Progress

After pondering the previous post for a bit, I became dissatisfied with the informality of it-- I know what I'm saying, but I'm leaving so much out that someone else could easily interpret what I said in a different way. So, I started over, this time stating things more explicitly. This turned out to be a fruitful path.

One: Start with first-order logic.
Two: Everyone seems to think that first-order logic is well-defined, but of course the fact is it cannot be defined in itself. So, we need to add the ability to define it. This can be done by adding some basic turing-complete formalism for the logic to manipulate, like lambda calculus or arithmetic or (perhaps most conveniently) first-order logic. So, we have some operator that means "implies in One", which takes two statements and is true if one can be deduced from the other with first-order manipulations. (We then use nonmonotonic logic when wewant to determine the truth value of the new operator.)
Three: OK, so we agree that system is well-defined. But, by Tarski's Undefinability Teorem, we know it can't be defined within itself. So, we add another operator, that means "implies in Two". This takes two statements and is true if the first implies the second by the rules of Two.
Infinity: We can obviously keep going in this manner. So, define the logic that has each of the "implies" operators that might be gained in this manner. For each number, it has the operator "imlies in [number]".
Infinity+1: By Tarski's theorem, this system also can't define its own truth. But, we just did, so we want our ideal logic to be able to as well. So, we add the "implies in Infinity" operator. (Maybe you've heard that infinity plus one is still just infinity? Well, that is true of cardinal infinities, but not ordinal infinities, which is what we have here. Fun stuff!)
Infinity+2: Add the "implies" relation for Infinity+1.
Infinity+Infinity: Keep doing that, so that we've now got 2 "implies" relations for each number: the one for just the number, and the one for infinity+number.
Infinity*infinity: Keep going on in this manner so that we have an infinite progression for each number, namely "implies in [number]", "implies in Infinity+[number]", "implies in Infinity+Infinity+[number]", ...
Infinity*infinity*Infinity...
Infinity^Infinity...
Infinity^(Infinity^Infinity)...
A(Infinity,Infinity)... (where A is the ackermann function)

Obviously I've gone on far longer than I need to to illustrate the pattern. But, it's fun! Anyway, the point is that finding higher and higher meaningful logics is "merely" a matter of finding higher and higher infinities.