I thought I just explained it in the same paragraph and in the parenthetical. Did you read those? If so, which claim do you find implausible or irrelevant to the issue?
The purpose of my remarks following the part you quoted was to clarify what I meant, so I'm not sure what to do when you cut that explanation off and plead incomprehension.
I'll say it one more time in a different way: You make certain assumptions, both in the background, and in your language, when you claim that "100 angels can dance on the head of a pin". As those assumptions turn out false, they lose importance, and you are forced to ask a different question with different assumptions, until you're no longer answering anything like e.g. "Do humans have free will?" or about angels -- both your terms, and your criteria for deciding when you have an acceptable answer, have changed so as to render the original question irrelevant and meaningless.
(Edit: So once you've learned enough, you no longer care if "Do humans have free will?" is "true", or even what such a thing means. You know why you asked about the phenomenon you had in mind with the question, thus "unasking" the question.)
I looked at the list of theories of truth you linked, and they don't seem to address (or be robust against) the kind of situation we're talking about here, in which the very assumptions behind claims are undergoing rapid change, and necessitate changes to the language in which you express claims. The pragmatic (#2) sounds closest to what I'm judging answers to philosophical questions by, though.
Thanks, that's actually much clearer to me.
You know why you asked about the phenomenon you had in mind with the question, thus "unasking" the question.
But can't that knowledge be expressed as a truth in some language, even if not the one that I used when I first asked the question? To put it another way, if I'm to be given confusion extinguishing answers, I still want them to be true answers, because surely there are false answers that will also extinguish my confusion (since I'm human and flawed).
I'm worried about prematurely identifying th...
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Like my post The Best Textbooks on Every Subject, this is meant to be a community-driven post. The first goal is to identify topics the Less Wrong community would like to read more about. The second goal is to encourage Less Wrongers to write on those topics. (Respecting, of course, the implicit and fuzzy guidelines for what should be posted to Less Wrong.)
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