No claim can be about everything, since "everything" would have to include "the set of all things that does not include this claim," which would violate the definition.
By
Speaker-to-Animals
on October 31, 2007
2
5
28.6% 71.4%
Embed Claim
Make a related claim
This claim was inspired by
Claims inspired by this one
Similar claims
- 2-4 No claim can be about everything, since "everything" would have to include "the set of all sets that do not include themselves as members," which can only include itself if it does not include itself, which would violate the definition.
- 2-3 "Everyone is special" and "no one is special" are not equivalent statements, because the first statement affirms and values the uniqueness of every individual whereas the second does not.
- 6-13 Wherever there is information, there is a preceding intelligence.
- 2-1 "It may nevertheless be thought that we cannot recognize a property of a thing without at the same time realizing the thought that this thing has this property to be true."
- 58-1 Potato chips are food, but not all food is potato chips.
Discussion (4)
this sentence is about the set of all things that do not include this sentence, and this sentence.
see? that paradox you imagine doesn't translate, because "including" and "being about" aren't the same. even rewording it "this sentence is about the set of all sentences not about this sentence and also about itself" doesn't work, because being about something isn't transitive.
consider:
There is a sentence about this sentence.
That sentence is about the next sentence.
Two sentences ago, there was a sentence about this sentence and itself, and the sentence after it was about the same two sentences, and not about itself at all; but this sentence is a run-on and is about all three.
Claims inspired by this comment
A "paradox" is unsolveable, & is likely to give you a Headache.yes -- except that the paradox doesn't work this way.
All righty, then....
http://tinyurl.com/2pu4mm
And BTW, thanks for educating me about Russell's Paradox!