Self-reference

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Self-reference occurs in natural or formal languages when a sentence, idea or formula refers to itself.

Description

The reference may be expressed either directly -- 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 by the first person nominative singular pronoun, the word "I" in English.

Self-reference is studied and has applications in mathematics, philosophy, computer programming, and linguistics. Self-referential statements are sometimes paradoxical.

See also

External links