Remarks on Tarski’s Nominalism

Abstract

In this article, I will offer some remarks about Tarski’s nominalism. First, I will show that, even though it was mainly developed in private conversation and lectures, Tarski did try to develop a rigorous nominalistic theory, which shows that the issue was of some importance to him. In particular, I show how Tarski’s formulation is based on the idea of a humanly understandable language and show how he tried to develop this idea throughout his career. Unfortunately, even though his formulation is interesting, it seems to face an insurmountable obstacle, which I examine in detail in the article. Finally, I offer some remarks about what went wrong with Tarski’s nominalist program.