Abstract

This paper was written with two aims in mind. A large part of it is just an exposition of Tarski's theory of truth. Philosophers do not agree on how Tarski's theory is related to their investigations. Some of them doubt whether that theory has any relevance to philosophical issues and in particular whether it can be applied in dealing with the problems of philosophy (theory) of science.In this paper I argue that Tarski's chief concern was the following question. Suppose a language L belongs to the class of languages for which, in full accordance with some formal conditions set in advance, we are able to define the class of all the semantic interpretations the language may acquire. Every interpretation of L can be viewed as a certain structure to which the expressions of the language may refer. Suppose that a specific interpretation of the language L was singled out as the intended one. Suppose, moreover, that the intended interpretation can be characterized in a metalanguage L +. If the above assumptions are satisfied, can the notion of truth for L be defined in the metalanguage L + and, if it can, how can this be done?