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‘Is it True What They Say About Tarski?’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Susan Haack
Susan Haack
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
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Extract

Popper welcomes Tarski's theory of truth as a vindication of the ‘objective or absolute or correspondence theory of truth’:

Tarski's greatest achievement, and the real significance of his theory for the philosophy of the empirical sciences, is that he rehabilitated the correspondence theory of absolute or objective truth … He vindicated the free use of the intuitive idea of truth as correspondence to the facts …

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Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 51 , Issue 197 , July 1976, pp. 323 - 336
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1976

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References

1 Popper, K. R., ‘Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge’ (1960), in Conjectures and Refutations (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), p. 224, pp. 225–6Google Scholar.

2 Popper takes it—despite what Tarski says to the contrary—that Tarski's theory can be applied to natural as well as formal languages. This claim raises too many issues to be discussed here; I shall assume for the sake of argument that it is correct.

3 Popper, K. R., ‘Philosophical Comments on Tarski's Theory of Truth’ (1971), in Objective Knowledge (OUP, 1972), p. 320Google Scholar, and ‘Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge’, p. 223.

4 Tarski, A., ‘The Semantic Conception of Truth’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, IV, 1944, and in Readings in Philosophical Analysis, Feigl, H. and Sellars, W. (ed.) (Appleton-Century Crofts, 1949), p. 54Google Scholar.

5 Naess, A., ‘Truth as Conceived by Those Who Are Not Professional Philosophers’, Skrifter utgitt av Det Norske Videnkaps-Akademi i Oslo, II. Hist-Filos, Klasse, Vol. IV, 1938Google Scholar.

6 ‘The Semantic Conception of Truth’, p. 70.

7 ‘Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge’, p. 224.

8 Cf. S. Haack, ‘The Pragmatist Theory of Truth’, forthcoming in British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

9 Cf. Davidson, D., ‘True to the Facts’, Journal of Philosophy, 65, 1969Google Scholar.

10 Austin, J. L., ‘Truth’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplement, XXIV, 1950Google Scholar; and in Philosophical Papers, J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock, (eds.); and in Truth, ed. G. Pitcher (Prentice-Hall, 1964)., p. 21 in Truth.

11 Popper, K. R., ‘Two Faces of Commonsense’, in Objective Knowledge (OUP, 1972), p. 45Google Scholar.

12 ‘Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge’, p. 225.

13 Ibid.

14 Cf. Haack, ‘The Pragmatist Theory of Truth’.

15 Gonseth, F., ‘Le Congrès Descartes. Questions de Philosophie scientifique’, Revue thomiste, XLIV, 1938Google Scholar.

16 ‘The Semantic Conception of Truth’, p. 71.

17 Dummett, M., ‘Truth’, in Truth, Pitcher (ed.)

18 Except that it can happen that a theory is called ‘objective’ when what is meant is that it has been invented in an impartial manner. That, clearly, praise. Equally clearly, that is not what Popper means when he calls Tarski's theory ‘objective’.

19 ‘Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge’, p. 225.

20 Popper, K. R., Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1934 (Hutchinson, 1959)Google Scholar.

21 ‘Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge’, p. 217.

22 ‘Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge’ pp. 233–4.

23 ‘Two Faces of Commonsense’, p. 53.

24 Miller, D., ‘Popper's Qualitative Theory of Verisimilitude’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 25, 1974Google Scholar.

25 Haack, S., Deviant Logic (CUP, 1974)., ch. 3Google Scholar.

26 Tichý, P., ‘On Popper's Definitions of Verisimilitude’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 25, 1974Google Scholar.