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Tarski's aim in his monograph on the concept of truth was to present a mathematically acceptable definition of the notion of a true sentence. At the beginning of the twentieth century, semantical concepts had an "evil reputation", as Tarski writes (cf. Tarski 2006g, p. 252). There was no coherent theory of semantical notions at that time. Moreover, there were no definitions of these notions within any mathematical and logical frameworks. Only a few logicians achieved positive results in this field, e.g. Gödel presenting his incompleteness theorem. Tarski is the first one to put forward a coherent semantical theory of truth. Tarski's pioneering work has soon become indispensable in philosophy and logic. It laid foundations for all future theories of truth. Even today, over eighty years later, Tarski's equivalence scheme is the core of every truth theory. His results in the domain of semantics are epochal and will continue to be of crucial importance for future investigations in logic and philosophy.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-32616-0_3

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