Re: The set of all JOKES.....

On Feb 24, 6:13 pm, "charlesweh...@xxxxxxxxxxx"
<charlesweh...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 24 Feb., 13:46, "LauLuna" <laureanol...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

You propose the following as the definition of one set and one joke:
'this is the set of all jokes that does include itself'

Let's call it 'J' and let me reformulate:

J =def. (x; x is a joke or x=J)

The definiens includes the definiendum. So, it is not a definition.

Quite wrong!

Bertrand Russell gave us "The set of all sets that does not include
itself". That is where your last statement came from. The joke is a
pastiche of the Russell "Set of all sets".

Your point seems to be that you can fix the circularity by means of
'itself'.

It is an illusion. 'Itself' is a pronoun and is in the place of a
noun, and the noun is in this context precisely 'J'.

That is the joke. The word "itself" does not of itself NEED to be used
in place of a noun. It is not rigidly, and for all time, condemned to
be a pronoun. As a WORD, and nothing but a word, it is a NOUN.

I think some kinds of radical egalitarianism arise from this mistake.

No mistake. You just failed to be flexible enough to see the PUN from
both directions.

History advises not to take this as a joke.

History advises that those who speak for history are invariably wrong.

A friend in England said that the "set of all jokes" is something that
one tells today, and in twenty years' time, somebody goes "Har, har,
har". A sense of humour is necessary if one wishes to understand
jokes.

Charles Douglas Wehner

Quite wrong. " "itself" " is a name for "itself" and thus a noun in
meta-language, but "itself" is not a noun. You can think of it as a
sequence of letters but then it is not a noun either.

And this is why your pun does not work:

'this is the set of all jokes that does contain itself' refers by
means of 'itself' to the set and not to the word 'itself'. So, it
cannot claim to be saying that it contains the word 'itself'.

Regards



.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: English ethnonyms Re: Loanwords of Turkish Origin
    ... >>> would probably not understand it as an insult (depending on the way ... In the languages I know nationalities have no ... 'Polack' jokes are the archetypical stupid person jokes, ... > Interestingly, if the noun and adjective are identical, the noun is ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: I Like This Group!
    ... taste "jokes." ... noun, thereby requiring the possessive "your" preceding it rather than ...
    (rec.outdoors.rv-travel)
  • Re: I Like This Group!
    ... appreciate you reposting my entire previous offering regarding bad ... taste "jokes." ... noun, thereby requiring the possessive "your" preceding it rather than ...
    (rec.outdoors.rv-travel)
  • Re: The set of all JOKES.....
    ... The story begins with "This is the set of all jokes that does include ... If we make the mistake once, the first joke WITHIN the binary set ... There are four RESTARTS in this joke, ... noun, and the noun is in this context precisely 'J'. ...
    (sci.logic)
  • STIX fonts update
    ... The STIX fonts website has been updated again. ... Insert your own jokes here. ... when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true. ... -- Bertrand Russell ...
    (comp.text.tex)