Alfred Tarski , born the January 14th 1902 with Warsaw and deceased the October 26th 1983 with Berkeley in California is a logician and a Philosophe Polish.
Biographical elements
After having received an excellent general education (which included/understood, in addition to the usual matters, Russian, German, French, the old Greek and Latin) and makes a short military service in the Polish army, just Alfred Teitelbaum in 1918 the university of recently open Warsaw. Converted with Catholicism, it takes the name of Tarski in 1923, whereas it had already published under its first name. It supports, also in 1923, its thesis of doctorate (under the direction of Stanislaw Lesniewski), devoted to the Set theory. It publishes a text with Stefan Banach which contains what one called thereafter the Paradoxe of Banach-Tarski.
In the years 1922 - 1925, Tarski teaches at the teaching Institute of Warsaw, then is then named privat docent mathematics and of logic at the University of Warsaw; later he becomes assistant of Jan Lukasiewicz. However not having succeeded in full-time obtaining a station at this same university, he in parallel teaches mathematics in one of the colleges of Warsaw. He marries Maria Witkowska in June 1929. Then it leaves to Vienna in 1930 and, for a few additional months, in 1935. For this period, it publishes (in 1933) its article probably most important, Pojęcie prawdy W językach nauk dedukcyjnych ( Concept of truth in the languages of deductive sciences , Prace Towarzystwa Naukowego Warszawskiego, Wydzial III Nauk Matematyczno-Fizycznych 34, Warsaw).
Near to the Circle of Vienna, it belongs to École of Lvov-Warsaw, like much of its professors of the University of Warsaw. It tries to obtain the post of professor at the University of Lvov, this project fails and Tarski which remains in the United States since August 1939 is surprised by the declaration of war, it decides to remain there. His wife and her children join there, thanks to the assistance of European friends. The remainder of its parentèle dies in the Nazi camps. After having taught in several universities, Tarski obtains a permanent station at the university of Berkeley in California in 1942. He travels much: in 1950 - it gives courses to University College of London and in 1955 at the Institute Henri Poincaré of Paris.
Alfred Tarski was made Honorary doctor of the universities of Calgary, Santiago of Chile and Aix-Marseilles.
Philosophical work
Tarski is in particular known for its theory of the Vérité which provided the foundations of the Sémantique and of the Théorie of the models. It had, in addition, a determining influence on the epistemology of Karl Popper, (of the consent even of this last), which, has a considerable debt with the theory of the truth of Tarski like correspondence with the facts. (See the book of Popper entitled: " Two fundamental problems of the theory of the connaissance" , Hermann edition, Paris, 1999).In 1933, Tarski publishes " Pojęcie prawdy W językach nauk dedukcyjnych" (" The concept of truth in the languages formelles" , French translation in Logical, semantic, méta-mathematics , A. Colin, 1976).
It gives the diagram of interpretation of the truth of a statement but the predicate " vrai" cannot belong to the language to which it relates, to avoid the Paradoxe of the liar.
" “P” is vrai" if and only if p. (where p is the proposal expressed by the statement “P”)
One of the philosophical debates on the theory tarskienne is to know if it presupposes a truth like correspondence with reality ( correspondantism ) or if it remains neutral and would be rather a theory known as " deflationary " (which does not add any entity) or simply " décitationnelle " (i.e. the predicate of truth makes it possible to withdraw the quotation marks of the quotation).
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