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The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages
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The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages

paper by Tarski
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Alfred Tarski's work on "The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages" addresses how to define truth within formal systems. He demonstrated that truth can be explicitly defined for these languages, but crucially, this definition must be stated in a richer metalanguage, not within the language itself. Tarski's approach, known as truth-conditional semantics, identifies truth conditions for sentences by using "T-sentences." For example, a T-sentence for a sentence S states that S is true if and only if a translation of S into the metalanguage holds. This method avoids self-referential paradoxes, like the liar paradox, by separating the object language from the metalanguage.123

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3 Britannica Sources
  1. history of logic - Gödel’s incompleteness theorems
  2. truth
  3. semantics - Truth-conditional semantics

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