Guiding Questions for Tarski's "The Semantic Conception of Truth"

1. What is the purpose of this paper?

2. What is material adequacy? What is formal correctness? Why is the latter important?

3. What are the primary truth bearers?

4. Which conception of truth is at the basis of Tarski’s definitions?

5. What does the criterion for material adequacy consists in?

6. Why can't (T) or any particular instance of it be regarded as a definition of truth?

7. Why does Tarski dub his conception of truth the “semantic conception of truth”?

8. What is a semantically closed language? Under which conditions are they inconsistent?

9. Is our everyday language a closed language? Is it inconsistent?

10. What does Tarski’s general strategy to avoid paradoxes in formal definitions of truth consist in? How does this lead to a hierarchy of languages?

11. Why shouldn’t semantic terms be introduced in the metalanguage only by definition?