Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern

I: Snags and Snarls

1. On Self-Referential Sentences

• Many systems have the capability to represent or refer to themselves somehow, to designate themselves (or elements of themselves) within the system of their own symbolism. Whenever this happens, it is an instance of self-reference.
• Self-reference is often associated with paradox, but this is not necessarily the case.
• The classic paradox is 'Epimenides the Cretan said "All Cretans are liars."'
• It seems that all paradoxes involve, in one way or another, self-reference, whether it is achieved directly or indirectly.
• The philosophical problem of the connections among Platonic ideas, mental activity, physiological brain activity, and the external symbols that trigger them is vividly raised by these disturbing sentences:
  • I am the meaning of this sentence.
  • I am the thought you are now thinking.
  • I am thinking about myself right now.
  • I am the set of neural firings taking place in your brain as you read the set of letters in this sentence and think about me.
  • This inert sentence is my body, but my soul is alive, dancing in the sparks of your brain.
• Content is just fancy form. Content is just a shorthand way of saying "form perceived by a very fancy apparatus capable of making complex and subtle distinctions and abstractions and connections to prior concepts.
• When self-reference (or reference in general, for that matter) is indirect, mediated by form, then fluidity is required. The understanding of such sentences involves a mixture of deriving the content and yet retaining the form in mind, letting qualities of the form in mind, letting qualities of the form conjure up flavors and enhance the meaning with a halo of not-quite-conscious pseudo-meanings, connotations, flavors, that flicker in the mind, not quite out of reach.