ABSTRACT
In this paper I want to discuss a contention made by Hartry Field, in his influential article 'Tarski's Theory of Truth' (Journal of Philosophy, vol. 59 (1972), p. 347 and Chapter 5 abovet). Tarski claimed that his work on truth ('The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages', in Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1956): henceforth 'CTFL') made semantics respectable from a physicalist standpoint ('The Establishment of Scientific Semantics', in Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics - henceforth 'ESS' - at p. 406). Field's contention is that Tarski thereby misrepresented what he had done, because of an erroneous belief that he had shown how truth (for formalized languages of finite order) can be interestingly defined without using prior semantic notions. What Tarski in fact did, according to Field, was to show how truth (for those languages) can be characterized in terms of a small number of primitive semantic notions. Physicalism requires something more, which Tarski did not offer: namely explication of those primitive notions in physical terms.
