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meditation answer to “What rule could restrict our beliefs to just propositions that can be meaningful, without excluding a priori anything that could in principle be true?”
Rule: that we continue to use the words true and truth to describe if something corresponds to reality within a wider context of prediction, experimentation and action, and not solely observation. In this case we expand the senses of perception to include rational experimentation as part of how we evaluate true or not true. The weird part about this is an underlying assumption that reality doesn’t necessarily correspond to matter etc. but instead to relationships that can be described or modeled on some level by language. For example the underlying assumption that the sky is a discrete color. I think this is a good answer because then we can incorporate observations into different aspects of our model and not just use it to assess predictions. For example, “the sky is a color > the sky is blue > the median spectrum for the sky on earth is… > the martian sky is also blue > the sky is blue like xerxes wings… etc. None of these statements follow rationally from one another. They instead create a sort of orb where each statement aligns along a different intersecting axis where the word “is” at the origin.
It’s a weird, abstract image where “is” and truth are corresponding statements that exist at the nucleus of interrelated concepts, ideas, phrases, equations etc. Truth is simultaneously the equal sign, and also what it is that makes the equal sign an outrageously useful tool.
you could take those last sentences about truth, and put a vertex where each “is” or = is, and make a 3d shape. And that would be cool. It wouldn’t be useful but it would be a way of illustrating the notion that truth is relational, creates structures, and might follow intuitions and descriptions that are non-linear, oddly constrained or alien, all while remaining concrete.
Lastly, the underlying assumption of this rule makes ai truly terrifying.