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Tarski on truth and logical consequence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2014

John Etchemendy
John Etchemendy*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305
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Extract

Tarski's writings on the concepts of truth and logical consequence rank among the most influential works in both logic and philosophy of the twentieth century. Because of this, it would be impossible to give a careful and accurate account of how far that influence reaches and of the complex route by which it spread. In logic, Tarski's methods of defining satisfaction and truth, as well as his work pioneering general model-theoretic techniques, have been entirely absorbed into the way the subject is presently done; they have become part of the fabric of contemporary logic, material presented in the initial pages of every modern textbook on the subject. In philosophy, the influence has been equally pervasive, extending not only to work in semantics and the philosophies of logic and language, but to less obviously allied areas such as epistemology and the philosophy of science as well.

Rather than try to chart the wide-ranging influence of these writings or catalog the important research they have inspired, I will concentrate on various confusions and misunderstandings that continue to surround this work. For in spite of the extensive attention the work has received in the past fifty years, especially in the philosophical literature, misunderstandings of both conceptual and historical sorts are still remarkably widespread. Indeed in the philosophical community, recent reactions to Tarski's work on truth range from Karl Popper's “intense joy and relief” at Tarski's “legitimation” of the notion [1974, p. 399], to Hilary Putnam's assessment that “as a philosophical account of truth, Tarski's theory fails as badly as it is possible for an account to fail” [1985, p. 64]. Opinions have not exactly converged.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Symbolic Logic , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , March 1988 , pp. 51 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Symbolic Logic 1988

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Footnotes

*

My work on this paper was made possible in part by a grant from the System Development Foundation; it was completed at the Center for the Study of Language and Information on computer equipment provided by the Xerox Corporation. My understanding of Tarski's work on truth has benefitted from discussions with many people, in particular, Jon Barwise and Scott Soames; helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper were received from Jon Barwise, Ned Block, Wilfrid Hodges, David Israel, Julius Moravscik, Patrick Suppes, Anthony Ungar and this Journal's referee. I would like to thank both the institutions and the colleagues.

References

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