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Some Philosophical Aspects of Semantic Theory of Truth

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The Lvov-Warsaw School. Past and Present

Part of the book series: Studies in Universal Logic ((SUL))

Abstract

The semantic theory of truth, formulated by Alfred Tarski in the 1939s, is primarily a mathematical theory. On the other hand, it also has a considerable philosophical content. This paper presents the second aspect of this theory. It can be shown that several traditional philosophical issues pertaining to the concept of truth can be illuminated by Tarski’s account of truth. It concerns, for instance, the idea of correspondence, the relation of truth and logic, the problem of the relativity/absoluteness of truth, etc.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I prefer the label “semantic theory of truth” over “semantic definition of truth” or “semantic conception of truth”, though I will use, mostly for stylistic reasons, the second name too. First of all, STT cannot be reduced to a definition, because it consists of a statement defining truth and many other assertion. On the other hand, the name “semantic conception of truth” is too vague.

  2. 2.

    Jean-Yves Girard is another critic of STT as a mathematical theory. See [8], section 2.3 of this book has “Tarksism” as its title and contains rather nasty comments on Tarski’s on pp. 36–37, 213, 491–496, 499–500. In fact, Girard’s criticism is also directed against philosophy behind STT.

  3. 3.

    Page-references are to translations or reprints, if they are mentioned in References at the end of the present paper.

  4. 4.

    My presentation of STT uses rather contemporary settings than original Tarski’s version given in [24, 25] and [29]). The main issue concerns the explicit role of the concept of model and working with first-order languages.

  5. 5.

    This suggestion was made by Anna Kanik, a former student of mine.

  6. 6.

    I model these formulas on the earlier mentioned debate between Davidson (realism) and Dummett (anti-realism). My own view (also expressed in [38]) is that meaning of a sentence exceeds its truth-conditions. However, the points (iii)–(iv) suffice for further analysis.

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  1. University of Information, Technology and Management Rzeszów, Rzeszów, Poland

    Jan Woleński

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  1. Department of Fundamental Mathematics, UNED, Madrid, Spain

    Ángel Garrido

  2. Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

    Urszula Wybraniec-Skardowska

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Woleński, J. (2018). Some Philosophical Aspects of Semantic Theory of Truth. In: Garrido, Á., Wybraniec-Skardowska, U. (eds) The Lvov-Warsaw School. Past and Present. Studies in Universal Logic. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65430-0_28

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