[Renall]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Your interpretation is bordering with a non congnitivist philosophy, and that's quite debatable in my opinion. You are falling in the same philosphical fluff that defies common sense that you criticized in Haguruma.

It has nothing to do with that and everything to do with logic. Not "logic the thing you use to think" but "logic the proposition-testing system of philosophy." I agree with you that a nonexistent thing doesn't have a color. But, formally, any statement about the properties of something whose properties cannot be observed or asserted conclusively can't simply be dismissed as false, because it would make its negation true, and its negation isn't true either. This is part of what Russell was talking about; normally, if we say the cow isn't brown, then we know the negation is true that the cow is some color other than brown. The cow exists, and we can verify that statement, so we don't run into any problems. And even when speaking abstractly about things that exist, we know we at least could test them, so we know that either the proposition is true or its negation is true.

The whole issue crops up when you're discussing a thing that isn't. If a knock really happens, then you can describe what the knock was and wasn't with ease. But if a knock doesn't happen, how can you describe it? It's like the old "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" koan. You can't describe what it sounds like, but at the same time you can't describe what it doesn't sound like, because it's impossible (well, it actually isn't impossible... but you know what I and the ancient philosophers mean).

However, describing how people would react to a thing that isn't is still perfectly fine, since you can just negate it to the case of how they wouldn't react since the thing didn't happen. So most of the stuff about the knock never runs up against this because it talks about what people did or didn't do or would or wouldn't do if a knock did happen or was made, which it is never actually stated that it is.

It is implied, but rereading the red I think this is a translation issue and LyricalAura is correct that the definite article "the" should be stripped from any red about "a knock." You can easily rewrite every red about the knock with "a knock" or "a knocking sound" instead of "the knock," thus entirely decoupling the notion that Lambda was ever even suggesting it was an actual event (existent or otherwise) from the text as presented.

Originally Posted by Kealym

Also, about the nature of meaningless red statements that's been going on ... well, I can accept that a lot of really shady things can probably be said in red (though I'm agreeing much much more with Jan-Poo than Renall here), in the context of the narrative, the human side HAS always had the right to ask for clarification of meaning and intent. That could POTENTIALLY be an eternal check as the two sides quibble over semantics endlessly ("Oh no,I was using 'key' to mean 'ancient babylonian language ciphers!"), but thankfully Ryu never takes it that far, 'cause it'd be annoying and boring.

Yes, the human side has the right to ask for it. They just don't unless it's convenient for the author. That's part of the frustration I have with the story. Especially in Dawn, where Erika obsessively asks for clarification of every detail and definition until at some point she just stops doing that even though it would help her.