Quine’s Tarskian Angle on Truth: Immanence, Semantic Ascent and the Importance of Generality

Abstract

There are two main parts to this article:  (1) Quine's view of truth is substantive in a way that is not generally recognized.  There are elements in the view of deflationism, minimalism, and of course disquotationalism to be sure, but from Quine's perspective the capacity for generalization - ascribing truth not to explicitly given sentences but to kinds of sentences - requires a full-bore Tarskian apparatus.  This is necessary in order for truth to play what for Quine are its vital roles in science, philosophy (epistemology and those parts of metaphysics that Quine recognizes), and crucially in logic itself.  (These points have not been made with adequate care in the literature). (2) But is Tarskianism sufficient for playing all of those roles? Contrary to an interesting article by Lars Bergström - I argue that it is indeed sufficient, at least from Quine's point of view, and to see the point is to appreciate how thoroughgoing and powerful the notion of truth is, despite its being, 'in itself', only a device of sentential generalization.  This dovetails with Quine's famous naturalism, a connection which I bring out at the end.