Alfred Tarski and the "Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages": A Running Commentary with Consideration of the Polish Original and the German Translation (Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science #39)

By: Monika Gruber

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Synopsis: This book provides adetailed commentary on the classic monograph by Alfred Tarski, and offers areinterpretation and retranslation of the work using the original Polish textand the English and German translations. In the original work, Tarski presentsa method for constructing definitions of truth for classical, quantificationalformal languages. Furthermore, using the defined notion of truth, hedemonstrates that it is possible to provide intuitively adequate definitions ofthe semantic notions of definability and denotation and that the notion in astructure can be defined in a way that is analogous to that used to definetruth. Tarski's piece is considered to be one of the major contributions tologic, semantics, and epistemology in the 20th century. However, the authorpoints out that some mistakes were introduced into the text when it wastranslated into German in 1935. As the 1956 English version of the work wastranslated from the German text, those discrepancies were carried over in additionto new mistakes. The author has painstakingly compared the three texts,sentence-by-sentence, highlighting the inaccurate translations, offeringexplanations as to how they came about, and commenting on how they haveinfluenced the content and suggesting a correct interpretation of certainpassages. Furthermore, the author thoroughly examines Tarski's article,offering interpretations and comments on the work.