Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics

by Alfred Tarski

This title contains the only complete English-language text of "The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages". Tarski made extensive corrections and revisions of the original translations for this edition, along with new historical remarks. It includes a new preface and a new analytical index for use by philosophers and linguists as well as by historians of mathematics and philosophy.

Genres: Philosophy, Logic, Mathematics, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1956

About the author

Alfred Tarski was a Polish logician and mathematician. Educated in the Warsaw School of Mathematics and philosophy, he emigrated to the USA in 1939, and taught and did research in mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1942 until his death.

A prolific author best known for his work on model theory, metamathematics, and algebraic logic, he also contributed to abstract algebra, topology, geometry, measure theory, mathematical logic, set theory, and analytic philosophy.

He is regarded as perhaps one of the four greatest logicians of all time, matched only by Aristotle, Kurt Gödel, and Gottlob Frege. His biographers Anita and Solomon Feferman state that, "Along with his contemporary, Kurt Gödel, he changed the face of logic in the twentieth century, especially through his work on the concept of truth and the theory of models."

Reviews

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

There will come a time when this work (and Tarski's extension of it into a foundation of Science) will be seen as the most forward looking work of the twentieth century. This relationship between symbol and referent occurs throughout philosophy, science, and mathematics. It is found in the relationship between theory and model, which lies as the basis of mathematics. It is found as the relationship between a computer program and it's execution. It is the relationship between our observations and our science of them. This is mathematically precise: we know the connection between syntax and semantics is a galois adjunction. It's the reason that constructivist logics are the only _meaningful_ logics. Once this foundational structure is established, it becomes possible to build a metaphysics solely from correlation, without any need to assume a priori a logic of connection. This work makes the empiricist's dream possible.

[Edward Kafka-Gelbrecht · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why are constructivist logics a priori the only foundational metaphysics? I am wearing a boot on my elbow. I give it five stars! The book is good, too.

[Cameron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ain't that the truth

[Leonardo]

Para Filosofía del Lenguaje. Para la discusión con Kripke y Davidson.