Springer From the Act of Judging to the Sentence: The Problem of Truth Bearers from Bolzano to Tarski: 328 (Synthese Library, 328)

IN MEMORIAM OF ARTUR ROJSZCZAK For a teacher, the opportunity to write the Foreword to a student’s work gives rise to a sense offul?lment and pride. In this case, however, although the latter remains, the former has been effaced.Inawell-ordered world Artur Rojszczak would have perhaps one day written tributes to ourselves. It isapoignant paradox when teachers are called upon to comment posthumously on thework of one of their students. This is a terrible task whichfalls to us―who have been not only mentors and colleagues to Artur, but also simply friends―of eulogizing someone who has died so soon, and so tragically. Artur was killed, together with his father, by an aggressive neighbour on September 27, 2001. Artur’s wife was severely injured in the same attack. Artur was born on March 12, 1968 in S?ubice (close to the Polish-German border). He studied in the Electronics College in Zielona Góra, graduating in 1987. But from very early on his dream was to study philosophy, and to do so at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow; no other place was considered by him seriously. He entered the university in 1988. From the Back Cover This book offers a detailed study of the truth-bearers problem, that is, the question of which category of items the predicates ‘true’ and ‘false’ are predicated. The book has two dimensions: historical and systematic. Both focus around Tarski’s semantic theory of truth. The author locates Tarski’s ideas in a broad context of Austrian philosophy, in particular, Brentano’s tradition. However, Bolzano and phenomenology (Husserl and Reinach) are also taken into account. The historical perspective is completed by showing how Tarski was rooted in Polish philosophical tradition originated with Twardowski and his version of Brentanism. The historical considerations are the basis for showing how the idea of truth-bearers as acts of judging was transformed into the theory of truth-bearers as sentences. In particular, the author analyses the way to nominalism in Polish philosophy, culminating in Lesniewski, Kotarbinski and Tarski. This book is indispensable for everybody interested in the evolution of Austrian philosophy from descriptive psychology to semantics. It is also a fundamental contribution toward a deeper understanding of the philosophical background of Tarski’s theory of truth.