Lesniewski's Early Liar, Tarski and Natural Language

Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 127 (1-3):267-287 (2004)
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Abstract

This paper is a contribution to the reconstruction of Tarski’s semantic background in the light of the ideas of his master, Stanislaw Lesniewski. Although in his 1933 monograph Tarski credits Lesniewski with crucial negative results on the semantics of natural language, the conceptual relationship between the two logicians has never been investigated in a thorough manner. This paper shows that it was not Tarski, but Lesniewski who first avowed the impossibility of giving a satisfactory theory of truth for ordinary language, and the necessity of sanitation of the latter for scientific purposes. In an early article (1913) Lesniewski gave an interesting solution to the Liar Paradox, which, although different from Tarski’s in detail, is nevertheless important to Tarski’s semantic background. To illustrate this I give an analysis of Lesniewski’s solution and of some related aspects of Lesniewski’s later thought.

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Arianna Betti
University of Amsterdam

References found in this work

The semantic conception of truth and the foundations of semantics.Alfred Tarski - 1943 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 4 (3):341-376.
Truth and meaning.Donald Davidson - 1967 - Synthese 17 (1):304-323.
Tarski's Theory of Truth.Hartry Field - 1972 - Journal of Philosophy 69 (13):347.
Semantical paradox.Tyler Burge - 1979 - Journal of Philosophy 76 (4):169-198.

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