Guiding Questions for Field's "Tarski’s Theory of Truth"

1. What’s the goal of the paper?

2. How does Field’s presentation of Tarski’s truth definition differ from the original one? What does it show?

3. What are the advantages and the disadvantages of understanding Tarski’s definition this way (T1)?

4. Why didn’t Tarski’s definition contain any mention of primitive denotation? Was he cheating?

5. Do Tarskian definitions explain us the meaning of the truth predicate? What purposes were they supposed to serve?

6. What is physicalism? What is semanticalism?

7. What purposes were Tarskian definitions supposed to serve? Do they?

8. What does Filed object in Tarski’s ‘explicit definition’ requirement?

9. What definition does Tarski provide of ‘denotation’? How does Field argue that T2 has no philosophical interest whatever that is not shared by Ti1?

10. What’s the ultimate purpose of pursuing theories of truth and reference?