Episode 194: Alfred Tarski on Truth (Part One)
The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
Mark Linsenmayer
4.6 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 9 July 2018
⏱️ 55 minutes
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Summary
On Tarski's "The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics" (1944), Hartry Field's "Tarski's Theory of Truth" (1972), and Donald Davidson's "The Folly of Trying to Define Truth" (1977).
What is truth? Tarski gives a technical, metaphysically neutral definition for truth within a particular, well-defined language. So how does that apply to real languages? He thought he was defining truth (a semantic concept) in terms of more primitive (physical?) concepts, but Field and Davidson think that actually, truth as a general concept is indefinable, even though it's still helpful for Tarski to have laid out the relations among various semantic concepts.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Partial Examined Life relies on your support. |
| 0:02.5 | To find out how to help in ways that are cheap or even free, |
| 0:05.4 | please visit partialexaminedlife.com slash support. |
| 0:16.5 | You're listening to The Partial Examined Life, |
| 0:18.0 | a podcast by some guys who are at one point |
| 0:20.0 | set on doing philosophy for living, |
| 0:21.5 | but then thought better of it. |
| 0:22.5 | Our question for episode 194 is, |
| 0:24.8 | what is truth? |
| 0:26.0 | We're focusing on the work of Alfred Tarski, |
| 0:28.3 | reading his 1944 article, |
| 0:30.3 | the Semantic Conception of Truth |
| 0:32.3 | and the Foundations of Semantics. |
| 0:33.8 | Plus, Tarski's Theory of Truth by Hartree Fields from 1972 |
| 0:37.3 | and Donald Davidson's essay, |
| 0:39.3 | The Folly of Trying to Define Truth from 1996. |
| 0:42.3 | For links to these articles and other information, |
| 0:44.3 | please check out partiallyexaminedlife.com. |
| 0:46.3 | This is Mark Linson-Meyer, |
| 0:47.8 | materially adequate yet formally deficient in Medicine, Wisconsin. |
| 0:51.3 | This is Seth Paskin referring to Seth Paskin in Austin, Texas. |
| 0:56.8 | This is Wes Allen satisfying the |
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