Abstract

This is the second part of a two-part paper devoted to a study of some historical, logical and philosophical issues arising from a reading of Tarski´s celebrated “Wahrheitsbegriff” monograph. This second part concentrates on issues related to Tarski´s “Wahrheitsbegriff” version of the theorem on the indefinability of truth. One of these issues is the correct exegesis of Tarski´s claim that a truth definition cannot be constructed in a metalanguage if its order is not higher than that of the object language. Another issue is the correct contrast between Tarski´s mathematical achievement in offering his version of the indefinability result and Gödel´s achievement in his earlier discovery of another version of the result. The correct contrast must emphasize the fact that Tarski´s version does not use semantic notions ; no way towards a version of the indefinability theorem not employing intuitive semantic notions appears in Gödel, despite the fact that he, like Tarski, sought to find non-semantic versions of his results.