Welcome to the home page of the Tarski’s World courseware package. Tarski’s World (TW) is published by CSLI Publications and distributed by the University of Chicago Press.
The package is intended as a supplement to any standard logic text or for use by anyone who wants to learn the language of first order logic. The main body of the book contains a collection of exericses which use the Tarski's World software to teach the language and semantics of first order logic. The Tarski's World application allows the evaluation of first-order sentences within blocks world which users may construct using a simple editor. The worlds consist of collections of blocks of varying sizes and shapes, and placed on a checkerboard. We use an interpreted first-order language which allows users to write sentences about these worlds and evaluate their truth. A Henkin-Hintikka game may be used to elucidate the evaluation procedure.
The package includes two pieces of software:
- Tarski's World, a program that teaches the basic first-order language and its semantics;
- Submit, a program that allows students to submit exercises done with the above programs to the Grade Grinder, the online grading service. Grade reports are returned to the student and, if requested, to the student's instructor.
All programs are available for the Windows, Macintosh and Linux platforms. Instructors do not need to use the programs themselves in order to be able to take advantage of their pedagogical value.
"If you have had a small amount of experience with a Macintosh and enjoy logical matters, then you will almost certainly enjoy using (or just playing with) this software for the Mac." --George Boolos, Journal of Symbolic Logic
"The authors are pioneers. [Tarski's World] is the only program that I know for teaching first-order semantics, and it sets a high standard. I warmly recommend it." --Wilfrid Hodges, Queen Mary College
