Unless they happen to be talking to someone -- say, an extraterrestrial visitor -- who knows nothing about mice or cows. AND what to deceive said person. ("You just sit right over there, Xangor, while my friend drops a cow on your head. Don't worry, you won't feel a thing...")
But even so, the sentence is not really about cows and mice, it's about what someone is telling someone. And if you say it, then it makes itself true, technically.
Oh, I see. The joke here is saying that a statement like "I am now saying that two and two makes five" has to be true because the speaker is accurately describing what he's saying.
In real life, though, people use the phrase "I'm telling you that X is true" to mean, "Believe me, I know for a fact that X is true." So I don't think your logic-chopping would get you much sympathy from a jury for this particular example.
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In real life, though, people use the phrase "I'm telling you that X is true" to mean, "Believe me, I know for a fact that X is true." So I don't think your logic-chopping would get you much sympathy from a jury for this particular example.
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