The One, The Only, The All

In our effort to completely eliminate sloppy thinking, to leave no fallacy unturned, we arrive at the All. This complete inclusion of being is tough to talk about. What can we say about something that is undifferentiated? Well, nothing! Not unless we compare it to something outside itself. But the very act of doing so denies an All, or at least makes it subordinate. For there to be a universe, an entirety of creation, something would have to stand outside of it to be not-creation, or what meaningful thing could we say?

It’s easier to deal with all hamburgers, because plenty of things are clearly not hamburgers, allowing for comparison. But are we relating it to all hot dogs, or all monarchies? We have to be more specific. Maybe all foods that are not hamburgers can be our basis of examination. Now the problems seem to vanish, but in fact, they only become more insidious in that we think we’ve found a way to speak clearly.

Let’s flip a U-turn and revisit this human—all too human—concept via Alfred Korzybski.

Remember that this Polish thinker made his name with his theory of general semantics and his criticism of the linguistic reinforcement of the concept of identities, which mislead so much thought. When we use words that suggest total belonging to a group, like all, only, always, every, totally, etc.; or words that suggest total exclusion, like never, nothing, none, etc.; and including strays that gloss any differences like absolutely, completely, entirely, we commit an act of identification.

It’s no crime yet, that’s for sure. I’d say the better part of us can come up with occasions when such statements are pretty useful. So what’s the trouble?

A Simple Paradox

Epimenides, a philosopher from Crete, stated that all Cretans are liars. But if they’re all liars, then so is Epimenides, so his statement that they’re all liars has to be taken as false. But if it’s false, then they’re not all liars, so maybe we can believe him. But if we believe him, then his own credibility is called into question. This paradox has fascinated logicians and philosophers for millennia, but its interest lies entirely in the identification of language.

For example, we have to identify Epimenides with Cretans, and Cretans with liars, and we also have to assume that a Cretan can’t possibly tell the truth some of the time, another gloss of all-ness. If we take our cues from the world we observe every day, we’ll realize that a large group is not homogenous, and probably contains both liars and honest men, and that among those two categories, it’s likely that liars say truthful things at times, and honest men fib. We might also suspect that philosophers can have senses of humor; that all jokes may be lies in a certain sense, but that the best jokes and lies contain a grain of truth—and little more.

Why is all-ness problematic for clear thinkers who give and take signs as authentically as possible? It’s confusing.

To create an All requires a category, like “hamburgers.” I hold a specific hamburger in front of me. It has many things in common with the rest of the category, but any hamburger eater knows that there is quite a diversity of hamburger experiences. Mine may be cooked on an oak coal grill to medium, topped with dill pickles and bacon and cheese, but hold the lettuce and mayo. It might have a brioche bun, toasted on the flats, and it bears a passing resemblance to the other three like it produced by the same grill and differentially appointed. But if I eat it, other hamburgers don’t vanish, because it isn’t the same.

To make a statement about all hamburgers, I have to smooth over the differences until I arrive at factors only common to all members of the category—fast food or gourmet, rancid or fresh, beef, bison, or turkey (we’ll agree to exclude veggie patties from hamburgers). I’m creating an abstraction that exists nowhere in the physical world. As you know by now, this is a sign of thirdness. Well and good, until we identify individuals with the name.

How would you treat a new Cretan you met at a party if you believed that all Cretans are liars? Stripping aside the identities, a Cretan is a Cretan, and they engage in any number of behaviors according to their personality and the situation. Quite a few people throughout history have been relegated to a category through some abstraction, then treated in a concretely unpleasant way.

Everything is Easy

When everybody is a certain way, when there is only one idea that works, or something never happens, life is easy. Or rather, easier to think about. Why the Cretan paradox got more than fifteen minutes of banter, much less the ink and angst it spilled, follows from an identification that is both very easy to think about, but creates an apparent (yet illusional) impossibility. The situation when we refuse to take words literally or skim over the complicating factors is a little taxing at first, but soon resolved. All-or-nothing attitudes simplify our world. There are times when they can be useful, but many others when they cause elementary errors to snowball out of proportion.

If we return to the signs of Peirce and Merrell, we see that reducing great swaths of individual impressions to a single presence or absence ignores our capacity to deal with signs of firstness (sensing incomparable individual signs in the present) and secondness (relating signs to past signs). When we fail to deal with a type of sign, we wander down the road to delusion.

Tangled up in Nots

While all-ness proposes to unite the many into the one, we actually set up a sneaky binary, the problems of which we discussed in the previous essay. There is the all, and that which stands outside. Hamburgers, and all things that are not hamburgers. Democracy, and every other state. This kind of mistake is subtle and nasty. It’s called an error of logical type, or put another way, a categorical fallacy. We can’t compare the thing to its category—apples to fruit, nor the individual apple to “apples.” The latter does not exist. When I hold up a thing to a not-thing—everything else—I place two different orders of magnitude on the same playing field, which leads to misidentification, which leads to a host of possible errors.

Being able to think in abstractions, to create a category and a not-category, is a neat human trick. We can’t dispense with it without overhauling our entire way of thinking and experiencing the world. I don’t propose eliminating all-ness from our speech, because language reflects experience, and chances are we’re stuck with this heritage.

What I do suggest is remembering that when someone says all people are a certain way, no such thing is acceptable, or any other statement that creates an All or a Nothing, they are dealing in abstractions. Even when the exceptions seem too rare to bother with, it isn’t a whole truth. It won’t map precisely to experience. Consider that life is more complicated than that. Treat the all statement as a binary to be resolved: if money is the root of all evil, then there is an implied category of not-money, which may not produce evil, only not-evil things. Is that your experience? Can you think of exceptions, or complicating factors? What’s the ternary? Recall that there are many.

We can at least resolve to reduce the frequency with which we…reduce! By that I mean reducing individuals to categories, and speaking of certainties and impossibilities. It might make your daily thinking a little more complicated. You’ll have to turn to your senses, and deal with your emotions, outside of that narrow structure of thirdness. But won’t we all be happier if not every Cretan you meet is a liar?

Exercise

It’s rare that “everyone” does something, or that something “never” happens. These notions might work as rules of thumb, but only if we remember that they aren’t literal truths. Grant those exceptions a moment’s attention. You may find that they change your outlook and clarify your understanding.

7. Once a day, catch yourself making a statement about “all” of something, or “none” of some other thing. If you don’t do it by accident, then make up the first one that comes to mind.

Notice the images that enter your head, the feelings you have, and the physical sensations of the body as you hold this statement before your attention.

Then think of the exceptions—the individuals who are members in your “all,” or the positive exceptions to your “none.” Notice how the images, emotions, and sensations shift as you hold you this new statement.