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Theories of Truth: Vienna, Berlin, and Warsaw

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Alfred Tarski and the Vienna Circle

Part of the book series: Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook [1998] ((VCIY,volume 6))

Abstract

Neo-Kantian philosophers sometimes divided the history of philosophy in three periods: philosophy before Kant, Kant, and philosophy after Kant. The admirers of Alfred Tarski are prone, with good justification, to propose a similar division of theories of truth. But even in our post-Tarskian period, the nature and significance of Tarski’s theory of truth is still a matter of controversy.1 Therefore, to understand better Tarski’s achievement and some of our present puzzles, it is instructive to go back to the pre-Tarskian problem situation in the late 1920s and the early 1930s, and to see how Tarski’s treatment of truth in Warsaw was related to alternative views current in Vienna and Berlin (Schlick, Reichenbach, Carnap, Neurath, Hempel, Popper).

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Notes

  1. For my own views about Tarski, see Ilkka Niiniluoto, “Defending Tarski against His Critics”, in: Jan Woleríski (Ed.), Sixty Years of Tarski’s Definition of Truth. Cracow: Philed 1994, pp. 48–68, and Ilkka Niiniluoto, “Tarskian Truth as Correspondence - Replies to Some Objections”, in: Jaroslaw Peregrin (Ed.), The Nature of Truth - If Any. Dordrecht: Kluwer, forthcoming 1998.

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  2. For my favourite version of critical scientific realism, see Ilkka Niiniluoto, Is Science Progressive?, Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1984, and llkka Niiniluoto, Truthlikeness. Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1987.

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  3. See Jan Woleríski and Peter Simons, “De Ventate: Austro-Polish Contributions to the Theory of Truth from Brentano to Tarski”, in: Klemens Szaniawski (Ed.), The Vienna Circle and the Lvov-Warsaw School. Dordrecht: Kluwer 1989, pp. 391–442, and Jan Wolenski, “Tarski as a Philosopher”, in: F. Coniglione, R. Poli, and J. Wolenski (Eds.), Polish Scientific Philosophy: The Lvov-Warsaw School. Amsterdam: Rodopi 1993, pp. 319–338.

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  4. SeeAlfred Tarski, “The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages”, in: Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics. Oxford University Press: Oxford 1956, p. 153; A. Tarski, “The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics”, in: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 4, 1944, pp. 341–376. In the Vienna Circle, Kotarbiríski’s views were commented by Rose Rand, “Kotarbinskis Philosophie auf Grund seines Hauptwerkes: ‘Elemente der Erkenntnistheorie, der Logik and der Methodologie der Wissenschaften’”, in: Erkenntnis 7 (1937), pp. 92–120

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  5. For the early history of model theory (Leopold Löwenheim, Thoralf Skolem, Kurt Gödel), see Robert Vaught, “Model Theory before 1945”, in: Leon Henkin et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Tarski Symposium. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society 1974, pp. 153–172.

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  6. See Jaakko Hintikka, Lingua Universalis vs. Calculus Ratiocinator: An Ultimate Presupposition of Twentieth-Century Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer 1997, and Martin Kusch, Language asCalculus vs. Language as Universal Medium: A Study in Husserl, Heidegger, and Gadamer. Dordrecht: Kluwer 1989.

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  7. See Tarski, “The Concept of Truth” (1956), pp. 199, 207, 239.

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  8. See A. Tarski, “On the Concept of Logical Consequence”, in: Logic, Semantics, and Metamathematics. Oxford University Press: Oxford 1956, pp. 416–417. For a mature formulation of model theory, which has become a standard approach in mathematical logic, see Alfred Tarski, “Contributions to the Theory of Models I - III”, in: Indagationes Mathematicae 16, 1954–55, pp. 572–581, 582–588; 17, pp. 56–64; Alfred Tarski and Robert Vaught, “Arithmetical Extensions of Relational Systems”, in: Compositio Mathematicae 13, 1957, pp. 81–102. (Reprinted in A. Tarski, Collected Papers 31945–1957,Basel - Boston - Stuttgart: Birkhäuser 1986, pp. 653–674.)

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  9. See Wilfrid Hodges, “Truth in a Structure”, in: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 86, 1986, pp. 135–152.

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  10. See Moritz Schlick, Philosophical Papers I. Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1979, p. 94.

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  11. See Moritz Schlick, General Theory of Knowledge. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court 1985, pp. 6063.

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  12. See Herbert Feigl’s and Albert E. Blumberg’s “Introduction” to Schlick’s General Theory of Knowledge,p. xvi, and Feigl’s “A Memoir”, in Schlick’s Philosophical Papers I,p. xxvi. Wittgenstein’s picture theory of language, which he rejected as meaningless at the end of Tractatus,resembles Tarski’s treatment of the truth conditions of atomic sentences, but Wittgenstein had nothing comparable to Tarski’s notion of satisfaction in the analysis of quantified sentences and formulas.

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  13. See R.L. Kirkham, Theories of Truth: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1992, p. 119. I disagree with the claim of Woletiski and Simons (op.cit.,p. 418) that Tarski’s definition would be only weak correspondence.

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  14. See the discussion in J. Alberto Coffa, Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap: To the Vienna Station. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991, pp. 176–178, 194, and A. Quinton, “Schlick before Wittgenstein”, in: Synthese 64, 1985, pp. 389–410.

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  15. See M. Schlick, Philosophical Papers II. Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1979, pp. 293, 375.

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  16. Ibid.,pp. 196–197.

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  17. Ibid.,pp. 437–445.

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  18. Cf. the discussion in Coffa, op. cit.,pp. 345–346.

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  19. See Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge. Oxford University Press: Oxford 1972, pp. 319–324, and P.A. Schilpp (Ed.), The Philosophy of Karl Popper I. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court 1974, p. 78.

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  20. See J. Lukasiewicz, “Logical Foundations of Probability Theory”, in: Selected Works. Amsterdam: North-Holland 1970, pp. 16–63.

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  21. Woleríski and Simons, “De Ventate”, pp. 401, 431.

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  22. See Hans Reichenbach, Selected Writings, 1909–1953. Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1978. Vol I, p. 355, vol. II, p. 155. Here I think some of Reichenbach’s intuitions could be explicated by concepts like approximate truth or truthlikeness rather than probability. Another version of the doctrine that truth is a limiting case of probability was proposed by the Finnish philosopher Eino Kaila, who was soon to seek contact with Schlick, Carnap, and Reichenbach. According to Kaila, truth is what is “immediately given hic et nunc”, while probability is defined by similarity to truth: “Wahrscheinlich, verisimile ist das dem Wahr ähnliche”. See E. Kaila, Die Prinzipien der Wahrscheinlichkeitslogik. Turku: Annales Universitatis Fennicae Aboensis B IV 1, 1926, p. 59, and I. Niiniluoto, “Truth, Probability, and Simplicity - Comments on Hans Reichenbach’s Probabilistic Empiricism”, forthcoming in the Proceedings of the Reichenbach-Tagung in Berlin in 1991.

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  23. Selected Writings,vol. II, p. 388.

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  24. See C.G. Hempel, “On the Logical Positivists’ Theory of Truth”, in: Analysis 2, 1935, pp. 49–59, and “Some Remarks on ‘Facts’ and Propositions”, in: Analysis 2, 1935, pp. 93–96.

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  25. For Neurath as an advocate of the universalist conception of language, see Thomas Mormann, “Encyclopedism as an Anti-Cartesian Account of Language and Science”, in: E. Nemeth and F. Stadler (Eds.), Encyclopedia and Utopia. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996, pp. 87–96. Mormann suggests that the supporters of the calculus view must be “Cartesian” philosophers as well, but I think already the great fallibilist Peirce is a counterexample. Cf. Hintikka, op. cit.,Ch. 6, on Peirce.

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  26. ILKKA NIINILUOTO

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  27. See Bela Juhos, “Empiricism and Physicalism”, in: Analysis 2, 1935, pp. 81–92.

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  28. See Bertrand Russell, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth. London: Allen and Unwin 1940, Ch. 10.

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  29. See Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1981. For critical remarks, see my works cited in note 2.

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  30. See C.G. Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation. New York: The Free Press, 1965, pp. 11, 17.

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  31. See Herbert Feigl, “Existential Hypotheses: Realistic versus Phenomenalistic Interpretations”, in: Philosophy of Science 17, 1950, pp. 35–62.

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  32. See Rudolf Carnap, Introduction to Semantics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1942, p. vi. In his historical remarks about semiotics, Carnap failed to mention Charles Peirce. In Formalization of Logic Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1947, p. xiii, Camap noted that the “set-theoretic logic” of Hilbert and Bernays can be understood as a form of semantics.

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  33. See P.A. Schilpp (Ed.), The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court 1963, pp. 29–31, and R. Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language. London: Kegan Paul 1937.

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  34. See Schilpp, op.cit., pp. 60–61.

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  35. See J.A. Coffa, op. cit.,p. 301, Richard Creath, “The Unimportance of Semantics”, in: A. Fine, M. Forbes, and L. Wessels (Eds.), PSA 1990,vol. 2. East Lansing: Philosophy of Science Association 1991, pp. 405–416, and Thomas Oberdan, “The Concept of Truth in Camap’s Logical Syntax of Language”,in: Synthese 93, 1992, pp. 239–260.

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  36. See J. Hintikka, “Camap’s Work in the Foundations of Logic and Mathematics in a Historical Perspective”, in: Synthese 93, 1992, pp. 167–190. Reprinted in Lingua Universalis vs. Calculus Ratiocinator, 1997, Ch. 7. Cf. the remark that Tarski showed how to “reduce semantics to syntax”, in: Alonzo Church, Introduction to Mathematical Logic. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1956, p. 65.

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  37. See R. Carnap, Foundations of Logic and Mathematics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1939, pp. 9–11.

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  38. See Kirkham, op.cit. pp. 130–132. Kirkham does not refer to Carnap, however. Cf. also the discussion in Erik Stenius, Critical Essays II. Helsinki: The Philosophical Society of Finland 1989, and I. Niiniluoto, “Tarskian Truth”.

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  39. It may be added that there are successful ways of doing semantics inside language (e.g., Carnap’s state descriptions, Henkin’s models in his completeness proof, and Hintikka’s model sets), but the assumption of language-world relations has to be built into these approaches in some way or another if they are intended to explicate the notion of factual or material truth.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 24, 00014, Finland

    Ilkka Niiniluoto

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  1. Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland

    Jan Woleński

  2. Institute Vienna Circle, Vienna and University of Vienna, Austria

    Eckehart Köhler

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Niiniluoto, I. (1999). Theories of Truth: Vienna, Berlin, and Warsaw. In: Woleński, J., Köhler, E. (eds) Alfred Tarski and the Vienna Circle. Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook [1998], vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0689-6_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0689-6_2

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