Also called Criterion T.
A device due to Polish logician Alfred Tarski (1901-1983) and originally used in defining truth for a formal language, but later used (by American philosopher Donald Davidson (1930-2003)) to give an account of meaning in terms of truth.
The details are complex, but roughly: consider the sentence ‘La neige est blanche’ is true (in French) and if and only if snow is white. This is called a T-sentence for French and is in fact true.
A definition of truth for French will satisfy convention T if it entails all true T-sentences for French and no false ones. Truth here is taken to be relative to a language, as with Tarski’s semantic theory of truth, and the ‘definition’ will be simply a conjunction of all the true T-sentences.
Tarski simply assumed that ‘snow is white’ is a translation of the French sentence, but Davidson tried to dispense with this assumption about meanings and provide a theory of meaning (for French in this case).
Davidson’s initial proposal (modified later) was that a set of axioms might be constructed which would logically entail these T-sentences, and that such a set, with the rules of logic, would constitute a theory of meaning from French.
Source:
G Evans and J McDowell, eds, Truth and Meaning (1976)
Table of Contents
- 1 Videos
- 2 Related Products
- 2.1 The New Crusades, the New Holy Land: Conflict in the Southern Baptist Convention, 1969-1991
- 2.2 How to Train Your Dragon
- 2.3 Logan's Way Detective Series, Novels1-3
- 2.4 Hustlas Convention [Explicit]
- 2.5 Disco Fever - Get Up and Boogie
- 2.6 TEXAS TEST PREP Spelling, Grammar, and Writing Conventions Grade 3: Language Skills Practice Book
- 2.7 Reno 911! - Miami (Unrated Edition)
- 2.8 Life of a King
- 2.9 Convention Management and Service with Answer Sheet (EI) (8th Edition)
- 2.10 SI ZENTNER HARVEST MOON BALL A.T.A. CONVENTION vinyl record
- truth conditional semantics
- semantic atomism
- radical interpretation
- correspondence theory of truth
- truth theory
Last update 2020-06-17. Price and product availability may change.