Re: Concept_sitting

Yup. And so the attempts to get around Goedel don't merely eschew
self-reference, but any sort of meta-reference.  A statement cannot
refer to anything about the medium containing it, includong adjacent
statements, etc.  This is of course silly since there are plenty of
examples in the wild, starting with "this space left blank", various
advertisements, etc.



On 1/22/09, Paul Kershaw <ptkershaw@...> wrote:
> Mark,
>
> It occurred to me this morning that my point about non-referential
> statements isn't trivial after all. Here are two statements that could
> easily occur naturally, albeit not next to each other:
>
> The next sentence is false. The preceding sentence is true.
>
> The sentences are not self-referential and, as I illustrated, could
> plausibly occur "in the wild." Together, they hold the same basic paradox.
>
> -- Paul
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
>> From: Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
>> >> (Proponents of those theories would simply say that no speaker would
>> >> ever "naturally emit" a sentence like "This sentence is false", so it
>> >> doesn't count.)
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Mark J. Reed
>> >
>> > Nit: I can easily imagine scenarios in which a native English speaker
>> > would
>> > naturally produce the sentence "This sentence is false," but "this
>> > sentence"
>> > wouldn't be self-referential, and hence the sentence wouldn't be
>> > paradoxical
>> > (e.g., someone's reading a news article aloud and pauses after a
>> > sentence to
>> > proclaim it false).
>> >
>> > -- Paul
>
--
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Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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