Tarski’s definition of truth

Alfred Tarski’s definition of truth is unlike any that philosophers have given in their long struggle to understand the concept of truth. Tarski’s definition is more clear and precise than any previous definition, but it is also unusual in character and more restricted in scope. Tarski does not provide a general definition of truth. He provides instead a method of constructing, for a range of formalized languages L, definitions of the notions ‘true sentence of L’. A remarkable feature of Tarski’s work on truth is his ‘Criterion T’, which lays down a general condition that any definition of ‘true sentence of L’ must satisfy. Tarski’s ideas have exercised an enormous influence in philosophy. They have played an important role in the formulation and defence of a range of views in logic, semantics and metaphysics.