Do you agree with this?
All sentences are a reproduction, with variation, of an earlier sentence.
All sentences are a reproduction, with variation, of an earlier sentence.
Been used before
Not really. It might be accurate to say that all clauses are variations of a previous clause, but the way you can string clauses together theoretically allows sentences of infinite length.
- Kef
- Kef
If true, then for all sentences there exists an earlier sentence. Thus the number of sentences that ever have been would be infinite. Nobody can produce an infinite number of sentences. There have not been an infinite number of beings capable of producing sentences. There the statement must be false.
<Thus the number of sentences that ever have been would be infinite. Nobody can produce an infinite number of sentences.>
You missed this part, Jim:
<<with variation, >>
You missed this part, Jim:
<<with variation, >>
How so? Though I did overlook the premise that there exists a sentence.
With or without variation, for a sentence to be a reproduction of an earlier sentence, this earlier sentence must have existed. Thus if this statement is true then for every sentence that existed there was an earlier one. This eariler one, being a sentence too, must therefore have been preceeded by an even eariler one. The same would be true of this even eariler one. This could be extended infinitely. The statement therefore (admittedly taken very literally) entails that if there exists or ever had existed a sentence, then there has existed an infinite number of them. Reductio ad absurdum.
I still think that the point that sentences can be infinitely long means that the statement cannot be true, unless you have a very, very broad definition of "variation"...
- Kef
- Kef
All Jim's sentences above and your too, Kef, I have seen before. Some of the words may be different, but they are at base the same sentences i've seen a thousand times.
Perhaps, but what if I make a single sentence that's as long as the U.S. Declaration of Independence? Would you have seen that sort of sentence before?
- Kef
- Kef
<Would you have seen that sort of sentence before? >
Do it, then I'll tell you if i have.
Do it, then I'll tell you if i have.