¿Cuál es la clase de verdad preservada por la sustitiución de equivalentes? Según Paterson, la sustitución de términos con idéntica denotación preserva la verdad definicional, no necesariamente la verdad lógica, la matemática o la necesaria.
Truth-Definitions and Definitional Truth
- Resumen. Tarski’s procedure for defining truth is often criticized for turning contingent truths about meaning into necessary or even logical or mathematical truths. The criticism is widely accepted, but I will argue that it is misguided because it rests on confusions about definition, in particular confusions about what is supposed to be preserved by the substitutions licensed by a definition. The result, I hope, will be a vindication of Tarski as well as a clarification of what is involved in evaluating semantic definitions, claims and theories. I intend the discussion, however, to be of interest not just to those with a scholarly interest in Tarski, and not just to those engrossed in the minutiae of the truth literature, but to anyone who has ever taken an interest in definitions and the relation of definitional truth to other sorts of truth, for instance logical truth, mathematical truth, and necessary truth. The more general thesis of this paper is that definitions, in the familiar sense of explanations of the meanings of words, need not be logically or even necessarily true.
