Tarski's hidden theory of meaning: Sentences say exactly one thing

Authors
Publication date 2008
Host editors
  • S. Rahman
  • T. Tulenheimo
  • E. Genot
Book title Unity, truth and the liar: The modern relevance of medieval solutions to the liar paradox
ISBN
  • 9781402084676
Series Logic, epistemology and the unity of science, 8
Pages (from-to) 41-63
Number of pages 338
Publisher Dordrecht: Springer
Organisations
  • Interfacultary Research - Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC)
Abstract I argue that Tarski's truth schema (T) concerns meaning just as much as it concerns truth. Better said, (T) implicitly presupposes a theory of meaning; it rests on a simple and yet contentious assumption, namely what Andjelković and Williamson [1] have termed the principle of uniformity (U): every sentence of a language says exactly one thing. I here challenge the validity of (U), and, insofar as (U) is a necessary condition for the validity of (T), I conclude that (T) is false.
Document type Chapter
Published at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8468-3_3
Permalink to this page
Back