Questions tagged [self-reference]
The self-reference tag has no usage guidance.
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Is Occam's razor a philosophical application of Occam's razor itself in epistemology? Is it a meta for itself?
I have to apologize for my title but this seems to me the only way I could have articulated this weird intuitive idea I had for the Occam's razor meta-analysis. Usually I tend to analyze things on the ...
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How does Gödel’s encoding of mathematical statements into natural numbers enable self-referential propositions?
As part of his proof for the first incompleteness theorem, Gödel encoded mathematical expressions into unique numbers. These were used to construct statements exhibiting self-referentiality, such as ...
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Do Gödel sentences (even indirectly) assert only their own unprovability?
Sometimes the basic Gödel sentence is said to mean something like, "This sentence is unprovable in system F." Perhaps more correctly, it is sometimes said to mean something like, "There ...
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Has any philosopher written about the implications of online multiplayer games on shared consciousness?
This question originates from the explanation of Existential Comics 332.
When The Matrix came out, the New York Times reached out to philosopher of mind John Searle to write an article about the ...
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Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem
I'll keep this short and sweet.
Construct Axiomatic System A in which we can do math.
Gödel Sentence G = G is unprovable in A.
Gödel's Argument (I)
If G is provable then there's proof that G has no ...
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In the liar/similar sentences, are the characteristic predicates being used more generally or more particularly, or neither?
Between (1) and (2), it seems like "is true" is more particular in the latter than the former:
The truth predicate ("is true") is a predicate attaching to (interpreted) sentences ...
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Would, "Don't run this program," pose a similar problem as, "Don't comply with this imperative"?
I was reading the SEP article on philosophy and computer science and there was this passage:
Suber (1988) goes even further, maintaining that hardware is a kind of software. Software is defined as ...
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Can, "This problem is unsolvable," be used to formulate the first incompleteness theorem in erotetic logic specifically?
Assumptions/definitions: the Gödel sentence is informally equivalent to, "This sentence can't be proved in system X," where X is appropriately specified. Since that sentence can itself be ...
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"Impredicative" definitions in mathematics
In this blog post, the following definition of an "impredicative definition" is offered:
A definition is said to be impredicative if it defines an object E by means of a quantification over a ...
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"I vow that this sentence 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 be true," vs., "I vow that this sentence 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘭 be true"
To try to "explain" why the liar sentence is "logically dangerous" whereas the Gödel sentence is "logically helpful," I tried out contrasting the differing "effect&...
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How can I optimize the attributes of God?
The Problem
The three traditional attributes of God (in whichever tradition it is) are omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence. Under the assumption that reasonable discussion of God is possible,...
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Is there some formal system of "first-person logic"?
The SEP article on indexicals mentions a lot of the seemingly logical complications that arise in connection with them. Indexicals are also comparable to variables and hence objects of schematism, so ...
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Kant's transcendental apperception and 'ipseity' in phenomenology
In the writings of various phenomenologists, the concept of 'ipseity' is widely discussed. As far as I can make out from various sources (e.g. Zahavi, Subjectivity and Selfhood, esp. chapter 5), ...
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Does the cardinal Yablo problem have the same solution as the ordinal one?
To quote Kant (as usual!):
A quantity is infinite, if a greater than itself cannot possibly exist. The quantity is measured by the number of given units- which are taken as a standard—contained in it....
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How should we characterize the logical structure of wishes?
The motivation for this question is extraordinarily stupid, but it requires just enough thought and specific knowledge of formal logic that I think it still falls within the broad scope of "...
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