Truth and its theoretical and philosophical models

Alfred Tarski’s semantic conception of truth is arguably the most influential – certainly, most discussed - modern conception of truth. It has provoked many different interpretations and reactions, some thinkers celebrating it for successfully explicating the notion of truth, whereas others have argued that it is no good as a philosophical account of truth. The aim of this work is to offer a systematic and critical investigation of its nature and significance, based on the thorough explanation of its conceptual, technical as well as historical underpinnings. The methodological strategy adopted in the thesis reflects the author’s belief that in order to evaluate the import of Tarski’s conception we need to understand what logical, mathematical and philosophical aspects it has, what role they play in his project of theoretical semantics, which of them hang in together, and which should be kept separate. Chapter 2 therefore starts with a detailed exposition of the conceptual and historical background of Tarski’s semantic conception of truth and his method of truth definition for formalized languages, situating it within his project of theoretical semantics, and Chapter 3 explains the formal machinery of Tarski’s truth definitions for increasingly more complex languages. Chapters 4 - 7 form the core of the thesis, all being concerned with the problem of significance of Tarski’s conception. Chapter 4 explains its logico-mathematical import, connecting it to the related works of Gödel and Carnap. Having explained the seminal ideas of the model-theoretic approach to semantics, Chapter 5 tackles the question to what extent Tarski’s ‘The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages’ (and related articles from the 1930s) anticipates this approach, and what elements might be missing from it. Chapter 6 then deals with the vexed question of its philosophical import and value as a theory of truth, reviewing a number of objections and arguments that purport to show that the method fails as an explanation (explication) of the ordinary notion of truth, and, in particular, that it is a confusion to think that Tarski’s truth definitions have semantic import. Finally, Chapter 7 is devoted to the question whether Tarski’s theory of truth is a robust or rather a deflationary theory of truth. On the basis of a careful analysis, the thesis aims to substantiate the following view. [A] Tarski’s theory with its associated method of truth definition was primarily designed to serve logico-mathematical purposes. [B] It can be regarded a deflationary theory of a sort, since it completely abstracts from meta- semantical issues concerning the metaphysical or epistemological basis or status of semantic properties. Indeed, [C] this can be interpreted as its laudable feature, since by separating formal (or logico-mathematical) from meta-semantical (or foundational) aspects it usefully divides the theoretical labour to be done in the area of meaning and semantic properties in general. [D] In spite of the fact that Tarski’s conception of truth has this deflationary flavour, the formal structure of its method of truth-definition is quite neutral in that it can be interpreted and employed in several different ways, some of them deflationary, others more robust.

In this essay, I pesent a new argument for the imposszbility of definmg truth by speafyzng the underlyzng structural property ali and only true proposttions have in common The set of consulerations I use to support this clazm take as thar inspiration Alston's recent argument that tt is trn possible to define truth epistemically-in terms of justification or warrant Accordmg to what Alston calls the "mtensional argument", epistenuc def =tons are inconststent with the Tschema or the principie that tt is true that p if, and only tf, p Smce the T-schema has great intuitive appeal, tias is a powerful zndictment of episterruc theones But the basic argument that Alston employs, and the constellatian of considerations whzch pros ecute that argument, work agamst a much broader range of views than he considers Whtle this implies that a traditional conceptual analysts of truth rnay be impossible, it opens the door to a piurahst approach to truth

2001

On the basis of elementary thinking about language functioning, a solution of truth paradoxes is given and a corresponding semantics of a truth predicate is founded. It is shown that it is precisely the two-valued description of the maximal intrinsic xed point of the strong Kleene threevalued semantics.

International Journal of Humanities Social Science and Management, 2024

The nature of knowledge as justified true belief in traditional Western epistemology has been a topic of debate over the years. Findings showed that in the various disagreements one can identify two main issues: whether knowledge is simply true belief or whether knowledge is justified true belief. Truth in both groups is not an orphan being the one that is constant in both definitions. I think this is the case because truth has a dynamic character that makes it attractive to everyone irrespective of the type of knowledge in question. This dynamism is expressed in various proverbs and wise sayings especially in African philosophy. The aim of this work is to make bare the ethical character of truth which is the main reason why it has been personified and given human attributes. The methodology to be adopted in achieving this aim is a critical analysis of the concept of truth and the relationship it has with human psychology. This will lead us to the conclusion that any idea of knowledge that is acceptable must incorporate the ethical dimension.

This dissertation is a philosophical analysis of the concept of truth. It is a development and defense of the “stratified” or “language-level” conception of truth, first advanced in Alfred Tarski’s 1933 monograph The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages. Although Tarski’s paper had seminal influence both in philosophy and in more technical disciplines, its central philosophical claim has not been generally accepted. This work has two central goals: (a) to give a detailed and analytic presentation of Tarski’s theory and the problems it faces; (b) to offer a solution to these problems and assess the philosophical significance of this solution. The essay is divided in two parts. Part One contains a detailed and analytic presentation and interpretation of the stratified conception of truth. The analysis contains several steps: (a) Crucial basic assumptions, such as the limitation to formalized languages and the requirement of explicit definitions, are stated explicitly, motivated, and their philosophical significance discussed. (b) The main negative result of the stratified conception, the impossibility of semantic closure and of a universal language, is given in detail and interpreted. (c) Tarski’s criterion for adequate truth definitions, known as Convention T, is stated and motivated. (d) The deep structure of Tarski-style truth definitions and the necessary conditions for their availability are analyzed. In particular, the philosophical significance of Tarski’s notion of “essential richness” is discussed. (e) Finally, several problems are raised for the stratified conception, chief among them the unity objection, according to which the stratified conception is not a viable analysis of the concept of truth, since (by (a) above) an analysis should take the form of a definition, and on the stratified conception different languages have different definitions. There is therefore no one analysis of the concept. Part Two is a development of answers to the problems raised at the end of Part One. The crux of the answer to the unity objection is that Convention T, the adequacy criterion, connects the many definitions of truth into a single concept. However, in order to fulfill that role Convention T must apply universally, and a universal language was shown to be impossible ((c) above). The task of Part Two is therefore to develop a mode of expression that allows the universal applicability of Convention T without commitment to a universal metalanguage. The procedure is as follows. (a) Convention T is formalized in order to isolate the place in which universal applicability is required. (b) A new expressive resource of “abstract generality” is developed. To this purpose a digression into the semantics of natural language indexicals is undertaken. David Kaplan’s thesis of the direct reference of indexicals is analyzed and a new formal system is proposed that embodies it. It is shown that this formal system expresses abstract generality. (c) The notion of abstract generality is adapted to languages without indexicals and it isviii shown that Convention T can be expressed without assuming a universal language. (d) A reconstrual of the task of concept analysis is proposed, which is a generalization of the answer to the unity objection. It is often complained against Tarski’s stratified conception of truth that it is of limited philosophical significance. In this work I show that, on the contrary, the problems it faces and the solutions that can be advanced to answer these problems have substantive philosophical consequences. The notion of abstract generality gives rise to a distinction between two fundamentally different modes of discourse: a universal but merely abstract methodological discourse on the one hand, and a concrete but inevitably restricted theoretical discourse on the other. This distinction has many important implications for our understanding of the concepts of truth, meaning and language.

Church, Communication and Culture

The article explores the most common disagreements and misunderstandings concerning truth, in philosophical as well as extraphilosophical debates, then reflects on the notion of "post-truth era", reverting the diagnosis, and suggesting that in the recent history of the concept of truth we may find some positive opportunities that deserve to be taken into account.

F. Bacchini, S. Caputo, M. Dell'Utri (eds.): New Frontiers in Truth. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 15-36., 2014

Advocates of different deflationary accounts of truth agree that the concept of truth has no explanatory role to play in philosophy. They do not deny that truth talk is sometimes useful for the purposes of formulating and expressing explanations; but, they insist, such talk does not and cannot contribute any genuinely explanatory content to the explanations which we formulate with its help. The article offers and discusses a counterexample to this no-explanatory-role claim.

2022

Kirkham’s book is not a plain attempt of asking the questions like “What is truth?” since it would, according to him, be one more mistake followed by confusion. The components of this four-dimensional confusion (vagueness, ambiguity, several ways of describing the same project, and one answer for two distinctly different questions about truth) find its original explanation in Kirkham’s book. Having stated that all of the previous theories of truth were just irrelevant to the question of “What is truth” because when asking different questions about truth, he draws his non-trivial approach of assigning each theorist to the particular question (or “project”) he or she was trying to answer with his or her theory of truth. So, the main merit of Kirkham’s work is the clarification of this most urgent philosophical problem of truth on the way of metaphysics.

Synthese 117: 133-72, 1999

The paper offers a new analysis of the difficulties involved in the construction of a general and substantive correspondence theory of truth and delineates a solution to these difficulties in the form of a new methodology. The central argument is inspired by Kant, and the proposed methodology is explained and justified both in general philosophical terms and by reference to a particular variant of Tarski's theory. The paper begins with general considerations on truth and correspondence and concludes with a brief outlook on the "family" of theories of truth generated by the new methodology.