That’s the point. I took the Red: “Kanon is dead.” I asked myself: what possible meanings does this statement have in English? (which really means: what possible meanings can this have across all public language-games?)
I then deduced: “all meanings of dead can be categorized into the following three options of a), b), and c); therefore, the meaning of ‘Kanon is dead’ is equivalent to at least one of these three.” I neglected to further look into c), since I don’t really need to right now; but if I wanted to categorize it fully, I would use “meanings of dead” in the public extension of it across all public language-games, which a dictionary does a good job of doing.
But we still use “I shot you! You’re dead!” in cops and robbers - the meaning being precisely “you’re out; you’ve lost the Game; in this role-play, the character you’ve played is dead.”
It is a use of language in games. It is a public extension of the word “dead”.
Precisely: he lost his role on the open stage. But he has another, deeper existence: his actual biological body. His real self. Even in the cases where “X is dead” refers to the end of a role or a character being role-played or being drunk on his feet, it still means something ended. The Red has a meaning; the mere fact that Battler didn’t think to use Blue to clarify the meanings of the Red through his theories (which was precisely the purpose of the Blue when they finally instituted it, if you recall) is his fault, not a fault of the Red Truth.
But I wasn’t saying it couldn’t be option c. The Red might really be option c. That’s what we deduced. The point, then, would be to craft a theory that the Red is option c. If that theory’s incorrect, Beatrice could counter it with Red: “option c is wrong.” Otherwise, you can keep running with it.
That’s how all these theories worked. That’s how they played the game later on: “The door was unlocked!” “The door was locked!” “Then the lock was broken by a tool!” “The lock cannot be broken by any tools!” “When you said ‘the lock’, you were referring to a different lock!” “No: ‘lock’ referred to this particular lock on that particular door!” It’s a process of narrowing down the possible truths.
And so on. The battle between Red and Blue is a battle of the Witch giving ambiguous Red and the other side giving Blue to specifically attack certain interpretations of the Red, until they’ve narrowed it down to one (they think). It’s a question of whether the wielder of Blue is wise enough to identify all possibilities.
EDIT: Just to summarize: @UsagiTenpura has a good point that it’s not the heart of the mystery to debate Red with Blue and so forth. But that’s not really what I mean to argue.
My thesis really comes down to a denial of the idea that Red doesn’t communicate truth. Whether you use it or not is irrelevant; I simply mean to deny the idea that it has no meaning. Like all statements in the public sphere, it does have meaning; it’s just a question of understanding its possible meanings and, if you want to narrow it down, start clarifying by going through each meaning.