The question how to turn the principles implicitly governing the concept of truth into an explicit definition (or explication) of the concept hence coalesced with the question how to get a finite grip on the infinity of T-sentences. Tarski's famous and ingenious move was to introduce a new concept, satisfaction, which could be, on the one hand, recursively defined, and which, on the other hand, straightforwardly yielded an explication of truth. A surprising 'by-product' of Tarski's effort to bring truth under control was the breathtaking finding that truth is in a precisely defined sense ineffable, that no nonยญ trivial language can contain a truth-predicate which would be adequate for the very 4 language . This implied that truth (and consequently semantic concepts to which truth appeared to be reducible) proved itself to be strangely 'language-dependent': we can have a concept of truth-in-L for any language L, but we cannot have a concept of truth applicable to every language. In a sense, this means, as Quine (1969, p. 68) put it, that truth belongs to "transcendental metaphysics", and Tarski's 'scientific' investigations seem to lead us back towards a surprising proximity of some more traditional philosophical views on truth. 3. TARSKI'S THEORY AS A PARADIGM So far Tarski himself. Subsequent philosophers then had to find out what his considerations of the concept of truth really mean and what are their consequences; and this now seems to be an almost interminable task
CONTENT
I. Past Masters on Truth -- Frege: Assertion, Truth and Meaning -- Carnap, Syntax, and Truth -- Jamesโ{128}{153}s Conception of Truth -- II. Tarski and Correspondence -- Semantic Conception of Truth as a Philosophical Theory -- Truth, Correspondence, Satisfaction -- Do We Need Correspondence Truth? -- Tarskian Truth as Correspondence โ{128}{148} Replies to Some Objections -- III. The Substantiality of Truth -- The Centrality of Truth -- Mapping the Structure of Truth: Davidson Contra Rorty -- The Explanatory Value of Truth Theoriesembodying the Semantic Conception -- Negative Truth and Knowledge -- IV. The Insubstantiality of Truth: The Pros and Cons of Deflationism -- Deflationary Truth, Aboutness and Meaning -- The Substance of Deflation -- Does the Strategy of Austerity Work? -- Rethinking the Concept of Truth: A Critique of Deflationism
