total semantic pit

I was wondering about this, as the antipode to “this statement is false”, which is a contradiction, it just denies itself. But the opposite is even more awkward.

this statement is true

look at it.

This statement is true.

“This statement is true”

This Statement Is True.

I now wonder, my mind hasn’t ever responded to a statement as it does to this statement. It seems vacuously hollow in a very dynamic way.
I feel this can’t even qualify as a statement. So then it is false. But that can’t be true either.

You see I am starting to suspect there is a problem with true and false. But… what?

Since truth or falsity refers to the existence of the clause before it, because there is no referential after it (so it defaults)

A better way to conceive this is:

This statement exists

This statement doesn’t exist

1.) is true
2.) is false

The difference is in the semantic versus the syntactic.

“This statement is true” is syntactically perfect, but semantically void. There is a void between words and that which they denote, which the semantic bridges but the syntactic doesn’t. The syntactic remains relevant to the internal sense between the words that were intended to be used to denote other things that are not the words themselves, but in your stated case did not.

Syntactics were of course derived from semantics, presumably in order to link semantically valid statements in a coherent way. They had a separate function to what you’re looking for and not finding: meaning. The statement is “false” in and only in that it carries no external meaning, even though the internal meaning remains in tact.

The problem isn’t with false and true, so much as what false and true relate to.