at everything in the world as a text". I'm not even explaining it well when I try to translate it into a whole lot of English words. *shakes tiny fist*

Is the "except [. . .] from the point of view that you can look at everything in the world as a text" part of her definition really lacking any semantic content?

If I say everything is about sex, or the death-drive, or the means of production, or the will-to-power, am I making meaningless statements?

If everything is X then, a) that may say something meaningful about the state of everything, and b) that doesn't eliminate the possibility that some things are more X than others, closer to the center of the conceptual web, less problematically X, while others lurk in the fuzzy boundaries.

Or am I just insane?

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

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.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

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.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

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'.