Does "everything" include potential entities that could and could not happen, exist in our world or not exist, and are abstract, fictitious, or imaginary?
Do we include "everything" in addition to material things, non-material things, spiritual things, etc.? — wax1232

First off, the question has a slightly peculiar ring to our ears. wax1232 didn't ask "What is there?" although that's how many readers took his question, not entirely without reason. (Even Quine said the answer to "What is there?" is "Everything!" but then spent decades telling us what was not included in "everything.")

So in what circumstances would you ask "What does 'everything' include?" rather than "What is there?"

"Everything" is a quantifier. As Willow pointed out, it's most often most useful to use it in a restricted sense, with some domain specified or at least implied by context. It is always so used in mathematics for instance.

Philosophy, however, is not mathematics, and we seem to retain a use for absolute (unrestricted) quantifiers. For one thing, if "what there is" is precisely what is at issue, it can be tricky to use a restricted quantifier without begging the question.

I suspect the OP was presented, or thought up on his own, one of those maddening arguments that makes use of absolute quantifiers, and wants to figure out if it really makes sense. (I'm thinking of arguments that include premises like "Everything has a cause," "Everything must come from something," that sort of thing.)

This is not foolish. The question of how to interpret absolute quantifiers is quite serious.

Is there actually any use for unrestricted quantifiers? I think I can give you at least one, probably one of the first philosophers learn: "We can talk about anything." (Or if you prefer, "Everything can be talked about.") We learn this early, because we learn to tell people that just because you can talk about something, that doesn't mean it's real. (This has considerable appeal to undergraduates and positivists.) I would say that here we have an absolute, unrestricted quantifier, that we need it to make such a statement at all, and that it works just fine. (Hence my earlier answer to the OP of "yes.")

"Everything can be talked about." — Srap Tasmaner

Interesting. So language and the world are co-extensive?

The OP said that by "everything" he meant the universe. So I think he was asking about ontology. But then he disappeared. Apo scared him off.

Yep. Although Mariner's answer was awesome. Did you see it?

Yes. A good reply.

"Everything can be talked about."
— Srap Tasmaner
Interesting. So language and the world are co-extensive? — Banno

"No triangle has four sides."

The OP said that by "everything" he meant the universe. — Mongrel

Yeah, except he started by asking about "potential entities that could and could not happen, exist in our world or not exist, and are abstract, fictitious, or imaginary," so "everything."

:) 'All interesting discussions require a portion of confusion.' -- Isaac Asimov.

I happen to find it interesting that language can reach beyond the actual, beyond the non-actual, and even encompass the impossible. No doubt this outsize capacity leads us astray, but I like to think we could learn something about how language works if we really understood that.

Yep. Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. Or syntax is not semantics. The capacity to be meaningless or false is why language appears to have unlimited capacity to be meaningful or true.

Yes.

I like to think we could learn something about how language works if we really understood that. — Srap Tasmaner

Cool. Now, what is it we could learn?

Does "everything" include potential entities that could and could not happen, exist in our world or not exist, and are abstract, fictitious, or imaginary? — wax1232

Possible world semantics provides a structure in which what you might be calling "potential entities" can be discussed in a coherent fashion. You might like to check it out.

fictitious, or imaginary — wax1232

Two approaches might help.

In the first fiction and metaphor are translated into true statements; so, roughly, Bilbo destroyed the One Ring is true if and only if there is a story in which Bilbo destroyed the one ring. That is, there is a domain in which the statement is true.

In the second, a statement might be strictly meaningless, and should rather be seen as showing something. That is, the statement encourages the hearer to view something in a certain way. Viewed in this way language is able to reach beyond the literal.

Either approach might have a use.

shouting your usual "metaphysics is bunk" slogans, — apokrisis

The OP is a question about the use of the word "everything". Surely a utilitarian would agree?

My point was even the metaphysical use of "everything" is only the restricted "all of this context" usage. Just here, for example, you are not talking about "everything." You are talking about every triangle in realationship to having four sides.

When we use "everything" in talking about possible and metaphysics, it's actually playing the same sort of role as when we say: "everything in the bag is gone."

In the unrestricted "everything" is an illusion all the way down (or up). Yes, we may say: "everything may be talked about" but in that statement we have talked about anything-- our language has described no state of the world. "Everything" is nothing. We aren't​ speaking about any moment of the world.

Now one might point out the unrestricted "everything" is talking about possibilities, saying that our language may talk of anything. This is true, but what does it mean? Well, it isolates the specific possibility of what our language can say. In the sense that it talks about anything, it's restricted to a specific possibility. It not about an unrestricted "everything" at all.

Surely a utilitarian would agree? — Banno

Are you a utilitarian? I'm a pragmatist - and Peircean not Jamesian. So different in essential ways.

Ramsey was getting it - and whispering it in Witti's ear in a way that inspired PI. So AP could have gone down a very different road after its failed project of logical atomism. You might have had a very different philosophical indoctrination as a result. Life is so full of paths not taken.

You are talking about every triangle in realationship to having four sides. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yep. So we can talk about the intersection of sets - {triangles} and {four sided polygons} - that then result in empty sets. It fits one view of set logic. But then more realistic is the thought that triangles are a subset of the polygons. And the particular constraint is that they have just three sides. Or even more importantly - in being maximally generic - they are the least sides a polygon can have in a two dimensional plane.

So an apparently simple logical operation is in fact a flattening of the hierarchical complexity of an actual world (even the actuality represented by the idea of spaces enclosed by edges on a plane).

A subsumptive hierarchy notation would make the point plainer - {n-gon {3-gon}}. Or putting it the other way around, given the world of a plane - constraint in two dimensions - the minimum constraint that has to be added to close those two degrees of freedom is 1 further. Or a rotation of 180 degrees. The n-gon, effectively a circle or 360 degree rotation, is then the maximum number of sides that can be used to enclose a space.

So four sided triangles sound a logical nonsense because they are understood as a particular of set theoretic operation. But set theory is itself a metaphysically impoverished language for doing real metaphysics. Logical atomism's spectacular crash and burn was surely enough to demonstrate that. And perhaps you can forgive the survivors for walking away muttering, metaphysics, never again! :)

Now one might point out the unrestricted "everything" is talking about possibilities, saying that our language may talk of anything. This is true, but what does it mean? Well, it isolates the specific possibility of what our language can say. In the sense that it talks about anything, it's restricted to a specific possibility. It not about an unrestricted "everything" at all. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Again yep. This is why a metaphysical strength logic wants to employ the further notion of vagueness, or the distinction between the radically indeterminate and the crisply individuated.

Vagueness can never be exhausted by inquiry. And the good thing about that is it means inquiry doesn't have to exhaust itself trying.

Theories of truth break themselves on the rocks because they believe the world is something definite and therefore every possible proposition has some true or false value. It's that AP disease. But as soon as you take the pragmatic view, everything changes. Truth only needs determining to the degree that a difference could make a difference.

So that is a real economising move. Truth is only in question to the degree it might actually matter in terms of a purpose or finality. We can lighten up. That was Witti's Peircean point.

On the other hand, we then need an objective model of finality - the purpose that determines what counts as meaningful. So that is the extra work that philosophy of language types never really got going on because they retreated into a commonsense realism about speech acts, thus completely avoiding the metaphysical issues which semiotics had already addressed.

As best I understand your last post, you're claiming there's something it's always pointless or meaningless or incoherent to talk about, that our language doesn't even allow us to talk about, and then you tell me what that is we can't actually talk about.

I still don't know what the OP's purpose was in asking the question he asked, because he hasn't told us. It might be, on closer inspection, incoherent. But I think it was prima facie meaningful.

It was only my opinion about "everything" and I wanted to know if it makes any sense in philosophy. I wanted to see the opinions and views of other people. I know - in philosophy everyone can have their own views about life, space etc. but I wanted to know if it had something to do with other's opinion.

An American philosopher named Wilfrid Sellars said this:

The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term.

Welcome to philosophy. We hope you enjoy your stay.