Seems like statements can have both verity (truthiness) and falsity in varying quantities. They might sum to 0, 1, or anything at all. Whether a statement has meaning seems important, too. '2020 will be a rainy year.' does not have meaning (yet). Pretty soon, though, the universe will reach a certain point where that statement starts to accumulate verity & falsity. Maybe 2020 will be a peak monsoon season in the Eastern Hemisphere; verity++. Maybe it'll be a record drought in North America, too; falsity++. This is not a 1-dimensional spectrum.
Seems like meaning is some sort of vector norm over || < verity, falsity > ||. It should be easy to imagine scenarios all across this unit square for '2020 will be rainy': (0,0) is now, (1,0) means lots of agreed-to raining everywhere, ( .9, .9) is crazy weather, and ( .2, 1) means it was mostly dry that year.
This seems heavily reliant on human interpretation, but trying to extract "intrinsic truthiness" will always rely upon some global context telling you what the rules are. '2 = 3' is absolutely true, depending on what you think the rules are.
'Correctness' seems to correspond to (verity - falsity), which is why ( .9, .9) is certainly meaningful but doesn't improve on the correctness of saying 2020 is rainy.
I have a haunting feeling GEB talks about this, though I never finished reading yet.
Seems like meaning is some sort of vector norm over || < verity, falsity > ||. It should be easy to imagine scenarios all across this unit square for '2020 will be rainy': (0,0) is now, (1,0) means lots of agreed-to raining everywhere, ( .9, .9) is crazy weather, and ( .2, 1) means it was mostly dry that year.
This seems heavily reliant on human interpretation, but trying to extract "intrinsic truthiness" will always rely upon some global context telling you what the rules are. '2 = 3' is absolutely true, depending on what you think the rules are.
'Correctness' seems to correspond to (verity - falsity), which is why ( .9, .9) is certainly meaningful but doesn't improve on the correctness of saying 2020 is rainy.
I have a haunting feeling GEB talks about this, though I never finished reading yet.