Monday's class was on Tarski's "Semantic Conception of Truth", which is what Burton Dreben used to call one of Tarski's "popularizations" and refused to take seriously. I like it for teaching, because it gives a nice introduction to Tarski's approach to the liar and to truth generally.
I felt like I fell a bit more into lecturing on this paper than on the others we've discussed. Maybe that was because it's more technical in nature, and I thought there was just stuff people needed to know. For example, Tarski indicates but does not actually argue that satisfaction of Convention T guarantees the extensional correctness of the defined truth-predicate. We needed to see why that is.
Still, the class was a lesson in how easy it is to fall back into talking a lot, something I'll try to avoid in our future sessions.
Today, then, is Dummett's "Truth". It seems, from the written responses I got from the students, as if my detailed reading notes did help. I was very impressed, in fact, with how well they'd done with this difficult paper. We'll see how the discussion goes.
The reading notes and questions seemed really effective. Having these beforehand really help structure the readings.
ReplyDeleteThe undergraduates in this class also seem really good. But I think these notes helped everyone quickly get on the same page.