Alfred Tarski and the Vienna Circle: Austro-Polish Connections in Logical Empiricism

✍ Scribed by Jan Woleński (auth.), Jan Woleński, Eckehart Köhler (eds.)

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 348
• Series: Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook [1998] 6
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The larger part of Yearbook 6 of the Institute Vienna Circle constitutes the proceedings of a symposium on Alfred Tarski and his influence on and interchanges with the Vienna Circle, especially those on and with Rudolf Carnap and Kurt Gödel. It is the first time that this topic has been treated on such a scale and in such depth. Attention is mainly paid to the origins, development and subsequent role of Tarski's definition of truth. Some contributions are primarily historical, others analyze logical aspects of the concept of truth. Contributors include Anita and Saul Feferman, Jan Wolenski, Jan Tarski and Hans Sluga. Several Polish logicians contributed: Gzegorczyk, Wójcicki, Murawski and Rojszczak. The volume presents entirely new biographical material on Tarski, both from his Polish period and on his influential career in the United States: at Harvard, in Princeton, at Hunter, and at the University of California at Berkeley. The high point of the analysis involves Tarski's influence on Carnap's evolution from a narrow syntactical view of language, to the ontologically more sophisticated but more controversial semantical view. Another highlight involves the interchange between Tarski and Gödel on the connection between truth and proof and on the nature of metalanguages.
The concluding part of Yearbook 6 includes documentation, book reviews and a summary of current activities of the Institute Vienna Circle. Jan Tarski introduces letters written by his father to Gödel; Paolo Parrini reports on the Vienna Circle's influence in Italy; several reviews cover recent books on logical empiricism, on Gödel, on cosmology, on holistic approaches in Germany, and on Mauthner.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages I-X
Semantic Revolution Rudolf Carnap, Kurt Gödel, Alfred Tarski....Pages 1-15
Theories of Truth: Vienna, Berlin, and Warsaw....Pages 17-26
Truth before Tarski....Pages 27-41
How the Unity of Science Saved Alfred Tarski....Pages 43-52
Tarski and Gödel: Between the Lines....Pages 53-63
Carnap’s Move to Semantics: Gains and Losses....Pages 65-76
Tarski and Carnap on Logical Truth — or: What Is Genuine Logic?....Pages 77-94
Interplay of Philosophy and Mathematics in the Classical Theory of Truth....Pages 95-108
Is Antipsychologism Still Tenable?....Pages 109-114
Why Should a Physical Object Take on the Role of Truth-Bearer?....Pages 115-125
Łukasiewicz’ Theory of Truth, from the Quantum Logical Point of View....Pages 127-134
Intuitionism and Logical Tolerance....Pages 135-148
Tarski on Language and Truth....Pages 149-163
Neurath’s Opposition To Tarskian Semantics....Pages 165-178
Tarski and Wittgenstein on Semantics of Geometrical Figures....Pages 179-191
Tarski’s Truth Condition Revisited....Pages 193-201
Undefinability vs. Definability of Satisfaction and Truth....Pages 203-215
Tarski’s Guilty Secret: Compositionality....Pages 217-230
Should Tarski’s Idea of Consequence Operation be Revised?....Pages 231-242
Remarks on a Carnapian Extension of S5....Pages 243-259
Letters to Kurt Gödel, 1942#x2013;47....Pages 261-273
Neo-Positivism and Italian Philosophy....Pages 275-294
Critical Idealism Revisited — Recent Work on Cassirer’s Philosophy of Science....Pages 295-306
Ronald N. Giere/Alan W. Richardson (eds.), Origins of Logical Empiricism (Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. XVI), Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press 1996....Pages 307-311
Hao Wang , A Logical Journey. From Gödel to Philosophy , Cambridge, MA—London: The MIT Press 1996....Pages 312-318
Werner DePauli-Schimanovich/ Peter Weibel , Kurt Gödel. Ein mathematischer Mythos , Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Temsky 1997....Pages 318-319
John Earman , Bangs, Crunches, Whimpers, and Shrieks. Singularities and Acausalities in Relativistic Spacetimes , New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995....Pages 320-325
Reenchanted Science: Holism in German Culture from Wilhelm II to Hitler . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996....Pages 325-329
Psychologism. A Case Study in the Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge . London: Routledge 1995....Pages 329-333
Das Philosophische Werk in 10 Bänden (ed. Ludger Lütkehaus), vols. 1–3, Wörterbuch der Philosophie. Neue Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache , Wien-Köln: Böhlau 1997....Pages 333-335
Back Matter....Pages 337-347

✦ Subjects

Philosophy of Science; Logic; History of Mathematical Sciences; Mathematical Logic and Foundations; Semantics