Tarski on logical notions

Luca Bellotti

pp. 401-413

in: Synthese 135 (3), 2003.

Abstract

We try to explain Tarski's conception of logical notions, as it emerges from alecture of his, delivered in 1966 and published posthumously in 1986 (Historyand Philosophy of Logic 7, 143–154), a conception based on the idea ofinvariance. The evaluation of Tarski's proposal leads us to consider an interesting(and neglected) reply to Skolem in which Tarski hints at his own point of view onthe foundations of set theory. Then, comparing the lecture of 1966 with Tarski'slast work and with an earlier paper written with Lindenbaum, it is shown thatTarski's conception of logical notions, with its essentially type-theoretic character,did not undergo any significant modifications throughout his life. A remark onTarski's prudential attitude on the topic in the famous paper on the concept oflogical consequence (and elsewhere) concludes our paper.

Cited authors

Tarski Alfred