• Korean Journal of Logic
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.33-70
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• 2014

We still do not know against what histocial/philosophical background and motivation was Tarski's definition of logical consequence introduced, even if it has had such a strong influence. In view of the centrality of the notion of logical consequence in logic and philosophy of logic, it is rather shocking. There must be various intertwined reasons to blame for this uncomfortable situation. There has been remarkable progress achieved recently on the history of analytic philosophy and modern logic. In view of the recent developments of the controversies involved, however, we will have to wait years to resolve all this uneasiness. In this gloomy situation, Douglas Patterson's recent study of Tarski's philosophy of language and logic seems to have the potential to turn out to be a ground breaking achievement. [Patterson (2012)] This article aims at reporting the state-of-the-art in this problem area, and fathoming the future directions of research by examining critically some unclear components of Patterson's study.

• Korean Journal of Logic
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.71-109
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• 2014

Gila Sher believes that Tarskian definition of logical consequence is a conceptually and extensionally adequate explanation. She has tried to show this on the basis of Mostowskian conceptions of generalized quantifiers as being invariant under isomorphic structures and her own conceptions of models. In this paper I try to show that her attempt to justify the Tarskian definition is only partially successful. I admit that her conceptions of the logical as being invariant under isomorphic structures are enough to show the logical formality of logical consequence relations. But I think that since her conceptions of meanings of terms are quite inadequate for dealing with the problem of empty predicates, she fails to distinguish logically necessary truths from other kinds of truths.