>A few comments on my own post. First, I am confused and don't want to set
>myself up as an expert on what an axiom is...it is not very obvious to me.
>I think that an axiom contains a teleological element, a tautological
>element, and a relationship between the two that objectively manifests
(and
>I'm not even sure what I just said).
An axiom, according to the dictionary, is a self-evident statement which
does not require proof. Something you just assume. But, it seems like the
statement, "statements can be either falsifiable, tautologies, or axioms"
can be either an axiom or a falsifiable statement. The statement seems
true, but it seems true based on *proof*--all observed statements seem to
fall into one of those 3 categories. You can assume it's axiomatically
true, or you can try to falsify it by finding a counter example, if
possible. If it's used as an axiom, I'd call it a "good" axiom, since,
unlike religions which use axioms on which to support closed ideologies,
this axiom says something useful about statements.
> Next, I'm fairly certain that a joke
>is a tautology (even my example "Bill hits himself" seems funny, in a
way).
I agree that jokes are tautologies--they all seem to have a circular
pattern of self-reference. Even entire comedy routines are
tautological--they have "callback" lines in which jokes refer to previous
jokes. You said earlier that riddles survive to resolve their negation,
but jokes do not. What do you mean by that?
--David R.