On Popper's use of Tarski's theory of truth

Abstract

I In a recent paper, S. Haack has claimed that Tarski does not present his theory of truth as a correspondence theory) K.R.Popper has pointed out in a reply that Tarski does regard his theory as a correspondence theory." Since each author gives references to Tarski's writings to back up his position, there seems to be a contradiction in the air an ironic situation for a theory of truth. Perhaps the contexts of the passages will resolve the difficulty. Popper first cites this passage from the beginning of Tarski's 1935 paper on truth: 'I would only mention that throughout this work I shall be concerned exclusively with grasping the intentions which are contained in the so-called classical conception of truth ("true corresponding with reality") in contrast, for example, with the utilitarian conception ("true in a certain respect usefu l" ) ' : Two paragraphs later, Tarski summarises the first section of his paper: 'In w colloquial language is the object of our investigations. The results are entirely negative. With respect to this language not only does the definition of truth seem to be impossible, but even the consistent use of this concept in conformity with the laws of logic'. Popper'.s second passage comes from a paper of Tarski of 1936: 'We regard the truth of a sentence as its "correspondence with reality" ,.4 Two paragraphs earlier Tarski writes: 'The language for which such a [structural] description can be given are called formalized languages. Now since the degree of exactitude of all further investigations depends essentially on the clarity and precision of this description, it is only the semantics of formalised languages which can be constructed by exact methods'. The impression provided by these contexts is thatTarski is restricting his theory of truth to formalised languages. The impression is confirmed in the passage from Tarski's 1944 paper cited by Haack. After describing various definitions of truth, includ-