more from Alfred Tarski

Single Idea 19185

[catalogued under 3. Truth / H. Deflationary Truth / 2. Deflationary Truth]

Full Idea

Semantics as it is conceived in this paper is a sober and modest discipline which has no pretensions to being a universal patent-medicine for all the ills and diseases of mankind, whether imaginary or real.

Gist of Idea

Semantics is a very modest discipline which solves no real problems

Source

Alfred Tarski (The Semantic Conception of Truth [1944], 05)

Book Reference

'Semantics and the Philosophy of Language', ed/tr. Linsky,Leonard [University of Illinois 1972], p.17


A Reaction

Written in 1944. This remark encourages the minimal or deflationary interpretation of his theory of truth, but see the robust use of 'satisfaction' in Idea 19184.