Everything about Self Reference totally explained
Self-reference is a phenomenon in
natural or
formal languages consisting of a
sentence or
formula referring to itself directly, or through some intermediate sentence or formula, or by means of some
encoding. In
philosophy, it also refers to the ability of a subject to speak of or refer to himself, herself, or itself: to have the kind of thought expressed in English by
the word "I".
Self-reference is possible when there are two logical levels, a level and a meta-level. It is most commonly used in
mathematics,
philosophy,
computer programming, and
linguistics. Self-referential statements can lead to
paradoxes (but see
Antinomy for limits on the significance of these).
Usage
An example of a self-referential situation is the one of
autopoiesis, as the logical organization produces itself the physical structure which creates itself.
In
metaphysics, self-reference is
subjectivity, while "hetero-reference", as it's called (see
Niklas Luhmann), is objectivity.
Self-reference also occurs in
literature when an author refers to his work in the context of the work itself. Famous examples include
Cervantes's
Don Quixote,
Denis Diderot's
Jacques le fataliste et son maître,
Italo Calvino's
If on a winter's night a traveler, many stories by
Nikolai Gogol,
Lost in the Funhouse by
John Barth, and
Luigi Pirandello's
Six Characters in Search of an Author. This is closely related to the concepts of
breaking the fourth wall and
meta-reference, which often involve self-reference.
The
surrealistic painter
René Magritte is famous for his self-referential works. His painting
The Treachery of Images, shown at right, includes words claiming, in French, it isn't a pipe, the truth of which depend entirely on what the word "ceci" (in English, "this") is taken to refer to. Is it the pipe depicted—or is it the painting, or even the sentence itself?
Self-reference is also employed in
tautology and in
licensed terminology. When a word defines itself (for example, "Machine: any objects put together mechanically"), the result is a tautology. Such self-references can be quite complex, include full propositions rather than simple words, and produce arguments and terms that require license (accepting them as proof of themselves).
Self-reference in
computer science is seen in the concept of
recursion, where a program unit relies on instances of itself to perform a computation. The
Lisp programming language is especially designed to exploit recursion. Many object oriented languages use special keywords to refer to the current instance of an object:
this in
C++,
Java, and
PHP;
self in
Smalltalk and
Objective C; and
Me in
Visual Basic, although some, like
Python, do this differently.
Examples
Many of the following examples appear in
Douglas Hofstadter's
Metamagical Themas, or
I Am a Strange Loop.
Mathematics
Sentences
"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation. (This is a version of the liar paradox, an example of indirect self-reference through a quine, which leads to a paradox.)
Russell's paradox: The set of all sets which are not elements of themselves (which includes, and therefore does not, and therefore does include itself)
The Fumblerules
Fumblerules state rules of good grammar and writing through sentences that violate those very rules. George L. Trigg and William Safire have made their own lists, but anyone knowledgeable on grammar can do the same.
Literature
"beware: don't read this poem" by Ishmael Reed - "the hunger of this poem is legendary, it has taken in many victims"
references itself in the title, as well as throughout the story.
Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls by Robert A. Heinlein considers the universe (multiverse) as an author-manipulated object including the plot in the book itself.
Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder, in which the titular character realizes she's the character of a book.
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende uses self-reference of the book prominently, when a character (Atreyu) of a story within the story (also called 'Neverending Story') finds a book called the same, and it's the same book the reader is reading.
Other
Self-enumerating pangrams
Article 52 of the Irish Constitution has prohibited publication of Article 52 in official texts since 1938 despite continuing to have the force of law.
RFC 2119 dictates the use of key words describing requirement levels — such as "must", "should" and "may" — in RFCs. The abstract of the RFC states that the key words are to be interpreted as described in the RFC.
Don't Download This Song by "Weird Al" Yankovic
Steal This Album! by System of a Down
Steal This Album by The Coup
referring to oneself in third person narrative
TLA, as an acronym for Three-letter acronymFurther Information
Get more info on 'Self Reference'.
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