August
11, 2017 Friday
Bedtime
Story
How Tarski and Aristotle Defined "True"
As
I told you last night, Tarski was very specific about his restrictive
understanding of “truth”.
Further,
Tarski even restricted the notion of “true” sentences.
By
sentences, he meant the phrases of the natural languages spoken and written by
the human apes.
In
that case, a sentence would imply a linguistic object that consists of strings
of sounds or written symbols.
It
is understood, of course, that not all strings of sounds or written symbols
construes a sentence.
Narrowing
it down even further, the sentences that we would be dealing with in this paper
would be grammar declarative sentences and not interrogative or imperative
sentences.
A
declarative sentence makes a statement.
An
example would be, “I plan to go for running today”.
An
interrogative sentence is a question such as, “Do I need to go for running
today?”
Am
imperative sentence is a command wherein someone orders somebody to do
something.
An
example would be, “Go to run today”.
Tarski
warns that whenever the idea of “true” is applied to natural languages, certain
things have to kept in perspective.
For
instance, the way a certain term is used in the sentence.
So
the explanation that Tarski is giving in this paper regarding truth takes into
account the general use of the term in everyday language.
In
general, Tarski’s understanding of the notion of truth essentially matches with
the traditional philosophical notion of truth.
Aristotle
somewhere in 350 BC wrote a book that went on to become a landmark in
philosophy.
The
book was Metaphysics and it essentially looked at the question of existence.
In
it, Aristotle gives the notion of truth the following way:
“To
say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to
say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is true.”
This
seems a bit difficult to understand as it is written in the archaic manner, but
if you care to read it slowly you will get the idea.
All
that Aristotle is saying is that any declarative sentence when it says
something positive about something negative or something negative about
something positive, then it is a false sentence.
On
the other hand, if any sentence claims something positive about something
positive and something negative about something negative, then it is a true
sentence.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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