Words, meaning, truth

When my artificial intelligence A.s.a. H. senses its near something,  experiences a force on its exterior framework, and then senses acceleration it forms a concept. We can simultaneously present the word “collision” and A.s.a. will name this concept. As time goes on this concept and the meaning of the word “collision” may change/evolve. A.s.a. might experience contact with a whisker or bumper switch instead of or in addition to feeling an external force, for example. I believe human words and their meanings evolve in a similar way.

I have just read Michael Butler’s Deflationism and Semantic Theories of Truth (Pendlebury Press, 2017). Should we be interested in defining truth in formal (closed) systems or in natural languages (open systems)? How similar will the two concepts of truth be? How relevant will one be to the understanding of the other?

“Tarski himself describes the problem of defining truth for natural languages as meeting with ‘unsuperable difficulties.’ Among these difficulties he cites that natural language is not bounded, in the sense that new words can always be added to it...” “...portions of a natural language, such as those dealing with an empirical science might be sufficiently formalized to allow the application of Tarskian methods.” (Butler, pg 75) But don’t scientific terms/words also change/evolve over time? Are space and time what Newton thought they were? Is E/(c*c) the concept of mass that Newton had?

Natural languages have long resisted attempts to axiomatize them.

The concept of truth as consistency or coherence will change if one goes from one conceptualization of reality to another. (In scientific pluralism.) If truth is defined by valid deduction from true assumptions what is true will very as one’s set of assumptions varys. Truth based on the satisfaction of definitions changes as our definitions vary and again, even scientific definitions vary over time and even from one research program to another. Theories are always underdetermined by the evidence.
Pragmatic bases of truth depend upon what is useful to a particular culture in a particular environment.

Perhaps closed formal systems can never be in complete correspondence with open natural languages. Perhaps “laws” of nature, written in formal languages, can never be completely correct. i.e. we should think models rather than laws. (See, for example, Science Without Laws, Creager, Lunbeck, and Wise, eds., Duke Univ. Press, 2007.)