This sentence is false.

@Night Ripper,

No, "This sentence has five words" is proper English grammar. I think you mean to say that it's not a common or useful sentence, other than its current utility. Of course, we can't forget "By the time you read this..." which is very common and very useful.[/QUOTE]

Your right. That's what i meant.

@greenghost08,

[QUOTE=greenghost08;166087]What I meant was that it is not a proper way of speaking in english.[/QUOTE]
I wouldn't say it's meaningless. It's ambiguous perhaps, but not meaningless. Once the ambiguity has been taken out and it's understood that it's self-referential, the question then is if it's cognitively meaningful.

Not all sentences are cognitively meaningful, but all propositions are cognitively meaningful. The only way to tell if the sentence is cognitively meaningful is to determine whether or not the sentence in fact expresses a proposition.

I don't see that a category error has been made, so I'm inclined to think that the sentence is cognitively meaningful; hence, it's in fact either true or false.

I'd like to see a consensus up to this point before going on and determining whether or not the proposition (if there is one) is true or not.

@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper;166088 wrote:

You know what he means. He means that it has little meaning. Stop being a pedant.

But having a little meaning is like being a little pregnant. And that isn't being pedantic. When has a sentence little meaning, and when has it some, and when has it a lot? And what (pedant that I am) do you mean by meaning? What I mean is that the sentence has a truth value, and truth value does not come in degrees. But what do you mean? (And is what you mean what it means for a sentence to have meaning, namely have truth value?).

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;166092 wrote:

And what (pedant that I am) do you mean by meaning?

I didn't make the statement. I was just clarifying for him and he's confirmed that I was right. When he said "it has little meaning" he meant significance as a role to play in everyday language use. So, in other words, it has little significance.

If you want to reformulate your argument as "When does something have a little significance? It is either significant or it is not." Then I submit that you are a little stupid because that's black-and-white thinking which is a form of the false dilemma fallacy.

@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper;166096 wrote:

I didn't make the statement. I was just clarifying for him and he's confirmed that I was right. When he said "it has little meaning" he meant significance as a role to play in everyday language use. So, in other words, it has little significance.

If you want to reformulate your argument as "When does something have a little significance? It is either significant or it is not." Then I submit that you are a little stupid because that's black-and-white thinking which is a form of the false dilemma fallacy.

If only you had told me that before I did it. Too late now, I suppose.

I didn't, by the way, use the term, "significant" which has a number of meanings, all of them fairly vague. I used the term "meaning", and explained that what I meant is, "has a truth value". So, that ought to clear that up. "Ought", not "will". To repeat, a sentence either has a truth value or it does not. End of story. The issue is, therefore, whether, "This sentence has five words" has a truth value. It does not. End of story.

@Night Ripper,

[QUOTE=Night Ripper;166088]Stop being a pedant.[/QUOTE]
I wouldn't rush to that conclusion. Go in that direction if you like, but don't hurry. You may just find that it's the very thing the cure of confusion is made of.

You bring up sentences. There are four kinds: 1) Declarative, 2) Interrogatory, 3) Imperative, and 4) Exclamatory.

Many sentences of each kind are meaningful, but when it comes to sentences that are cognitively meaningful, we are ordinarily only speaking about declarative sentences (but certainly not all of them).

Consider the sentences, "Wow, congratulations! Come over hear and give granny a hug." Those sentences are not meaningless, but they are cognitively meaningless (as neither of those sentences are true or false), and be us pedants or not, understanding that difference is important.

We've been talking about whether sentences are true or not, so it seems to me we've not been talking about whether or not (until just recently) they're merely meaningful but rather whether or not they're cognitively meaningful (true or false).

---------- Post added 05-19-2010 at 10:31 AM ----------

[QUOTE=kennethamy;166101]The issue is, therefore, whether, "This sentence has five words" has a truth value. It does not. End of story.[/QUOTE]If the sentence does not have a truth value, then the sentence does not express a proposition. Some sentences don't express propositions, so I'm open-minded to the possibility that this one doesn't either.

If we don't know what "this sentence" refers to, that doesn't imply that it's not self-referential, so our lack of knowledge doesn't affect the truth.

If the sentence commits a category error, then the sentence doesn't express a proposition. I don't see that it commits a category error.

It seems to me that what we needed was clarification regarding whether or not the sentence was self-referential, and it seems that it's been clarified, so I'm having trouble seeing why it fails to express a proposition.

@fast,

fast;166105 wrote:

I wouldn't rush to that conclusion. Go in that direction if you like, but don't hurry. You may just find that it's the very thing the cure of confusion is made of.

You bring up sentences. There are four kinds: 1) Declarative, 2) Interrogatory, 3) Imperative, and 4) Exclamatory.

Many sentences of each kind are meaningful, but when it comes to sentences that are cognitively meaningful, we are ordinarily only speaking about declarative sentences (but certainly not all of them).

Consider the sentences, "Wow, congratulations! Come over hear and give granny a hug." Those sentences are not meaningless, but they are cognitively meaningless (as neither of those sentences are true or false), and be us pedants or not, understanding that difference is important.

We've been talking about whether sentences are true or not, so it seems to me we've not been talking about whether or not (until just recently) they're merely meaningful but rather whether or not they're cognitively meaningful (true or false).

None of that has to do with the disagreement I had with kennethamy. You basically just talked right over the issue which in this case is actually fine because what you're talking about is on topic and kennethamy's literal interpretation of a figure of speech isn't. Though, nothing you've said is news to me so it's kind of peevish that you would present it as such.

---------- Post added 05-19-2010 at 09:50 AM ----------

1. This sentence has five words.

2. The above sentence has five words.

Now certainly (2) expresses a proposition so why doesn't (1)?

@Night Ripper,

[QUOTE=Night Ripper;166118]
1. This sentence has five words.

2. The above sentence has five words.

Now certainly (2) expresses a proposition so why doesn't (1)?[/QUOTE]

It might. You are presenting a sentence, but I have no way of knowing if you have taken that sentence out of a different context where "this sentence" actually refers to another sentence. So, "this sentence" is ambiguous between the sentence following the number 1 in the above quote and some other sentence that may or may not even exist.

Assuming that no wool is being pulled over my eyes and the sentence is in fact self-referential, then I'm now left to figure out whether or not the sentence expresses a proposition. To do that, I need to figure out whether or not the sentence is committing any category errors. So far as I can tell, it's not.

But, there is something else going on that is quite deceptive. Let's suppose for the sake of argument that the sentence does express a proposition. That would imply that the sentence is true or false (and not merely not true or not false). What's wrong with that? Nothing except that determining whether or not it's true is strangely problematic, as I cannot rightfully determine whether or not the proposition is true merely because the sentence stipulates that it is; that's equivalent to begging the question.

@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper;166118 wrote:

None of that has to do with the disagreement I had with kennethamy. You basically just talked right over the issue which in this case is actually fine because what you're talking about is on topic and kennethamy's literal interpretation of a figure of speech isn't. Though, nothing you've said is news to me so it's kind of peevish that you would present it as such.

---------- Post added 05-19-2010 at 09:50 AM ----------

1. This sentence has five words.

2. The above sentence has five words.

Now certainly (2) expresses a proposition so why doesn't (1)?

Why should it? How does the fact that 2 has a meaning imply that 1 does? If 1 had a meaning, then 1 would have a truth value. But 1 has no truth value. You can draw your own conclusion. The issue is, has 1 a truth value? It would help decide that issue if you could say what that truth value is, and why (I mean, of course, without begging the question).

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;166127 wrote:

But 1 has no truth value. You can draw your own conclusion. The issue is, has 1 a truth value?

Huh? :perplexed:

---------- Post added 05-19-2010 at 10:16 AM ----------

fast;166124 wrote:

So, "this sentence" is ambiguous between the sentence following the number 1 in the above quote and some other sentence that may or may not even exist.

How is it ambiguous? This sentence has five words. There is nothing ambiguous about that.

@kennethamy,

[QUOTE=kennethamy;166127]Why should it? How does the fact that 2 has a meaning imply that 1 does? If 1 had a meaning, then 1 would have a truth value. But 1 has no truth value. You can draw your own conclusion. The issue is, has 1 a truth value? It would help decide that issue if you could say what that truth value is, and why (I mean, of course, without begging the question).[/QUOTE]
We shouldn't rely on our conclusion that the sentence has five words in it because the sentence says it contains five words, but if we were to rely on our ability to correctly count them, then that would be different, yes?

---------- Post added 05-19-2010 at 11:21 AM ----------

Night Ripper;166131 wrote:

Huh? :perplexed:

---------- Post added 05-19-2010 at 10:16 AM ----------

How is it ambiguous? This sentence has five words. There is nothing ambiguous about that.

I had pizza yesterday afternoon. This sentence has five words. So, I guess you're right.

Is that way too subtle?

@fast,

fast;166133 wrote:

I had pizza yesterday afternoon. This sentence has five words. So, I guess you're right.

Is that way too subtle?

Yes, it is because it would be:

I had pizza yesterday afternoon. That sentence has five words.

This vs. that.

@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper;166135 wrote:

Yes, it is because it would be:

I had pizza yesterday afternoon. That sentence has five words.

This vs. that.

I thought of that, but I don't think so. That it's near is sufficient.

@fast,

fast;166137 wrote:

I thought of that, but I don't think so. That it's near is sufficient.

I disagree and I think the evidence is that you had to say it twice and then ask if you were being too subtle before I even got what you were trying to say. It was so unambiguous that you had to club me over the head with your point before I got it. We were talking about pizza earlier in this thread as well so your talk of pizza was chalked up as par for the course.

EDIT: I just noticed that "So, I guess you're right" has five words as well. You see, I really just don't go around counting the number of words in a sentence. That's why there's not even a hint of ambiguity though I doubt there would be if I did do something OCD like that.

@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper;166139 wrote:

I disagree and I think the evidence is that you had to say it twice and then ask if you were being too subtle before I even got what you were trying to say. It was so unambiguous that you had to club me over the head with your point before I got it. We were talking about pizza earlier in this thread as well so your talk of pizza was chalked up as par for the course.

EDIT: I just noticed that "So, I guess you're right" has five words as well. You see, I really just don't go around counting the number of words in a sentence. That's why there's not even a hint of ambiguity though I doubt there would be if I did do something OCD like that.

All I ever wanted you to see was why "this sentence" may not refer to the sentence in which "this sentence" is used.

---------- Post added 05-19-2010 at 11:39 AM ----------

I thought post #47 would have really drove home the point.

@Gnostic,

Hi,

Liar's Paradox! Will drive you nuts.
Keep away.

Thank you, and be fantastic.

Mark...

@fast,

fast;166140 wrote:

All I ever wanted you to see was why "this sentence" may not refer to the sentence in which "this sentence" is used.

Well, the example you gave doesn't show that. I racked my brain for one and here's the best example I can come up with.

"There's a sentence I want to talk about. The sentence is 'This sentence is false'. This sentence has plagued philosophers for many years."

As you can see, the above example manages to use "this sentence" in a way that provides the ambiguity you are looking for. However, it's only the surrounding context that allows for the ambiguity. Taken in isolation, "This sentence has plagued philosophers for many years." isn't ambiguous at all. It's referring to itself and is false, since I just wrote it.

@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper;166131 wrote:

Huh? :perplexed:

---------- Post added 05-19-2010 at 10:16 AM ----------

How is it ambiguous? This sentence has five words. There is nothing ambiguous about that.

The issue is, does 1 have a truth value.

Which sentence has five words? Would you mind mentioning a sentence, so I can count the words in that sentence. Otherwise, I am quite at a loss.

By the way, I certainly agree that the sentence, "this sentence has five words" does have five words. But why should I believe that the referent of "this sentence has five words" has five words when there is no referent of "this sentence"?

---------- Post added 05-19-2010 at 03:09 PM ----------

mark noble;166156 wrote:

Hi,

Liar's Paradox! Will drive you nuts.
Keep away.

Thank you, and be fantastic.

Mark...

Too late, alas! too late. By the way, this is not the Liar's paradox, although this is a self-referential paradox and the Liar's paradox is also a self-referential paradox.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;166169 wrote:

The issue is, does 1 have a truth value.

Which sentence has five words? Would you mind mentioning a sentence, so I can count the words in that sentence. Otherwise, I am quite at a loss.

By the way, I certainly agree that the sentence, "this sentence has five words" does have five words. But why should I believe that the referent of "this sentence has five words" has five words when there is no referent of "this sentence"?

---------- Post added 05-19-2010 at 03:09 PM ----------

Too late, alas! too late. By the way, this is not the Liar's paradox, although this is a self-referential paradox and the Liar's paradox is also a self-referential paradox.

If it has no referent, then why call it a self-referential paradox?

Maybe it seems like it has a referent but really doesn't? Hmmm.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;166169 wrote:

Which sentence has five words? Would you mind mentioning a sentence, so I can count the words in that sentence. Otherwise, I am quite at a loss.

This sentence has five words.

Anyone that claims not to know which sentence the "this sentence" refers to is either lying or stupid.

Philosophy Forum

This sentence is false.

Quick Links

My Account

able2know