[lit-ideas] Tarski, Informing, "Snow Is White"
- From: jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 23:15:22 EST
In a message dated 1/2/2010 9:35:29 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
The fact "Snow is white" is (assumimg it true a statement) independent of
the expression "Snow is white". Its truth is, in this sense, "individuated
independent of propositional form", even if _expressing_ such a truth is
not.
----
Part of the problem is crossnational. Tarski was a Pole, but he wrote in
German. The famous (or infamous as I prefer) utterance, originally in Polish
is:
nievska es albaska
which he translated to German,
"Schnee ist weiss"
"Wahrheit in Formalisierte Spraeche".
In English, this comes out, naturally, or non-naturally as Grice preferred
(WoW, ii) as
"Snow is white".
Grice tried to think for a context in which Tarski's statement would make
sense. He failed.
Grice also noted that Tarski fails in 'embedded contexts', as Grice calls
them.
"Suppose a policeman tells me, "Snow is white".
I tell my son, "What the policeman told me is
true". This harmless statement is impossible for
Tarski to formalise, therefore, he thought, it would
be senseless".
Indeed, if 't' is true iff t -- does not yield
(1) What the policeman told is true iff ...?
"What the policeman told me is true. If," adds Grice, "what transpires is
that what the policeman told me is that monkeys can talk, then I deny that
what the policeman said referred to a 'fact'"
On the whole Grice endorsed his pupil Strawson's theory of "Truth" which
Strawson (later Sir Peter) presented in a reply to J. L. Austin, in, of all
places, "Bristol".
Grice would reminisce, "I have good memories of Bristol". And he did, since
he was an old Cliftonian.
Cheers,
JL
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