Speranza
It might (but then again it might not) argued that philosophy, for Grice, was a branch of stylistics. His style became pretty barroque, but then, once a barroque always a barroque.
His very first essay, "Negation", is barroque enough, and a proof of this is that he manages to quote from Bradley and Bosanquet!
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Grice: Sentences in Sequence
Speranza
Grice thought that 'and' was otiose.
It is raining. It is cold.
Why bother with 'and'? Mere succession seems to do!
For Witters,
It is raining AND it is cold.
was enough to give him a claim to fame, as inventor of the truth-tables!
Grice thought that 'and' was otiose.
It is raining. It is cold.
Why bother with 'and'? Mere succession seems to do!
For Witters,
It is raining AND it is cold.
was enough to give him a claim to fame, as inventor of the truth-tables!
Grice: Master Sentences
Speranza
Grice recollects all he learned from Wilson (or Cook Wilson, to be more precise). He was fascinated by once hearing Wilson (or Cook Wilson) utter a 'master sentence':
i. What we know, we know.
Grice uses the Oxford comma, but when this master sentence travelled to Cambridge it lost it!
ii. What we know we know.
Grice recollects all he learned from Wilson (or Cook Wilson, to be more precise). He was fascinated by once hearing Wilson (or Cook Wilson) utter a 'master sentence':
i. What we know, we know.
Grice uses the Oxford comma, but when this master sentence travelled to Cambridge it lost it!
ii. What we know we know.
Grice: Balanced Series and Serial Balances
Speranza
Grice thought, with Cook Wilson (his surname was Wilson but everybody at Oxford referred to him as Cook Wilson, for some reason -- was he a closet cook?), that there is balance and order in the introduction of connectives.
The Sheffer stroke is hardly balanced!
Grice thought, with Cook Wilson (his surname was Wilson but everybody at Oxford referred to him as Cook Wilson, for some reason -- was he a closet cook?), that there is balance and order in the introduction of connectives.
The Sheffer stroke is hardly balanced!
Grice: the rhythm of threes
Speranza
Grice once considered the example:
James is between Tom and Jerry.
He was wondering if 'between' should have two different SENSES here. Suppose we are talking of height.
But suppose we are talking of MORAL height.
He concludes that 'between' has only ONE sense even if the utterance can be used to mean one thing and implicate the other!
Grice once considered the example:
James is between Tom and Jerry.
He was wondering if 'between' should have two different SENSES here. Suppose we are talking of height.
But suppose we are talking of MORAL height.
He concludes that 'between' has only ONE sense even if the utterance can be used to mean one thing and implicate the other!
Grice: Balanced Sentences and Balanced Forms
Speranza
Grice was fascinated by the phrase, "logical form", and he found that a sentence, as Lord Russell said, more or less reflects pretty transparently its own logical form. In other words, syntax is a fairly good guide to logical form.
When it came to 'connectives', Grice did discuss the Sheffer stroke, but he found it not too balanced!
Grice was fascinated by the phrase, "logical form", and he found that a sentence, as Lord Russell said, more or less reflects pretty transparently its own logical form. In other words, syntax is a fairly good guide to logical form.
When it came to 'connectives', Grice did discuss the Sheffer stroke, but he found it not too balanced!
Grice: Prefab Patterns of Suspense
Speranza
Degrees of suspensiveness is a Fregeian notion: but then there are prefab patterns of suspense, which are more Griceian in nature.
Degrees of suspensiveness is a Fregeian notion: but then there are prefab patterns of suspense, which are more Griceian in nature.
Grice: The Mechanics of Delay
Speranza
"Delay" is almost like a 'Fregeian' notion, like 'degrees of suspensiveness'. If you are going to CONCLUDE that Q, say, why bother to state the premise P from which Q follows?
This troubled Robin Talmach, who said that one should not really mind about one's Ps and Qs!
"Delay" is almost like a 'Fregeian' notion, like 'degrees of suspensiveness'. If you are going to CONCLUDE that Q, say, why bother to state the premise P from which Q follows?
This troubled Robin Talmach, who said that one should not really mind about one's Ps and Qs!
Grice: Degrees of Suspensiveness
Speranza
"Suspense" is almost a Fregeian notion, like 'colour'. So is 'suspensiveness'. In Grice's case it is a case when an implicature is 'triggered', or as Stephen Yablo would prefer, when 'implicature happens', because, implicature, like sh*t, happens!
Others, like Zwicky, would prefer to speak of an inference or an implicature being INVITED: some uninvited guest!
"Suspense" is almost a Fregeian notion, like 'colour'. So is 'suspensiveness'. In Grice's case it is a case when an implicature is 'triggered', or as Stephen Yablo would prefer, when 'implicature happens', because, implicature, like sh*t, happens!
Others, like Zwicky, would prefer to speak of an inference or an implicature being INVITED: some uninvited guest!
Grice: Cumulative Syntax to Create Suspense
Speranza
"Suspense" is a Fregean notion, almost, like 'colour'. Grice would prefer: 'cumulative syntax to trigger an implicature'.
Sherlock Holmes was good at detecting them, as the film with Ian McKellen testifies!
"Suspense" is a Fregean notion, almost, like 'colour'. Grice would prefer: 'cumulative syntax to trigger an implicature'.
Sherlock Holmes was good at detecting them, as the film with Ian McKellen testifies!
Grice: The riddle of prose rhythm
Speranza
Grice was of course not into prosody itself, but he found that there are two points:
i. John knew it.
ii. John KNEW it, and not merely believed it.
So, there is an implicature to a suprasegmental.
More importantly, he found that the FLOW of speech should follow the FLOW of meaning which should follow the FLOW of thought!
This he does in his last William James lecture, to the fascination of those who attended it!
Grice was of course not into prosody itself, but he found that there are two points:
i. John knew it.
ii. John KNEW it, and not merely believed it.
So, there is an implicature to a suprasegmental.
More importantly, he found that the FLOW of speech should follow the FLOW of meaning which should follow the FLOW of thought!
This he does in his last William James lecture, to the fascination of those who attended it!
Grice: Prompts of Explanation
Speranza
Grice was fascinated by the misuse, by people (rather than chimps -- cfr. "Chimps can talk"), of 'because'.
The bridge collapsed because...
In his John Locke lectures, Grice distinguishes between justificatory and explanatory reasons. He then finds that he is not explaining or justifying his distinction too well and grants that there may be justificatory-cum-explanatory reasons, too!
The John Locke lectures audience was delighted!
Grice was fascinated by the misuse, by people (rather than chimps -- cfr. "Chimps can talk"), of 'because'.
The bridge collapsed because...
In his John Locke lectures, Grice distinguishes between justificatory and explanatory reasons. He then finds that he is not explaining or justifying his distinction too well and grants that there may be justificatory-cum-explanatory reasons, too!
The John Locke lectures audience was delighted!
Grice: Prompts of Comparison
Speranza
Grice does not deal with similes, but with metaphors directly.
You, I tell you, are the cream in my coffee.
This is of course TOTALLY different from
You, I tell you, are LIKE the cream in my coffee.
But since the former is a categorial mistake and obviously a FALSE thing to say, it's best to see the logical form of metaphor as involving a 'prompt of comparison'.
"Shakespeare used a lot of these prompts," but then he was an actor!
Grice does not deal with similes, but with metaphors directly.
You, I tell you, are the cream in my coffee.
This is of course TOTALLY different from
You, I tell you, are LIKE the cream in my coffee.
But since the former is a categorial mistake and obviously a FALSE thing to say, it's best to see the logical form of metaphor as involving a 'prompt of comparison'.
"Shakespeare used a lot of these prompts," but then he was an actor!
Grice: Subordinate and Mixed Cumulatives
Speranza
The house that Grice built.
This is the stairs to the house that Grice built.
Matter of fact, he never built it. But when he became professor at Berkeley, he found this lovely 'mansion' (he called it 'cottage') and full of garden stairways it was, too!
But the prize was the lovely view of the bay!
The house that Grice built.
This is the stairs to the house that Grice built.
Matter of fact, he never built it. But when he became professor at Berkeley, he found this lovely 'mansion' (he called it 'cottage') and full of garden stairways it was, too!
But the prize was the lovely view of the bay!
Grice: Coordinate Cumulative Sentences
Speranza
This is almost like the house that Grice built. Only he never touched a stab!
This is almost like the house that Grice built. Only he never touched a stab!
Grice: Coordinate, Subordinate, and Mixed Patterns
Speranza
Grice was fascinated, and irritated, by some of L. J. Cohen's criticism (The fact that Cohen was an Oxonian irritated Grice even more).
Cohen's criticism has to do with implicatures in suboordination.
Cohen failed to explain the problem, but Grice found a solution!
Grice was fascinated, and irritated, by some of L. J. Cohen's criticism (The fact that Cohen was an Oxonian irritated Grice even more).
Cohen's criticism has to do with implicatures in suboordination.
Cohen failed to explain the problem, but Grice found a solution!
Grice: Direction of Modification
Speranza
Grice deals with this:
-- French professor
a professor who is French
a professor who teaches french.
Cfr. "French poem"
There may be an implicature to the effect that "French poem" is a poem written by a Frenchman, say, in Arabic!
Grice deals with this:
-- French professor
a professor who is French
a professor who teaches french.
Cfr. "French poem"
There may be an implicature to the effect that "French poem" is a poem written by a Frenchman, say, in Arabic!
Grice: The rhythm of cumulative syntax
Speranza
Grice thought, rightly, that there is an ORDER in which connectives have to be introduced:
First come conjunction.
Then disjunction.
And then 'if'.
He was so fascinated (and irritated) by what Strawson (his tutee, of all people) had said, wrongly, about 'inferrability' and 'if' that when he (Grice) had to entitle his fourth William James lecture he chose, "Indicative Conditionals"!
Grice thought, rightly, that there is an ORDER in which connectives have to be introduced:
First come conjunction.
Then disjunction.
And then 'if'.
He was so fascinated (and irritated) by what Strawson (his tutee, of all people) had said, wrongly, about 'inferrability' and 'if' that when he (Grice) had to entitle his fourth William James lecture he chose, "Indicative Conditionals"!
Grice: Adjectival Steps
Speranza
Grice was fascinated by adjectives. His examples don't proliferate, though!
-- The dog is shaggy
was his example.
He chose 'shaggy' after that idiom, 'a shaggy-dog story'.
He formulates adjectives in "Way of Words" as "beta". Thus, "The dog is shaggy" becomes, rightly,
"The alpha is beta".
Grice was fascinated by adjectives. His examples don't proliferate, though!
-- The dog is shaggy
was his example.
He chose 'shaggy' after that idiom, 'a shaggy-dog story'.
He formulates adjectives in "Way of Words" as "beta". Thus, "The dog is shaggy" becomes, rightly,
"The alpha is beta".
Grice: How Sentences Grow
Speranza
Grice is a compositionalist, but one has to be careful! It's utterer's meaning that's basic, not expression meaning!
Grice is a compositionalist, but one has to be careful! It's utterer's meaning that's basic, not expression meaning!
Grice: Propositions and Meaning
Speranza
Why was Grice against 'propositions' and preferred 'propositional complexes' isntead? I know!
Why was Grice against 'propositions' and preferred 'propositional complexes' isntead? I know!
Monday, August 24, 2015
Fifty Shades Of Grice
Speranza
Grice was once asked if his surname was Scots (In Scots, 'grice' means 'pig'). He was offended (about the denotatum of the alleged derivation of his surname). "Hardly: it's Anglo-Norman: it means 'grey'" -- as implicating, 'as in fifty shades of Grice,' you know.
Grice was once asked if his surname was Scots (In Scots, 'grice' means 'pig'). He was offended (about the denotatum of the alleged derivation of his surname). "Hardly: it's Anglo-Norman: it means 'grey'" -- as implicating, 'as in fifty shades of Grice,' you know.
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Kaarlo Jaakko Juhani Hintikka and Herbert Paul Grice: Implicature as a Game
Speranza
Hintikka has written a delightful 'intellectual autobiography' for the
Schilpp volume series.
Was he (Hintikka, not Schilpp) jealous of his wife's previous lovers?
He doesn't think so. The thing was remote. But interesting from a
philosophical point of view:
Jane Merrill Bristow (she later dropped the "Jane") was studying
philosophy and considered herself a "follower of Sartre’s thoughts".
When an influential Senator from Massachusetts, New England, visited
Bristow's college, he took part in a discussion with students. Jane Merrill
Bristow was selected.
During the conversation, Bristow took the Massachusetts senator by
surprise with her knowledge of the notorious trade union Teamsters.
Afterwards the senator's press secretary, invites Jane to a one-on-one
meeting with the senator.
At first, Bristow thought that the senator wanted to hear more about
Teamsters but he had other things in mind.
As a (not logical) consequence, the pair became what Americans call
"lovers".
Bristow kept the affair a secret, only telling Hintikka some time later
(when she had chosen the name "Merrill Hintikka").
Merrill Hintikka told Hintikka: He [the senator] cried almost every time
after we had made love."
(Recall they were what Americans call 'lovers', and "lovers make love" is
analytic a priori).
Hintikka was frequently asked of his feelings on being compared with such
a well-known ladies’ man as the senator for Massachussets was.
Hintikka held a distinct belief: "Their affair was in the distant past by
that time. So there was no jealousy on my part but of course you had to
wonder if you were found wanting in that contest. But this is something I
touched upon in my book."
The book was selected by the Helsinki book club which meets weekly.
Grice was married once, and at one point he discusses the 'evidence' for a
belief versus the 'acceptance' for a belief. Grice holds that certain
beliefs (or other attitudes) are accepted notably NOT on the basis of their
evidence (in this he may contrast with Popper but most notably with the
Inductivists). He gives just one example: the belief in one's fideltity to one's
wife.
The case with Hintikka's first wife -- not Merrill Hintikka -- was an
interesting one to discuss in this respect since as Hintikka suggests in his
"Intellectual Autobiography", there is evidence for belief and acceptance of
belief other than based on evidence.
When Hintikka met for a second time Merrill Provence (Jane Merrill Bristow
the "Jane" and married Provence) at the Statler Hilton Hotel in New York,
she "was going through a divorce", while Hintikka himself was married to
Soili Hintikka -- "happily as far as [he knew]."
A conversation with Merrill Provence ended in Hintikka’s room at the Hilton
"and finally in his bed where Hintikka and Provence make love "tenderly,
albeit clumsily"".
It may be interesting to study the scenarios in terms of what Dennett calls
'hintikkas':
hintikka, n. A measure of belief, the smallest logically discernible
difference between beliefs. "He argued with me all night, but did not alter my
beliefs one hintikka."
Hintikka's third wife wrote her dissertation on what she calls a formal
theory of the will; so we have to broaden Dennett's definition to cover the
measure of ANY PROPOSITIONAL ATTITUDE [and not those only accepted on their
basis of their evidence], to wit: "the smallest logically discernible
difference between" propositional attitudes.
Witters thought that some attitudes were not propositional, and not merely
Italian! [Witters was insisting that a proposition and that which it describes must
have the same 'logical form', the same 'logical multiplicity'. Sraffa [the
Torino son of Angelo Sraffa and Irma Sraffa (née Tivoli), a wealthy
couple] made a gesture, familiar to Neapolitans [although Sraffa was from
Torino] as meaning something like disgust or contempt, of brushing the underneath
of his chin with an outward sweep of the finger-tips of one hand. And he
asked: 'What is the logical form of that?' The implicature was that some
attitudes are not propositional _in nature_.]
Dennett's example: "He argued with me all night, but did not alter my
beliefs one hintikka". This sort of scenario led to a development in epistemics,
doxastics, boulemaics, and denotics based on the idea of CHANGE in one's
tableau of such attitudes.
Hintikka has written a delightful 'intellectual autobiography' for the
Schilpp volume series.
Was he (Hintikka, not Schilpp) jealous of his wife's previous lovers?
He doesn't think so. The thing was remote. But interesting from a
philosophical point of view:
Jane Merrill Bristow (she later dropped the "Jane") was studying
philosophy and considered herself a "follower of Sartre’s thoughts".
When an influential Senator from Massachusetts, New England, visited
Bristow's college, he took part in a discussion with students. Jane Merrill
Bristow was selected.
During the conversation, Bristow took the Massachusetts senator by
surprise with her knowledge of the notorious trade union Teamsters.
Afterwards the senator's press secretary, invites Jane to a one-on-one
meeting with the senator.
At first, Bristow thought that the senator wanted to hear more about
Teamsters but he had other things in mind.
As a (not logical) consequence, the pair became what Americans call
"lovers".
Bristow kept the affair a secret, only telling Hintikka some time later
(when she had chosen the name "Merrill Hintikka").
Merrill Hintikka told Hintikka: He [the senator] cried almost every time
after we had made love."
(Recall they were what Americans call 'lovers', and "lovers make love" is
analytic a priori).
Hintikka was frequently asked of his feelings on being compared with such
a well-known ladies’ man as the senator for Massachussets was.
Hintikka held a distinct belief: "Their affair was in the distant past by
that time. So there was no jealousy on my part but of course you had to
wonder if you were found wanting in that contest. But this is something I
touched upon in my book."
The book was selected by the Helsinki book club which meets weekly.
Grice was married once, and at one point he discusses the 'evidence' for a
belief versus the 'acceptance' for a belief. Grice holds that certain
beliefs (or other attitudes) are accepted notably NOT on the basis of their
evidence (in this he may contrast with Popper but most notably with the
Inductivists). He gives just one example: the belief in one's fideltity to one's
wife.
The case with Hintikka's first wife -- not Merrill Hintikka -- was an
interesting one to discuss in this respect since as Hintikka suggests in his
"Intellectual Autobiography", there is evidence for belief and acceptance of
belief other than based on evidence.
When Hintikka met for a second time Merrill Provence (Jane Merrill Bristow
the "Jane" and married Provence) at the Statler Hilton Hotel in New York,
she "was going through a divorce", while Hintikka himself was married to
Soili Hintikka -- "happily as far as [he knew]."
A conversation with Merrill Provence ended in Hintikka’s room at the Hilton
"and finally in his bed where Hintikka and Provence make love "tenderly,
albeit clumsily"".
It may be interesting to study the scenarios in terms of what Dennett calls
'hintikkas':
hintikka, n. A measure of belief, the smallest logically discernible
difference between beliefs. "He argued with me all night, but did not alter my
beliefs one hintikka."
Hintikka's third wife wrote her dissertation on what she calls a formal
theory of the will; so we have to broaden Dennett's definition to cover the
measure of ANY PROPOSITIONAL ATTITUDE [and not those only accepted on their
basis of their evidence], to wit: "the smallest logically discernible
difference between" propositional attitudes.
Witters thought that some attitudes were not propositional, and not merely
Italian! [Witters was insisting that a proposition and that which it describes must
have the same 'logical form', the same 'logical multiplicity'. Sraffa [the
Torino son of Angelo Sraffa and Irma Sraffa (née Tivoli), a wealthy
couple] made a gesture, familiar to Neapolitans [although Sraffa was from
Torino] as meaning something like disgust or contempt, of brushing the underneath
of his chin with an outward sweep of the finger-tips of one hand. And he
asked: 'What is the logical form of that?' The implicature was that some
attitudes are not propositional _in nature_.]
Dennett's example: "He argued with me all night, but did not alter my
beliefs one hintikka". This sort of scenario led to a development in epistemics,
doxastics, boulemaics, and denotics based on the idea of CHANGE in one's
tableau of such attitudes.
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Monday, August 17, 2015
KAARLO JAAKKO JUHANI HINTIKKA and HERBERT PAUL GRICE: Implicature as Game
Speranza
Some say that if you are going to write an essay for a festschrift, you should state that you don't allow any reprint of that essay elsewhere: to reprint a festschrift essay elsewhere kills the point of the festchrift. Yet. Strawson re-published his "if and -->' elsewhere, as did Hintikka his essay on the logic of conversation (in Kasher, Pragmatics). Both were intended for the Grice festschrift.
For the record, a commentary on the volume in the "Library of Living
Philosophers" series on Hintikka.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF JAAKO HINTIKKA
This is VOLUME 30.
While his full name was K. J. J. H., Hintikka went most of the time by
Jaakko.
Hintikka is recognized as one of the handful of most creative,
comprehensive, and rigorous philosophical minds.
His major contributions to philosophy range over a very wide area, most
conspicuously:
-- logic
-- epistemology
-- philosophy of science
-- history of philosophy.
In this celebration, twenty-seven philosophers expound and criticise
aspects of Hintikka's though, and he responds directly to each one of them with
elegance and precision.
The volume also contains Hintikka's intellectual autobiography, as well as
a comprehensive, up-to-date bibliography of all his published work.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Jaako Hintikka: Intellectual Autobiography
ESSAY I:
Simo Knuuttila: Hintikka's View of the History of Philosophy
---- What are Hintikka's views on the history of philosophy? He seems to
have had a fascination (via his mentor, von Wright, for Witters, but he also
liked Aristotle, and always enjoyed the work of Grice who was the cynosure
of everyone while Hintikka was at Harvard.
ESSAY II:
Gabriel Motzkin: Hintikka's Ideas About the History of Ideas
"The History of Ideas" is a chair in Oxford once held by Berlin. By "Ideas"
we mean "Ideology". Not any idea does. "It was Joe's idea to do it" does
not form part of the history of ideas, but Jefferson's views were.
ESSAY III:
Juliet Floyd:
On the Use and Abuse of Logic in Philosophy: Kant, Frege, and Hintikka on
the Verb "To Be"
--- This relates to the essay by Grice on "Aristotle on the multiplicity of
being". Grice, against G. E. L. Owen ("The snares of ontology") thinks
that 'be' is uniguous. But Grice distinguishes between:
(a) Socrates izz rational.
and
(b) Socrates hazz a flat nose.
Both come up as 'is' in Aristotle, but they shouldn't!
ESSAY IV: Judson C. Webb: Hintikka on Aristotelian Constructions, Kantian
Intuitions, and Peircean Theorems
This is a comprehensive view of Hintikka's take on Aristotle, Kant and
Peirce. I think he preferred Aristotle of all, and his last volume of Selected
Papers is dedicated to Aristotle.
ESSAY V:
R.M. Dancy: Hintikka, Aristotle, and Existence
This overlaps a bit with Essay III. "Existentia" is not a word Aristotle
would use. He would use 'ousia'. Hintikka distinguishes between 'existence'
(not a predicate for Kant) and essence.
ESSAY VI:
Aaron Garrett: The Method of the Analyst
Hintikka is, like Grice, an analytic philosopher; but unlike Grice,
Hintikka skips 'linguistic botanising' and goes straight to formalism.
ESSAY VII:
Karl-Otto Apel: Speculative-Hermeneutic Remarks on Hintikka's Performatory
Interpretation of Descartes's Cogito, Ergo Sum
By 'performatory', Apel means 'performative' which is a lexical item J. L.
Austin borrowed (but never returned from Scots law: 'operative'). The idea
is that when Descartes said what he did in French he was doing things with
words. Some have argued, wrongly, that performatives are neither true nor
false, and Hintikka thinks this may shed light on what Descartes actually
DID with his words.
ESSAY VIII:
Dagfinn Follesdal: Hintikka On Phenomenology
Phenomenology is not supposed to be analytic philosophy, but continental
philosophy. The fat that Follesdal, who taught with Hintikka at Stanford,
thinks that what Hintikka (an analytic philosopher) says about phenomenology
(a branch of continental philosophy) is important goes to show how arbitrary
(contra Woody Allen's recent film, "Irrational man", after book by
Barrett) can be.
ESSAY IX:
David Pears: Private Language
D. F. Pears with collaborator with H. P. Grice on work in the philosophy of
action. A student at Christ Church (the most prestigious college in
Oxford), Pears knows what he is saying. Robinson Crusoe did have a private
language, UNTIL HE MET FRIDAY.
ESSAY X
Mathieu Marion: Phenomenological Language, Thoughts, and Operations in the
Tractatus
Hintikka had, via von Wright, a fascination for the three Witters: the
first Witters of the Tractatus, the middle Witters, and the latter Witters.
Operations is a key concept in the early Witters as Marion shows, and he
learned this from Hintikka.
Essay XI:
Raymond M. Smullyan: A Logical Miscellany
By 'miscellany', Smullyan means a mischmasch. He learned this from
Hintikka.
ESSAY XII:
Solomon Feferman: What Kind of Logic Is "Independence Friendly" Logic?
We speak of X-friendly figuratively. Logic is not friendly, since only
persons are friendly. A logician may be friendy. So a logician who is
independence-friendly is possibly revolutionary, so beware! (Hintikka was one!)
ESSAY XIII:
Johan Van Benthem: The Epistemic Logic of IF Games
Grice laughed at Strawson's account of 'if', for Strawson thought that he
was doing first-rate ordinary language philosophy (in "Introduction to
Logical Theory") and laughed at the fact that logicians's 'if' has NOTHING to do
with HIS use of 'if'. Hintikka underestimates this polemic and bases his
games on 'if' -- as a background for his epistemic logic.
ESSAY XIV
Wilfrid Hodges: The Logic of Quantifiers
Hodges wrote a nice little volume on Logic for Penguin. Hintikka was
obsessed with quantifiers: any, each, all. He noted that they can NOT all be
symbolised, as Grice thinks, by (x). "Each clown can be funny". But this does
not implicate that "ALL" clows are funny, let alone that "any clown is
funny" or "every clown is funny". In fact, it may well be that NO clown is funny.
ESSAY XV:
Gabriel Sandu: Hintikka and the Fallacies of the New Theory of Reference
By the New Theory of Reference we mean Ruth Barcan Marcus and Saul Kripke.
Hintikka thought it was plagued with fallacies. This gave Dennett the idea
to coin 'hintikka': "We discussed all night, but that did not lead me to
change ONE hintikka about stuff".
ESSAY XVI
James Higginbotham: The Scope Hypothesis
This is a very important philosopher. Some say that Higginbotham is no
philosopher, but a linguist, but Hintikka sometimes felt himself honoured that
he was being treated seriously be linguists! The scope hypothesis
fascinated Grice. He developed two theories to deal with it: the subscript device,
in "Vacuous Names" (in Davidson/Hintikka, "Words and Objections) and the
square-bracket device: e.g. "[The king of France] is not bald." IMPLICATES
there is a king of France and we write that between square bracket and thus
make it immune to criticism: a presupposition alla Collingwood. This allows
Grice to avoid problems with truth-value gaps.
ESSAY XVII
Hans Sluga: Jaakko Hintikka (and Others) on Truth
Sluga is credited by Grice in "Presupposition and Conversational
Implicature" for his help in analysing "the king of France is bald". Sluga, unlike
Hintikka, was Oxonian-educated.
ESSAY XVIII:
Pascal Engel: Is Truth Effable?
Engel is playing on Witters for whom truth like the naming of cats is
ineffable.
Engel (not to be confused with the plural Engels, a dangerous philosopher)
betwen:
i. truth is effable.
ii. truth is ineffable
iii. truth is effanineffable.
Witters would have thought that truth was effanineffable, but G. E. M.
Anscombe found that hard to translate.
ESSAY XIX:
Jan Wolenski: Tarskian and Post-Tarskian Truth
If Popper learned from Tarksi while seating on a bench in Vienna, Hintikka
didn't.
ESSAY XX:
Philippe De Rouilhan and Serge Bozon: The Truth of IF: Has Hintikka Really
Exorcised Tarski's Curse?
D. M. S. Edginton, once professor of metaphysical philosophy at Oxford,
held that 'if' sentences do not have truth values. Tarski was known to curse
in Polish (his native language). You make the connections. For the
exorcising of curses vide Geary, "Secret Papers".
Essay XXI
Martin Kusch: Hintikka on Heidegger and the Universality of Language
For Heidegger German was a universal language; for Hintikka Finnish was a
universal language. For Kusch both were!
ESSAY XXII
Patrick Suppes: Hintikka's Generalizations of Logic and their Relation to
Science
Suppes taught with Hinitkka at Stanford. Logic ain't science and science
ain't logic. Logicians play with silly examples like "All ravens are black".
Scientists, unless you are a biologist (and play with "Some ravens are
albino"), don't.
ESSAY XXIII
Isaac Levi: Induction, Abduction, and Oracles
Hintikka delivered the second von Wright lecture on induction. Ab-duction
was of course a coinage by Peirce. Oracles were heard at Delphi. Levi makes
all the proper connections in connection with the War of the Peloponnesus.
ESSAY XXIV
Risto Hilpinen: Jaakko Hintikka on Epistemic Logic and Epistemology
Perhaps the most quoted essay by Hintikka is his essay on knowledge, for
which he uses the symbol "K", as in KAP, KKAP. The second reads that A knows
that he knows that p.
Epistemology, for Hintikka, is epistemics, i.e. epistemic logic. And right
he is!
ESSAY XV
Matti Sintonen: From the Logic of Questions to the Logic of Inquiry
Questions and inquiry have been related since Hobbes. For Hobbes, the
scientist asks questions to Nature, and Nature never lies.
ESSAY XVI
Theo A.F. Kuipers: Inductive Aspects of Confirmation, Information, and
Content
Hintikka, unlike Popper, was stuck with induction. But also with
confirmation, information, and content. He was so much into content that Dennett
coined 'hintikka' to refer to a belief that varies infinitesimally from
another.
ESSAY XVII
Michael Meyer: Questioning Art
The sad thing is that it's artist (notably Andy Warhol) who first and
foremost question art, when they should just sell it!
The volume concludes with a Bibliography of the Writings of Jaakko Hintikka
Cheers,
Speranza
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Some say that if you are going to write an essay for a festschrift, you should state that you don't allow any reprint of that essay elsewhere: to reprint a festschrift essay elsewhere kills the point of the festchrift. Yet. Strawson re-published his "if and -->' elsewhere, as did Hintikka his essay on the logic of conversation (in Kasher, Pragmatics). Both were intended for the Grice festschrift.
For the record, a commentary on the volume in the "Library of Living
Philosophers" series on Hintikka.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF JAAKO HINTIKKA
This is VOLUME 30.
While his full name was K. J. J. H., Hintikka went most of the time by
Jaakko.
Hintikka is recognized as one of the handful of most creative,
comprehensive, and rigorous philosophical minds.
His major contributions to philosophy range over a very wide area, most
conspicuously:
-- logic
-- epistemology
-- philosophy of science
-- history of philosophy.
In this celebration, twenty-seven philosophers expound and criticise
aspects of Hintikka's though, and he responds directly to each one of them with
elegance and precision.
The volume also contains Hintikka's intellectual autobiography, as well as
a comprehensive, up-to-date bibliography of all his published work.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Jaako Hintikka: Intellectual Autobiography
ESSAY I:
Simo Knuuttila: Hintikka's View of the History of Philosophy
---- What are Hintikka's views on the history of philosophy? He seems to
have had a fascination (via his mentor, von Wright, for Witters, but he also
liked Aristotle, and always enjoyed the work of Grice who was the cynosure
of everyone while Hintikka was at Harvard.
ESSAY II:
Gabriel Motzkin: Hintikka's Ideas About the History of Ideas
"The History of Ideas" is a chair in Oxford once held by Berlin. By "Ideas"
we mean "Ideology". Not any idea does. "It was Joe's idea to do it" does
not form part of the history of ideas, but Jefferson's views were.
ESSAY III:
Juliet Floyd:
On the Use and Abuse of Logic in Philosophy: Kant, Frege, and Hintikka on
the Verb "To Be"
--- This relates to the essay by Grice on "Aristotle on the multiplicity of
being". Grice, against G. E. L. Owen ("The snares of ontology") thinks
that 'be' is uniguous. But Grice distinguishes between:
(a) Socrates izz rational.
and
(b) Socrates hazz a flat nose.
Both come up as 'is' in Aristotle, but they shouldn't!
ESSAY IV: Judson C. Webb: Hintikka on Aristotelian Constructions, Kantian
Intuitions, and Peircean Theorems
This is a comprehensive view of Hintikka's take on Aristotle, Kant and
Peirce. I think he preferred Aristotle of all, and his last volume of Selected
Papers is dedicated to Aristotle.
ESSAY V:
R.M. Dancy: Hintikka, Aristotle, and Existence
This overlaps a bit with Essay III. "Existentia" is not a word Aristotle
would use. He would use 'ousia'. Hintikka distinguishes between 'existence'
(not a predicate for Kant) and essence.
ESSAY VI:
Aaron Garrett: The Method of the Analyst
Hintikka is, like Grice, an analytic philosopher; but unlike Grice,
Hintikka skips 'linguistic botanising' and goes straight to formalism.
ESSAY VII:
Karl-Otto Apel: Speculative-Hermeneutic Remarks on Hintikka's Performatory
Interpretation of Descartes's Cogito, Ergo Sum
By 'performatory', Apel means 'performative' which is a lexical item J. L.
Austin borrowed (but never returned from Scots law: 'operative'). The idea
is that when Descartes said what he did in French he was doing things with
words. Some have argued, wrongly, that performatives are neither true nor
false, and Hintikka thinks this may shed light on what Descartes actually
DID with his words.
ESSAY VIII:
Dagfinn Follesdal: Hintikka On Phenomenology
Phenomenology is not supposed to be analytic philosophy, but continental
philosophy. The fat that Follesdal, who taught with Hintikka at Stanford,
thinks that what Hintikka (an analytic philosopher) says about phenomenology
(a branch of continental philosophy) is important goes to show how arbitrary
(contra Woody Allen's recent film, "Irrational man", after book by
Barrett) can be.
ESSAY IX:
David Pears: Private Language
D. F. Pears with collaborator with H. P. Grice on work in the philosophy of
action. A student at Christ Church (the most prestigious college in
Oxford), Pears knows what he is saying. Robinson Crusoe did have a private
language, UNTIL HE MET FRIDAY.
ESSAY X
Mathieu Marion: Phenomenological Language, Thoughts, and Operations in the
Tractatus
Hintikka had, via von Wright, a fascination for the three Witters: the
first Witters of the Tractatus, the middle Witters, and the latter Witters.
Operations is a key concept in the early Witters as Marion shows, and he
learned this from Hintikka.
Essay XI:
Raymond M. Smullyan: A Logical Miscellany
By 'miscellany', Smullyan means a mischmasch. He learned this from
Hintikka.
ESSAY XII:
Solomon Feferman: What Kind of Logic Is "Independence Friendly" Logic?
We speak of X-friendly figuratively. Logic is not friendly, since only
persons are friendly. A logician may be friendy. So a logician who is
independence-friendly is possibly revolutionary, so beware! (Hintikka was one!)
ESSAY XIII:
Johan Van Benthem: The Epistemic Logic of IF Games
Grice laughed at Strawson's account of 'if', for Strawson thought that he
was doing first-rate ordinary language philosophy (in "Introduction to
Logical Theory") and laughed at the fact that logicians's 'if' has NOTHING to do
with HIS use of 'if'. Hintikka underestimates this polemic and bases his
games on 'if' -- as a background for his epistemic logic.
ESSAY XIV
Wilfrid Hodges: The Logic of Quantifiers
Hodges wrote a nice little volume on Logic for Penguin. Hintikka was
obsessed with quantifiers: any, each, all. He noted that they can NOT all be
symbolised, as Grice thinks, by (x). "Each clown can be funny". But this does
not implicate that "ALL" clows are funny, let alone that "any clown is
funny" or "every clown is funny". In fact, it may well be that NO clown is funny.
ESSAY XV:
Gabriel Sandu: Hintikka and the Fallacies of the New Theory of Reference
By the New Theory of Reference we mean Ruth Barcan Marcus and Saul Kripke.
Hintikka thought it was plagued with fallacies. This gave Dennett the idea
to coin 'hintikka': "We discussed all night, but that did not lead me to
change ONE hintikka about stuff".
ESSAY XVI
James Higginbotham: The Scope Hypothesis
This is a very important philosopher. Some say that Higginbotham is no
philosopher, but a linguist, but Hintikka sometimes felt himself honoured that
he was being treated seriously be linguists! The scope hypothesis
fascinated Grice. He developed two theories to deal with it: the subscript device,
in "Vacuous Names" (in Davidson/Hintikka, "Words and Objections) and the
square-bracket device: e.g. "[The king of France] is not bald." IMPLICATES
there is a king of France and we write that between square bracket and thus
make it immune to criticism: a presupposition alla Collingwood. This allows
Grice to avoid problems with truth-value gaps.
ESSAY XVII
Hans Sluga: Jaakko Hintikka (and Others) on Truth
Sluga is credited by Grice in "Presupposition and Conversational
Implicature" for his help in analysing "the king of France is bald". Sluga, unlike
Hintikka, was Oxonian-educated.
ESSAY XVIII:
Pascal Engel: Is Truth Effable?
Engel is playing on Witters for whom truth like the naming of cats is
ineffable.
Engel (not to be confused with the plural Engels, a dangerous philosopher)
betwen:
i. truth is effable.
ii. truth is ineffable
iii. truth is effanineffable.
Witters would have thought that truth was effanineffable, but G. E. M.
Anscombe found that hard to translate.
ESSAY XIX:
Jan Wolenski: Tarskian and Post-Tarskian Truth
If Popper learned from Tarksi while seating on a bench in Vienna, Hintikka
didn't.
ESSAY XX:
Philippe De Rouilhan and Serge Bozon: The Truth of IF: Has Hintikka Really
Exorcised Tarski's Curse?
D. M. S. Edginton, once professor of metaphysical philosophy at Oxford,
held that 'if' sentences do not have truth values. Tarski was known to curse
in Polish (his native language). You make the connections. For the
exorcising of curses vide Geary, "Secret Papers".
Essay XXI
Martin Kusch: Hintikka on Heidegger and the Universality of Language
For Heidegger German was a universal language; for Hintikka Finnish was a
universal language. For Kusch both were!
ESSAY XXII
Patrick Suppes: Hintikka's Generalizations of Logic and their Relation to
Science
Suppes taught with Hinitkka at Stanford. Logic ain't science and science
ain't logic. Logicians play with silly examples like "All ravens are black".
Scientists, unless you are a biologist (and play with "Some ravens are
albino"), don't.
ESSAY XXIII
Isaac Levi: Induction, Abduction, and Oracles
Hintikka delivered the second von Wright lecture on induction. Ab-duction
was of course a coinage by Peirce. Oracles were heard at Delphi. Levi makes
all the proper connections in connection with the War of the Peloponnesus.
ESSAY XXIV
Risto Hilpinen: Jaakko Hintikka on Epistemic Logic and Epistemology
Perhaps the most quoted essay by Hintikka is his essay on knowledge, for
which he uses the symbol "K", as in KAP, KKAP. The second reads that A knows
that he knows that p.
Epistemology, for Hintikka, is epistemics, i.e. epistemic logic. And right
he is!
ESSAY XV
Matti Sintonen: From the Logic of Questions to the Logic of Inquiry
Questions and inquiry have been related since Hobbes. For Hobbes, the
scientist asks questions to Nature, and Nature never lies.
ESSAY XVI
Theo A.F. Kuipers: Inductive Aspects of Confirmation, Information, and
Content
Hintikka, unlike Popper, was stuck with induction. But also with
confirmation, information, and content. He was so much into content that Dennett
coined 'hintikka' to refer to a belief that varies infinitesimally from
another.
ESSAY XVII
Michael Meyer: Questioning Art
The sad thing is that it's artist (notably Andy Warhol) who first and
foremost question art, when they should just sell it!
The volume concludes with a Bibliography of the Writings of Jaakko Hintikka
Cheers,
Speranza
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Kaarlo Jaakko Juhani Hintikka and Herbert Paul Grice: Implicature as Game
Speranza
So, Paul Grice and Rogers Albritton, and K. J. J. Hintikka were at the
Harvard cafeteria. S. Bernadette turns up, and doesn't seem to be understanding
what Albritton and Grice are discussing. "Free will," Hintikka's curt
answer was.
For the record, the contents of Hintikka's "Selected Papers", in six
volumes.
Vol. 1: "Ludwig Wittgenstein: Half-Truths and One-and-a-Half-Truths"
Because of his legendary impatience, Witters's published books are focused
on his solutions to his latest problems and consequently often fail to
explain not only his earlier solutions but also his problem situation.
In the essays collected the first volume of Hintikka's selected essays, he
counteracts the difficulty which this peculiarity of Witters''s poses to
his readers by analysing in depth the crucial stages of Witters's
philosophical career and the relation of his ideas to those of other philosophers,
especially Russell, Carnap and Husserl, with sometimes surprising results.
(Incidentally, Husserl is cited in Woody Allen's latest, "Irrational man" *
now playing * -- "We'll deal with Husserl's phenomenology tomorrow, so I
hope you get the reading done by then. I realise it can be difficult").
Vol. 2: Lingua Universalis vs. Calculus Ratiocinator
Twentieth-century philosophy has tacitly been dominated by a deep contrast
between universalist and model-theoretical visions of language.
The role of this contrast is studied here in Peirce, Frege, Witters,
Carnap, Quine, Husserl, Heidegger and in the development of logical theory.
Hintikka also develops a new approach to truth-definitions which strongly
supports the model-theoretical view.
Vol. 3: Language, Truth and Logic in Mathematics.
The foundations of mathematics are examined by reference to such crucial
concepts as the informational independence of quantifiers, the
standard-nonstandard distinction, completeness, computability, parallel processing and
the extremality of models.
Vol. 4: Paradigms for Language Theory and Other Essays
Several of the basic ideas of current language theory are subjected to
critical scrutiny and found wanting, including the concept of scope, the
hegemony of generative syntax, the Frege-Russell claim that verbs like `is' are
ambiguous [cfr. Grice, "Aristotle on the multiplicity of being], and the
assumptions underlying the so-called New Theory of Reference. In their stead,
new constructive ideas are proposed.
Vol. 5: Inquiry as Inquiry: A Logic of Scientific Discovery
In the essays collected here, Hintikka both defends and outlines a genuine
logic of scientific discovery, the logic of questions and answers.
Thus inquiry in the sense of knowledge-seeking becomes inquiry in the sense
of interrogation.
Using this new logic, Hintikka establishes a result that will undoubtedly
be considered the fundamental theorem of all epistemology, viz., the virtual
identity of optimal strategies of pure discovery with optimal deductive
strategies.
Vol. 6: Analyses of Aristotle
This collection comprises several striking interpretations of Aristotle's
logic and methodology that Hintikka has put forward over the years,
constituting a challenge not only to Aristotelian scholars and historians of
ideas, but to everyone interested in logic, epistemology or metaphysics and in
their history.
Incidentally, both Hintikka's second and third wives were philosophers. His
second philosophical wife is Ghita Holmström.
Her work includes:
"A Formal Theory of Will", Licentiate Thesis. Department of Philosophy,
University of Helsinki.
"Wills, Purposes and Actions" in Ghita Holmström and Andrew J.I. Jones
(eds.), Action, Logic and Social Theory, Acta Philosophica.
Cheers,
Speranza
So, Paul Grice and Rogers Albritton, and K. J. J. Hintikka were at the
Harvard cafeteria. S. Bernadette turns up, and doesn't seem to be understanding
what Albritton and Grice are discussing. "Free will," Hintikka's curt
answer was.
For the record, the contents of Hintikka's "Selected Papers", in six
volumes.
Vol. 1: "Ludwig Wittgenstein: Half-Truths and One-and-a-Half-Truths"
Because of his legendary impatience, Witters's published books are focused
on his solutions to his latest problems and consequently often fail to
explain not only his earlier solutions but also his problem situation.
In the essays collected the first volume of Hintikka's selected essays, he
counteracts the difficulty which this peculiarity of Witters''s poses to
his readers by analysing in depth the crucial stages of Witters's
philosophical career and the relation of his ideas to those of other philosophers,
especially Russell, Carnap and Husserl, with sometimes surprising results.
(Incidentally, Husserl is cited in Woody Allen's latest, "Irrational man" *
now playing * -- "We'll deal with Husserl's phenomenology tomorrow, so I
hope you get the reading done by then. I realise it can be difficult").
Vol. 2: Lingua Universalis vs. Calculus Ratiocinator
Twentieth-century philosophy has tacitly been dominated by a deep contrast
between universalist and model-theoretical visions of language.
The role of this contrast is studied here in Peirce, Frege, Witters,
Carnap, Quine, Husserl, Heidegger and in the development of logical theory.
Hintikka also develops a new approach to truth-definitions which strongly
supports the model-theoretical view.
Vol. 3: Language, Truth and Logic in Mathematics.
The foundations of mathematics are examined by reference to such crucial
concepts as the informational independence of quantifiers, the
standard-nonstandard distinction, completeness, computability, parallel processing and
the extremality of models.
Vol. 4: Paradigms for Language Theory and Other Essays
Several of the basic ideas of current language theory are subjected to
critical scrutiny and found wanting, including the concept of scope, the
hegemony of generative syntax, the Frege-Russell claim that verbs like `is' are
ambiguous [cfr. Grice, "Aristotle on the multiplicity of being], and the
assumptions underlying the so-called New Theory of Reference. In their stead,
new constructive ideas are proposed.
Vol. 5: Inquiry as Inquiry: A Logic of Scientific Discovery
In the essays collected here, Hintikka both defends and outlines a genuine
logic of scientific discovery, the logic of questions and answers.
Thus inquiry in the sense of knowledge-seeking becomes inquiry in the sense
of interrogation.
Using this new logic, Hintikka establishes a result that will undoubtedly
be considered the fundamental theorem of all epistemology, viz., the virtual
identity of optimal strategies of pure discovery with optimal deductive
strategies.
Vol. 6: Analyses of Aristotle
This collection comprises several striking interpretations of Aristotle's
logic and methodology that Hintikka has put forward over the years,
constituting a challenge not only to Aristotelian scholars and historians of
ideas, but to everyone interested in logic, epistemology or metaphysics and in
their history.
Incidentally, both Hintikka's second and third wives were philosophers. His
second philosophical wife is Ghita Holmström.
Her work includes:
"A Formal Theory of Will", Licentiate Thesis. Department of Philosophy,
University of Helsinki.
"Wills, Purposes and Actions" in Ghita Holmström and Andrew J.I. Jones
(eds.), Action, Logic and Social Theory, Acta Philosophica.
Cheers,
Speranza
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Kaarlo Jaakko Juhani Hintikka and Herbert Paul Grice: Implicature as a Game -- Both were John Locke Lecturers, Oxford and Kant Lectures, Stanford.
Speranza
Kaarlo Jaakko Juhani Hintikka was born in Vantaa, Finland. He was educated at the Kerava High School, Kerava and Helsinki University and Williams College, America (as an exchange student). He held a Cand. Phil. (Helsinki), Lic. Phil. (Helsinki), Dr. Phil. (Helsinki). He was Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows, Harvard University, Professor of "Practical Philosophy", University of Helsinki, Professor of Philosophy, Stanford University, Research Professor, The Academy of Finland, Professor of Philosophy, Florida, Professor of Philosophy, Boston. Docent in Philosophy, University of Helsinki, Visiting Professor, Brown University, Visiting Professor, University of California, Berkeley, Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences, Visiting Professor, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Courtesy Professor, Department of Computer Science, Florida. American Philosophical Association (APA). Vice-President of the Pacific Division, President of the Division, Member of the committee for International Co-operation, International Union of of History and Philosophy of Science, Vice-President of the Division of Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science (LMPS), President, Chairman of the Program Committee for the Fifth International Congress of LMPS, Chairman of the Joint Commission, Association for Symbolic Logic, Vice-President, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Philosophy of Science Association, Member of the Governing Board, Fellow of the Institut International de Philosophie, Vice-President, Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie, Member of the Comité Directeur, Member of the Finance Committee of the same, Chair of the Committee, Co-chair of the American Organizing committee for the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Scientific Advisor and Foreign member of the Internationales Forschungszentrum Salzburg (Salzburg, Austria), Member of the Academy of Science and Letters of Finland, Member of the Council, Fellow of Societas Scientiarum Fennica, Council for Philosophical Studies, Member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Ernst Lindelöf Prize, University of Helsinki, The John Locke Lectures, Oxford University, W. T. Jones Lectures, Pomona College, Wihuri International Prize, Guggenheim Fellow, Phi Beta Kappa (honorary), Williams College chapter, Hägerström Lectures, University of Uppsala, Honorary Doctorate, University of Liége.Immanuel Kant Lectures, Stanford University, Florida State University Foundation Professor, (renamed McKenzie Professor), Commander of the Order of the Lion of Finland, First Class, E. J. Nyström Prize of the Societas Scientiarum Fennica, Erik Ahlman Lecture, University of Jyväskylä, The Grand Prize of Suomen Kulttuurirahasto, Finland, Honorary Doctorate, Jagiellonian University of Krakow, Editor-in-Chief, international journal Synthese (Dordrecht), Senior Advisory Editor, Synthese, Editor, Synthese Library (Dordrecht), Managing Editor, Synthese Library, Managing Co-editor, Synthese Language Library (Dordrecht), Editor, Acta Philosophica Fennica, Consulting Editor of over ten journals or series.
Areas of Interest (Research, Teaching, and/or Advising):
-- Philosophy of Language and Theoretical Linguistics:
game-theoretical semantics
methodology of linguistics
logic and semantics of questions and of question-based dialogues
semantic information and its varieties
the analytic-synthetic distinction
possible-worlds semantics, etc.).
- Foundations of Cognitive Science (interrogative model of inquiry, differences between information-processing by humans and computers, knowledge representation and reasoning about knowledge, the psychology of reasoning, mental models, etc.
- Philosophical Logic (semantics of intensional logics, game-theoretical semantics, independence-friendly logics, non=standard interpretations of logic, problems of individuation and identification, nature of reasoning, urn models, deductive information, etc.).
- Mathematical Logic and Foundations of Mathematics (distributive normal forms, independence-friendly logic, definability, infinitely deep languages, extremality assumptions in mathematical theories, etc.).
- Philosophy of Science (interrogative models of scientific inquiry, the concepts of experiment and induction, why-questions and explanation, inductive logic, decision-theoretical approaches to theory choice, information as utility, identifiability problems in science, theory structure and the different ingredients of an empirical theory, interplay between history of science and philosophy of science, etc.).
- History of Philosophy and History of Ideas (Aristotle, the general assumptions of Greek philosophy, modal concepts in mediaeval philosophy, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, the history of the method of analysis, the "principle of plenitude" in the history of philosophy, methodology of the history of ideas, etc.).
- Interpretations of Recent and Contemporary Philosophy (Frege, Peirce, Russell, the Bloomsbury Group, Wittgenstein, Husserl, Carnap, Quine, etc.).
- Philosophy of Education (models of instruction, the role of questions and answers in education, etc.).
- Aesthetics (problems of pictorial representation, philosophy and literature, intentionalty and artistic creation, etc.).
Kaarlo Jaakko Juhani Hintikka and Herbert Paul Grice: Implicature as a Game
Speranza
"Logic of Conversation as a Logic of Dialogue" is K. Jaakko J. Hintikka's
contribution to the Grice festschrift, in P.G.R.I.C.E., Philosophhical
Grounds of Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends.
In this celebratory essay, Hintikka -- whose affiliations to the Oxonian
school of philosophy to which Grice belonged were minimal -- compliments
Grice on a body of work.
However, Hintikka singles out “Logic and Conversation” to criticize --
i.e. the second lecture at Harvard, where Hintikka was a fellow. It should be
reminded that this was just ONE out of a series of lectures that Grice gave
at Harvard, as he tried to combine his interests in implicature
(introduced as a coinage -- but cfr. Sidonius, "implicatura", Lewis/Short, Latin
Dictionary) and meaning.
Hintikka believes that the Gricean maxims "are not, and cannot be, the rock
bottom of a satisfactory analysis of the logic of conversation" (Hintikka
1986, 273).
Hintikka is using 'rock bottom' figuratively. Figures are tricky. Grice's
example is
i. You are the cream in my coffee.
which is literally false as it involves a categorial mistake, unless we
suppose that one's addressee -- cream -- has ears to understand what Utterer
is saying.
Similarly, a maxim is not a rock bottom.
Kant knew this, and by using "maxim", Grice is merely, and jocularly (such
was his obscure sense of humour) referring to Kant (as does Joaquin Phoenix
in the recent "Irrational man" when he discusses Kant's categorical
imperative and Kant's universal prohibition on lying).
One of the reasons Hintikka thinks this -- that a maxim is not a rock
bottom -- is his belief that, “when the time comes to conceptualize the results
of […] discourse-theoretical observations Grice often seems to retreat back
to formulations that pertain to utterances taken one by one rather than to
the interplay of different utterances in discourse".
Which is of course an OVER-SIMPLIFICATION.
In the original OXFORD (*not* Harvard) lectures on implicature, Grice
tortured his students ALWAYS with dialogues, between whom Grice called "A" and
"B". Perhaps his most famous example is:
A: I'm out of petrol.
B: There's a garage round the corner. (Implicature: Which is open and with
petrol to sell).
Grice is considering co-operativeness (or helpfulness) and you cannot have
THAT with a single utterance, unless you are God ("Let there be light!").
Hintikka is interested in a "different, more flexible framework in which
the dynamics of discourse are spelt out more explicitly."
The use of 'discourse' is vague. Grice prefers the more conversational
adjective, 'conversational' and its corresponding noun, 'conversation'.
First-order predicate logic is clearly not the logic of dialogue.
This point, as Hintikka wants to explore, leads to a fundamental difference
between propositions and the utterances of dialogue.
The new strategy for understanding conversation Hintikka wants to employ is
explained as follows.
Grice says that one of his ‘avowed aims is to see talking as a special
case or variety of purposive, indeed rational, behaviour’.
If so, the bag of conceptual tools one can profitably use in studying
conversational "logic" (although Grice never used this phrase) should be a
special case, or variety, of the conceptual tools one uses in studying the
rationality of human behaviour in general. One such tool is game theory.
This had been tried before Hintikka, and at Harvard, too, by D. K. Lewis in
his dissertation under Quine. Lewis was thinking that co-operation is
conventional and that conventions invite a game-theoretical approach.
Thus, Hintikka argues that the framework for studying dialogue needs to be
shifted from formal logic to game theory.
Game theory is geared toward better understanding which appropriate
strategies one ought to use in given situations, or games.
The use of 'strategy' is vague. Strictly, for Grice, there are no
strategies, since he knew Greek, and 'strategy' comes from a Greek word meaning
'general' -- as in military. And a military person KNOWS that his strategies
have to be SECRETIVE. But Grice wants all ABOVE-BOARD. So we need another
term to categorise what is going one when, to use S. Yablo's phrase,
'implicature happens'.
Hintikka sketches a simple schema in which conversations can be viewed
game theoretically.
He writes, “Utterer 1 and Utterer 2 make ‘moves’ alternately.
There are four different kinds of moves for Hintikka.
-- The phrase 'conversational move' and 'conversational game' and
'conversational rule' DO APPEAR in Grice's "Logic and Conversation", so it's not
like Hintikka is being 100% original --
(a) Assertoric moves.
----- as in "We've been having some delightful weather this summer, no?" --
This implicating: "You've just committed a social gaffe: what about
changing the topic?")
(b) Interrogative moves.
----- Humpty Dumpty: How old did you say you were?
----- Alice: Seven years and six months.
----- Humpty Dumpty: Wrong! You never said a word like it!
(c) Deductive moves.
---- as in what Grice calls trivial reasoning:
-------------------- A: You have two hands, right?
-------------------- B: Yes.
---------------------A: Well, if I had THREE more hands, you would have 5
hands.
---------------------B: And if I were permitted to double that, I would
have 10 hands.
---------------------A: Exactly: But If four of your hands were removed,
you would still remain with six hands.
---------------------B: Exactly, and I would still have four more hands
than I have now.
---------------------A: Brilliant.
(d) Definitory moves, as in
-------------------A: All swans are black.
-------------------B: You never ventured outside Australia, right?
Hintikka then explains how each of these steps work.
First, a "player" must make an assertoric move -- as in "The weather has
been delightful this summer, no?" -- in which he or she “puts forward a new
proposition (a new ‘thesis’)".
An interrogative move is a questioning move, the answer (if one can be
given) to which "is then added to the list of the answerer’s theses".
The deductive moves are pretty straightforward, it is comprised of "a
logical conclusion from the totality of his/her opponent’s theses," and previous
conclusions obtained by the same means.
Finally, definitory moves are when one "introduces a new non-logical symbol
by and appropriate explicit definition".
These four conversational moves in the conversational game are used to
prove all the players’ theses, but according to Hintikka the goals can be
varied.
Hintikka believes that the Gricean maxims can be incorporated into this
model. Had he attended Grice's original implicature lectures at Oxford, he
would have known Grice had already done that!
In referring to maxims enjoining 'strength' or 'informativeness' of
conversational moves, Hintikka notes, while Grice remarks that one ought not
violate these maxims for fear of confusing one's co-conversationalist, for
Hintikka there "is nevertheless operative,… in ordinary discourse, a different
pressure against extra information. Everything a player of my dialogical
games says can be used against him (or her) by the opponent".
Here, the player will want his discourse to be as weak as possible.
Thus, requiring him to prove less by the rules of the game.
This is a fundamentally different reason to act in accordance with the
maxims enjoining strength or informativeness. However the "end result" is the
same.
The same result will be found regarding the maxims of quality, enjoining
trustworthiness.
Recall that Grice uses 'quality/quantity/relation/mode' just to tease Kant!
Because one only gets a payoff by proving the maximum amount of statements
in the dialogue, one will only want to propose things that he or she may be
able to show to be true.
Surprisingly, the maxims enjoining trustworthiness are also satisfied by
this game.
Hintikka writes: "iif my opponent gives true answers to my question, if the
opponent is fairly well-informed, and if the effects of my own answers can
be discounted, then it is ceteris paribus in my own best interest to put
forward true theses".
Modus, unlike quantity, quality, and relevance, is not of interest to
Hintikka.
He states that it "is different in kind from the first three" -- which
shows that Hintikka does NOT share Grice's obscure sense of humour. What is the
point of poking fun of Kant if you are not going to accept the FOUR
'categories'. Note that in an outburst of humour, Grice calls these the
'conversational categories' -- in his critique of conversational reason, of course!
This should become apparent, as arguments to this affect will be made
later.
Relation, however, must be addressed and is actually reworded to state that
it is a move within the rules to increase one’s pay-off.
This Hintikka must explain.
He states: "For instead of the relevance of the several utterances in a
dialogue I could collectively speak of the coherence of the dialogue".
Hintikka refers to a Sherlock Holmes story (now played by Ian McKellen) in
which Holmes solves a mystery about a prize race horse by asking a
shepherd an apparently irrelevant question about the recent status of his sheep.
However, this question, as is often the case with the solutions to
intricate puzzles, was the crucial link between a series of facts that ultimately
achieved the goal of solving this mystery.
This shows that Hintikka read the novels of Sherlock Holmes, as did Grice,
and Grice's mother.
From all this, one can see that Hintikka has crafted a formal game that
models the Griceian maxims.
This game does not however require a Cooperative Principle, which was
another outburst of humour on Grice's part. In his Oxford lectures on
implicature, he had spoken of desiderata of candour, benevolence, clarity, and
self-interest, to account for the same phenomena! He wasn't literally wedded to
calling his desiderata, principles, maxims or stuff THIS or THAT!
For Hintikka, in fact, this becomes a competition between the players of
the game.
Still, there are clearly some problematic results of this account.
For example, intuitions of conversation stray far from this schema.
Conversations are certainly not games in which one must prove, or at least
hope to prove, all the propositions that one puts forward.
Still, the idea of conversation as a goal oriented game, with pay-offs and
costs, is certainly an idea which has not been explored, and may have some
benefits.
The primary significance of Hintikka's Griceian exegesis, however, may be
his alternative approach to the theory of conversation, which is based on
rationality theory in a way that explores Grice's ideas under a different
light.
Oxonians prefer Grice's Oxonian light, though -- any night!
"Logic of Conversation as a Logic of Dialogue" is K. Jaakko J. Hintikka's
contribution to the Grice festschrift, in P.G.R.I.C.E., Philosophhical
Grounds of Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends.
In this celebratory essay, Hintikka -- whose affiliations to the Oxonian
school of philosophy to which Grice belonged were minimal -- compliments
Grice on a body of work.
However, Hintikka singles out “Logic and Conversation” to criticize --
i.e. the second lecture at Harvard, where Hintikka was a fellow. It should be
reminded that this was just ONE out of a series of lectures that Grice gave
at Harvard, as he tried to combine his interests in implicature
(introduced as a coinage -- but cfr. Sidonius, "implicatura", Lewis/Short, Latin
Dictionary) and meaning.
Hintikka believes that the Gricean maxims "are not, and cannot be, the rock
bottom of a satisfactory analysis of the logic of conversation" (Hintikka
1986, 273).
Hintikka is using 'rock bottom' figuratively. Figures are tricky. Grice's
example is
i. You are the cream in my coffee.
which is literally false as it involves a categorial mistake, unless we
suppose that one's addressee -- cream -- has ears to understand what Utterer
is saying.
Similarly, a maxim is not a rock bottom.
Kant knew this, and by using "maxim", Grice is merely, and jocularly (such
was his obscure sense of humour) referring to Kant (as does Joaquin Phoenix
in the recent "Irrational man" when he discusses Kant's categorical
imperative and Kant's universal prohibition on lying).
One of the reasons Hintikka thinks this -- that a maxim is not a rock
bottom -- is his belief that, “when the time comes to conceptualize the results
of […] discourse-theoretical observations Grice often seems to retreat back
to formulations that pertain to utterances taken one by one rather than to
the interplay of different utterances in discourse".
Which is of course an OVER-SIMPLIFICATION.
In the original OXFORD (*not* Harvard) lectures on implicature, Grice
tortured his students ALWAYS with dialogues, between whom Grice called "A" and
"B". Perhaps his most famous example is:
A: I'm out of petrol.
B: There's a garage round the corner. (Implicature: Which is open and with
petrol to sell).
Grice is considering co-operativeness (or helpfulness) and you cannot have
THAT with a single utterance, unless you are God ("Let there be light!").
Hintikka is interested in a "different, more flexible framework in which
the dynamics of discourse are spelt out more explicitly."
The use of 'discourse' is vague. Grice prefers the more conversational
adjective, 'conversational' and its corresponding noun, 'conversation'.
First-order predicate logic is clearly not the logic of dialogue.
This point, as Hintikka wants to explore, leads to a fundamental difference
between propositions and the utterances of dialogue.
The new strategy for understanding conversation Hintikka wants to employ is
explained as follows.
Grice says that one of his ‘avowed aims is to see talking as a special
case or variety of purposive, indeed rational, behaviour’.
If so, the bag of conceptual tools one can profitably use in studying
conversational "logic" (although Grice never used this phrase) should be a
special case, or variety, of the conceptual tools one uses in studying the
rationality of human behaviour in general. One such tool is game theory.
This had been tried before Hintikka, and at Harvard, too, by D. K. Lewis in
his dissertation under Quine. Lewis was thinking that co-operation is
conventional and that conventions invite a game-theoretical approach.
Thus, Hintikka argues that the framework for studying dialogue needs to be
shifted from formal logic to game theory.
Game theory is geared toward better understanding which appropriate
strategies one ought to use in given situations, or games.
The use of 'strategy' is vague. Strictly, for Grice, there are no
strategies, since he knew Greek, and 'strategy' comes from a Greek word meaning
'general' -- as in military. And a military person KNOWS that his strategies
have to be SECRETIVE. But Grice wants all ABOVE-BOARD. So we need another
term to categorise what is going one when, to use S. Yablo's phrase,
'implicature happens'.
Hintikka sketches a simple schema in which conversations can be viewed
game theoretically.
He writes, “Utterer 1 and Utterer 2 make ‘moves’ alternately.
There are four different kinds of moves for Hintikka.
-- The phrase 'conversational move' and 'conversational game' and
'conversational rule' DO APPEAR in Grice's "Logic and Conversation", so it's not
like Hintikka is being 100% original --
(a) Assertoric moves.
----- as in "We've been having some delightful weather this summer, no?" --
This implicating: "You've just committed a social gaffe: what about
changing the topic?")
(b) Interrogative moves.
----- Humpty Dumpty: How old did you say you were?
----- Alice: Seven years and six months.
----- Humpty Dumpty: Wrong! You never said a word like it!
(c) Deductive moves.
---- as in what Grice calls trivial reasoning:
-------------------- A: You have two hands, right?
-------------------- B: Yes.
---------------------A: Well, if I had THREE more hands, you would have 5
hands.
---------------------B: And if I were permitted to double that, I would
have 10 hands.
---------------------A: Exactly: But If four of your hands were removed,
you would still remain with six hands.
---------------------B: Exactly, and I would still have four more hands
than I have now.
---------------------A: Brilliant.
(d) Definitory moves, as in
-------------------A: All swans are black.
-------------------B: You never ventured outside Australia, right?
Hintikka then explains how each of these steps work.
First, a "player" must make an assertoric move -- as in "The weather has
been delightful this summer, no?" -- in which he or she “puts forward a new
proposition (a new ‘thesis’)".
An interrogative move is a questioning move, the answer (if one can be
given) to which "is then added to the list of the answerer’s theses".
The deductive moves are pretty straightforward, it is comprised of "a
logical conclusion from the totality of his/her opponent’s theses," and previous
conclusions obtained by the same means.
Finally, definitory moves are when one "introduces a new non-logical symbol
by and appropriate explicit definition".
These four conversational moves in the conversational game are used to
prove all the players’ theses, but according to Hintikka the goals can be
varied.
Hintikka believes that the Gricean maxims can be incorporated into this
model. Had he attended Grice's original implicature lectures at Oxford, he
would have known Grice had already done that!
In referring to maxims enjoining 'strength' or 'informativeness' of
conversational moves, Hintikka notes, while Grice remarks that one ought not
violate these maxims for fear of confusing one's co-conversationalist, for
Hintikka there "is nevertheless operative,… in ordinary discourse, a different
pressure against extra information. Everything a player of my dialogical
games says can be used against him (or her) by the opponent".
Here, the player will want his discourse to be as weak as possible.
Thus, requiring him to prove less by the rules of the game.
This is a fundamentally different reason to act in accordance with the
maxims enjoining strength or informativeness. However the "end result" is the
same.
The same result will be found regarding the maxims of quality, enjoining
trustworthiness.
Recall that Grice uses 'quality/quantity/relation/mode' just to tease Kant!
Because one only gets a payoff by proving the maximum amount of statements
in the dialogue, one will only want to propose things that he or she may be
able to show to be true.
Surprisingly, the maxims enjoining trustworthiness are also satisfied by
this game.
Hintikka writes: "iif my opponent gives true answers to my question, if the
opponent is fairly well-informed, and if the effects of my own answers can
be discounted, then it is ceteris paribus in my own best interest to put
forward true theses".
Modus, unlike quantity, quality, and relevance, is not of interest to
Hintikka.
He states that it "is different in kind from the first three" -- which
shows that Hintikka does NOT share Grice's obscure sense of humour. What is the
point of poking fun of Kant if you are not going to accept the FOUR
'categories'. Note that in an outburst of humour, Grice calls these the
'conversational categories' -- in his critique of conversational reason, of course!
This should become apparent, as arguments to this affect will be made
later.
Relation, however, must be addressed and is actually reworded to state that
it is a move within the rules to increase one’s pay-off.
This Hintikka must explain.
He states: "For instead of the relevance of the several utterances in a
dialogue I could collectively speak of the coherence of the dialogue".
Hintikka refers to a Sherlock Holmes story (now played by Ian McKellen) in
which Holmes solves a mystery about a prize race horse by asking a
shepherd an apparently irrelevant question about the recent status of his sheep.
However, this question, as is often the case with the solutions to
intricate puzzles, was the crucial link between a series of facts that ultimately
achieved the goal of solving this mystery.
This shows that Hintikka read the novels of Sherlock Holmes, as did Grice,
and Grice's mother.
From all this, one can see that Hintikka has crafted a formal game that
models the Griceian maxims.
This game does not however require a Cooperative Principle, which was
another outburst of humour on Grice's part. In his Oxford lectures on
implicature, he had spoken of desiderata of candour, benevolence, clarity, and
self-interest, to account for the same phenomena! He wasn't literally wedded to
calling his desiderata, principles, maxims or stuff THIS or THAT!
For Hintikka, in fact, this becomes a competition between the players of
the game.
Still, there are clearly some problematic results of this account.
For example, intuitions of conversation stray far from this schema.
Conversations are certainly not games in which one must prove, or at least
hope to prove, all the propositions that one puts forward.
Still, the idea of conversation as a goal oriented game, with pay-offs and
costs, is certainly an idea which has not been explored, and may have some
benefits.
The primary significance of Hintikka's Griceian exegesis, however, may be
his alternative approach to the theory of conversation, which is based on
rationality theory in a way that explores Grice's ideas under a different
light.
Oxonians prefer Grice's Oxonian light, though -- any night!
Hintikka and Grice: Implicature as a Game
Speranza
Hintikka is known as the main architect of game-theoretical semantics and of the interrogative approach to inquiry, and also as one of the architects of distributive normal forms, possible-worlds semantics, tree methods, infinitely deep logics, and the present-day theory of inductive generalization.
He has authored or co-authored lots of essays that have appeared in many languages.
Five volumes of his "Selected Papers" were published by Kluwer.
Jaakko Hintikka has edited or co-edited a lot of volumes and authored or co-authored a lot of essays.
A comprehensive examination of his thought appeared as the volume The Philosophy of Jaakko Hintikka in the series "The Library of Living Philosophers."
Hintikka is known as the main architect of game-theoretical semantics and of the interrogative approach to inquiry, and also as one of the architects of distributive normal forms, possible-worlds semantics, tree methods, infinitely deep logics, and the present-day theory of inductive generalization.
He has authored or co-authored lots of essays that have appeared in many languages.
Five volumes of his "Selected Papers" were published by Kluwer.
Jaakko Hintikka has edited or co-edited a lot of volumes and authored or co-authored a lot of essays.
A comprehensive examination of his thought appeared as the volume The Philosophy of Jaakko Hintikka in the series "The Library of Living Philosophers."
Kaarlo Jaakko Juhani Hintikka and Herbert Paul Grice: Implicature as a Game
Speranza
The difference between obituaries and Wikipedia is that Wikipedia, like
Popper's W3 GROWS. So let's provide a running commentary on the ever-growing
entry for Hintikka.
Hintikka was baptised Kaarlo Jaakko Juhani Hintikka.
So, strictly, his initials go:
Hintikka, K. J. J.
In this he is superior to
Grice, H. P. -- who only has TWO Christian names.
Hintikka was "a Finnish philosopher and logician."
This implicates that logicians are not philosophers. Similarly, Bartlett's
Dictionary's entry for Grice is "British logician", which WRONGLY
implicates he was not a philosopher. In fact he was not a logician but a philosopher
of logic or philosophical logician if you must.
Hintikka was born in Helsingin maalaiskunta (now Vantaa).
The 'now' Vanta is important and interesting. Similarly, Baron Russell was
born English (or Welsh) because that part of England (or Wales) where he
had his family seat was then part of England (or Wales) to later become part
of Wales (or England). So we can say that Russell was Welsh or English (if
not both).
After teaching for a number of years at Florida, Stanford, Helsinki, and
the Academy of Finland, K. J. J. Hintikka became a Professor of Philosophy at
Boston.
He was familiar with the area since he had been a Harvard fellow earlier in
his career.
He lived in Marlborough, a charming little New England borough.
The prolific author or co-author of lots of books and essays, Hintikka
contributed to
-- mathematical logic (his first love: recall his tutors were one
philosopher -- von Wright -- and one mathematical logician).
-- philosophical logic
-- the philosophy of mathematics
-- epistemology -- or 'epistemics' and 'doxastics', as he preferred)
-- language theory
-- and the philosophy of science.
His works have appeared in over nine languages, that is 10.
Hintikka is regarded as the founder of formal epistemic logic and of game
semantics for logic.
"Game-theoretical" semantics, as Geary reminds us, 'is no game'. The word
'game' is used figuratively, after Witters used the example of 'game' to
disprove the idea of a family resemblance ("Do I have a family resemblance
with other members of the aristocratic Witters family?").
Early in his career, K. J. J. Hintikka devised a semantics of modal logic
essentially analogous to Saul Kripke's frame semantics.
Kripke later got into a fight with Ruth Barcan Marcus about who invented
stuff first.
-- No such polemic arose between Hintikka and Kripke.
K. J. J. Hintikka discovered the now widely taught semantic tableau,
independently of Evert Willem Beth.
The word 'independently' is interesting from a Popperian point of view:
'semantic tableaux' are part of W3, but there are different rigid-designators
to Hintikka and Beth attached to them.
Later, K. J. J. Hintikka worked mainly on game semantics, and on
independence-friendly logic, known for its "branching quantifiers", which he
believed do better justice to our intuitions about quantifiers than does
conventional first-order logic.
Grice also had doubts about the correctness of the 'classical logic' about
quantifiers and he developed special quantifiers to deal with slogans like
"Every nice girl loves a sailor": One-at-a-time-sailor and
altogether-sailor.
Hintikka did important exegetical work on Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Ludwig
Wittgenstein, and Charles Sanders Peirce and he provided at least ONE
exegesis of Grice's logic of conversation in Philosophical Grounds of
Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends (P. G. R. I. C. E. for short). Grice was
supposed to provide a reply to Hintikka's contribution, but he changed his
mind (Changing one's mind is accounted by K. J. J. Hintikka in terms of
'semantic tableaux': Grice's tableau changed from one where he wanted to provide
a reply to one where he did not).
Hintikka's work can be seen as a continuation of the analytic tendency in
philosophy founded by Franz Brentano and Peirce, advanced by Gottlob Frege
and Bertrand Russell, and continued by Rudolf Carnap, Willard Van Orman
Quine, and by Hintikka's teacher Georg Henrik von Wright.
Von Wright brilliantly coined 'alethic' that Grice overuses in "Aspects of
Reason". In Finnish, 'Wright' is pronounced /rixt/.
Hintikka wrote "The Principles of Mathematics Revisited", which takes an
exploratory stance comparable to that Russell made with his "The Principles
of Mathematics" in 1903.
"The Principles of Mathematics Revisited" has been compared (by Geary) to
Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited" -- "only it's not fictional," he adds.
Hintikka edited the academic journal "Synthese" and was a consultant
editor for more than ten journals -- perhaps eleven.
Hintikka was the first vice-president of the Fédération Internationale des
Sociétés de Philosophie, the Vice-President of the Institut International
de Philosophie, as well as a member of the American Philosophical
Association, the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science,
Association for Symbolic Logic, and a member of the governing board of the Philosophy
of Science Association.
Hintikka won the Rolf Schock prize in logic and philosophy "for his
pioneering contributions to the logical analysis of modal concepts, in particular
the concepts of knowledge and belief".
Some say that Rolf Schock was a genius.
Hintikka was president of the Florida Philosophical Association, based in
Florida -- the 'sunshine state'.
Hintikka was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
-- where "Letters" is "Humanities". Snow develops the distinction between
"Science" and "Letters" in his "Two Cultures". The Norwegian Academy is
supposed to refute Snow.
A pretty complete bibliography of Hintikka is to be found in Auxier and
Hahn.
Hintikka's essays include:
Knowledge and Belief – An Introduction to the Logic of the Two Notions.
-- Popper possibly criticised this as it sees 'knowledge' as JTB (justified
true belief).
Models for Modalities: Selected Essays
The intentions of intentionality and other new models for modalities
The semantics of questions and the questions of semantics: case studies in
the interrelations of logic, semantics, and syntax
The Logic of Epistemology and the Epistemology of Logic
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Half-Truths and One-and-a-Half-Truths
Lingua Universalis vs Calculus Ratiocinator
The Principles of Mathematics Revisited
Paradigms for Language Theory and Other Essays
Language, Truth and Logic in Mathematics
Inquiry as Inquiry: A Logic of Scientific Discovery -- an echo of
Popper's more rotund, "THE logic of scientific discovery".
Analyses of Aristotle
Socratic Epistemology: Explorations of Knowledge-Seeking by Questioning
Secondary:
Auxier, R.E., and Hahn, L., eds., The Philosophy of Jaakko Hintikka (The
Library of Living Philosophers).
Open Court. Includes a complete bibliography of Hintikka's publications.
Bogdan, Radu, ed., Jaakko Hintikka, Kluwer Academic Publishers
Daniel Kolak, On Hintikka, Wadsworth -- there is a volume on Grice in this
series.
Daniel Kolak and John Symons, eds., Quantifiers, Questions and Quantum
Physics: Essays on the Philosophy of Jaakko Hintikka Springer.
See also: Rudolf Carnap, Saul Kripke, Charles Sanders Peirce, Willard Van
Orman Quine, Alfred Tarski, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Doxastic logic
Speranza
References:
Gruppe 3: Idéfag" (in Norwegian). Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
Philosopher Jaakko Hintikka reveals love affair between his wife and JFK
Analytic philosophy
Notable logicians
Philosophy of language
Philosophy of science
Rolf Schock Prize laureates
Categories: 20th-century philosophers 21st-century philosophersAnalytic
philosophers Finnish philosophers Florida University faculty Game theorists
Guggenheim Fellows Logicians Members of the Norwegian Academy of Science and
Letters Foreign Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences Modal
logiciansPeople from VantaaPhilosophers of language Philosophers of mathematics Rolf
Schock Prize laureates
The difference between obituaries and Wikipedia is that Wikipedia, like
Popper's W3 GROWS. So let's provide a running commentary on the ever-growing
entry for Hintikka.
Hintikka was baptised Kaarlo Jaakko Juhani Hintikka.
So, strictly, his initials go:
Hintikka, K. J. J.
In this he is superior to
Grice, H. P. -- who only has TWO Christian names.
Hintikka was "a Finnish philosopher and logician."
This implicates that logicians are not philosophers. Similarly, Bartlett's
Dictionary's entry for Grice is "British logician", which WRONGLY
implicates he was not a philosopher. In fact he was not a logician but a philosopher
of logic or philosophical logician if you must.
Hintikka was born in Helsingin maalaiskunta (now Vantaa).
The 'now' Vanta is important and interesting. Similarly, Baron Russell was
born English (or Welsh) because that part of England (or Wales) where he
had his family seat was then part of England (or Wales) to later become part
of Wales (or England). So we can say that Russell was Welsh or English (if
not both).
After teaching for a number of years at Florida, Stanford, Helsinki, and
the Academy of Finland, K. J. J. Hintikka became a Professor of Philosophy at
Boston.
He was familiar with the area since he had been a Harvard fellow earlier in
his career.
He lived in Marlborough, a charming little New England borough.
The prolific author or co-author of lots of books and essays, Hintikka
contributed to
-- mathematical logic (his first love: recall his tutors were one
philosopher -- von Wright -- and one mathematical logician).
-- philosophical logic
-- the philosophy of mathematics
-- epistemology -- or 'epistemics' and 'doxastics', as he preferred)
-- language theory
-- and the philosophy of science.
His works have appeared in over nine languages, that is 10.
Hintikka is regarded as the founder of formal epistemic logic and of game
semantics for logic.
"Game-theoretical" semantics, as Geary reminds us, 'is no game'. The word
'game' is used figuratively, after Witters used the example of 'game' to
disprove the idea of a family resemblance ("Do I have a family resemblance
with other members of the aristocratic Witters family?").
Early in his career, K. J. J. Hintikka devised a semantics of modal logic
essentially analogous to Saul Kripke's frame semantics.
Kripke later got into a fight with Ruth Barcan Marcus about who invented
stuff first.
-- No such polemic arose between Hintikka and Kripke.
K. J. J. Hintikka discovered the now widely taught semantic tableau,
independently of Evert Willem Beth.
The word 'independently' is interesting from a Popperian point of view:
'semantic tableaux' are part of W3, but there are different rigid-designators
to Hintikka and Beth attached to them.
Later, K. J. J. Hintikka worked mainly on game semantics, and on
independence-friendly logic, known for its "branching quantifiers", which he
believed do better justice to our intuitions about quantifiers than does
conventional first-order logic.
Grice also had doubts about the correctness of the 'classical logic' about
quantifiers and he developed special quantifiers to deal with slogans like
"Every nice girl loves a sailor": One-at-a-time-sailor and
altogether-sailor.
Hintikka did important exegetical work on Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Ludwig
Wittgenstein, and Charles Sanders Peirce and he provided at least ONE
exegesis of Grice's logic of conversation in Philosophical Grounds of
Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends (P. G. R. I. C. E. for short). Grice was
supposed to provide a reply to Hintikka's contribution, but he changed his
mind (Changing one's mind is accounted by K. J. J. Hintikka in terms of
'semantic tableaux': Grice's tableau changed from one where he wanted to provide
a reply to one where he did not).
Hintikka's work can be seen as a continuation of the analytic tendency in
philosophy founded by Franz Brentano and Peirce, advanced by Gottlob Frege
and Bertrand Russell, and continued by Rudolf Carnap, Willard Van Orman
Quine, and by Hintikka's teacher Georg Henrik von Wright.
Von Wright brilliantly coined 'alethic' that Grice overuses in "Aspects of
Reason". In Finnish, 'Wright' is pronounced /rixt/.
Hintikka wrote "The Principles of Mathematics Revisited", which takes an
exploratory stance comparable to that Russell made with his "The Principles
of Mathematics" in 1903.
"The Principles of Mathematics Revisited" has been compared (by Geary) to
Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited" -- "only it's not fictional," he adds.
Hintikka edited the academic journal "Synthese" and was a consultant
editor for more than ten journals -- perhaps eleven.
Hintikka was the first vice-president of the Fédération Internationale des
Sociétés de Philosophie, the Vice-President of the Institut International
de Philosophie, as well as a member of the American Philosophical
Association, the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science,
Association for Symbolic Logic, and a member of the governing board of the Philosophy
of Science Association.
Hintikka won the Rolf Schock prize in logic and philosophy "for his
pioneering contributions to the logical analysis of modal concepts, in particular
the concepts of knowledge and belief".
Some say that Rolf Schock was a genius.
Hintikka was president of the Florida Philosophical Association, based in
Florida -- the 'sunshine state'.
Hintikka was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
-- where "Letters" is "Humanities". Snow develops the distinction between
"Science" and "Letters" in his "Two Cultures". The Norwegian Academy is
supposed to refute Snow.
A pretty complete bibliography of Hintikka is to be found in Auxier and
Hahn.
Hintikka's essays include:
Knowledge and Belief – An Introduction to the Logic of the Two Notions.
-- Popper possibly criticised this as it sees 'knowledge' as JTB (justified
true belief).
Models for Modalities: Selected Essays
The intentions of intentionality and other new models for modalities
The semantics of questions and the questions of semantics: case studies in
the interrelations of logic, semantics, and syntax
The Logic of Epistemology and the Epistemology of Logic
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Half-Truths and One-and-a-Half-Truths
Lingua Universalis vs Calculus Ratiocinator
The Principles of Mathematics Revisited
Paradigms for Language Theory and Other Essays
Language, Truth and Logic in Mathematics
Inquiry as Inquiry: A Logic of Scientific Discovery -- an echo of
Popper's more rotund, "THE logic of scientific discovery".
Analyses of Aristotle
Socratic Epistemology: Explorations of Knowledge-Seeking by Questioning
Secondary:
Auxier, R.E., and Hahn, L., eds., The Philosophy of Jaakko Hintikka (The
Library of Living Philosophers).
Open Court. Includes a complete bibliography of Hintikka's publications.
Bogdan, Radu, ed., Jaakko Hintikka, Kluwer Academic Publishers
Daniel Kolak, On Hintikka, Wadsworth -- there is a volume on Grice in this
series.
Daniel Kolak and John Symons, eds., Quantifiers, Questions and Quantum
Physics: Essays on the Philosophy of Jaakko Hintikka Springer.
See also: Rudolf Carnap, Saul Kripke, Charles Sanders Peirce, Willard Van
Orman Quine, Alfred Tarski, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Doxastic logic
Speranza
References:
Gruppe 3: Idéfag" (in Norwegian). Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
Philosopher Jaakko Hintikka reveals love affair between his wife and JFK
Analytic philosophy
Notable logicians
Philosophy of language
Philosophy of science
Rolf Schock Prize laureates
Categories: 20th-century philosophers 21st-century philosophersAnalytic
philosophers Finnish philosophers Florida University faculty Game theorists
Guggenheim Fellows Logicians Members of the Norwegian Academy of Science and
Letters Foreign Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences Modal
logiciansPeople from VantaaPhilosophers of language Philosophers of mathematics Rolf
Schock Prize laureates
Kaarlo Jaakko Juhani Hintikka and Herbert Paul Grice: Implicature as a Game
Speranza
Kaarl Jaakko Juhani Hintikka was born in Vantaa, Helsinki, Finland.
Hintikka studied mathematics with Rolf Nevanlinna and philosophy with
Georg Henrik von Wright at the University of Helsinki where defended his
doctoral dissertation on distributive normal forms.
So we see the cross-reference mathematics -- as per mathematics logic, that
today, for example, is taught at Oxford not within the Sub-Faculty of
Philosophy but across the street, so that people enrolled in disciplines other
than Philosophy can attend. The chair is called "Mathematical logic" -- and
philosophy.
Grice loved Wright and he borrowed from him (but never returned) the word
'alethic'. That Hintikka was inspired by these two people (and these two
fields: mathematical logic and philosophy -- moral theory --) to write his
essay on 'distributive normal forms' is interesting.
Geary commented: "A distributive normal form is not as normal as it
seems," and adds with sarcasm: "especially if you catch it undistributed!".
After his Ph.D. studies Hintikka worked as junior fellow at Harvard and
became (independently of Stig Kanger) the founder of possible world
semantics.
The keyterm is Leibniz, as in Leibniz's world: the best of all possible
worlds. Woody Allen (who wrote "Irrational man") and Barrett (who wrote
"Irrational man") have something to say about this, because Leibniz is concerned
with the "best" (morally best) of all possible worlds and Lucas (the
character in Allen's film fallaciously thinks he has discovered it!). Hintikka's
treatment is more abstract: he uses subindexes w1 w2 w3 wn to represent
each world. Thus
"All man is rational"
is true in all possible worlds if for any world n, man is rational.
Hintikka published his groundbreaking work "Knowledge and Belief" on
epistemic logic -- the semantics of which is 'possible-worlds'. He uses now two
dyadic operators:
B(A, p)
and
K(A, p)
to represent that A believes and knows that p respectively. He liked to
play with 'paradoxes' like
K(A, p) --> KK(A, p)
i.e. if you know that God exists, you know that you know that God exists.
Hintikka was appointed professor of Practical Philosophy at Helsinki --
which was a good thing since, having been born there, he never got lost! In
fact, he moved not far from the house where he had been born. And a nice
house it was, too!
Hintikka later became professor of philosophy at Stanford -- which is a
bit away from Helsinki, if just more or less at the same distance from the
beach (different beaches, admittedly).
Stanford, with Hintikka, Patrick Suppes and Dagfinn Föllesdal, and the
programme initiated by Grice "Hands across the Bay" from across the Bay in
UC/Berkeley -- became one of the leading centres of philosophy of science and
philosophical logic, if not conceptual analysis: Urmson and S. N. Hampshire
also taught there.
Hintikka’s new interests included inductive logic and semantic information.
He would say, "What's the good of a philosopher if you don't have a new
interest?"
He shared his time between Stanford and Helsinki for a while.
Later Hintikka started his work with D. Reidel’s Publishing Company (later
Kluwer Academic Publishers) in Holland as the editor-in-chief of the
journal "Synthese" and the book series "The Synthese Library" -- which Geary
calls "hardly synthetic".
This activity made Hintikka the most influential editor of philosophical
works. In fact, he was co-editor of a festschrift, as it were, for Quine, who
had written "Words and Objections". This came out in Reidel as Words and
ObjectIONS -- what's the good of a philosophical theory if you are not going
to criticise it, as Joaquin Phoenix says in "Irrational man"? -- and they
invited H. P. Grice to contribute. Grice took his time -- which delayed the
publication of the thing -- and Hintikka was strict with deadlines -- but
eventually the thing came out with Grice's "Vacuous Names" in it, and a
short reply by Quine crediting Grice's brilliancy.
Hintikka was appointed to a Research Professorship in the Academy of
Finland which allowed him to establish a research group of Finnish scholars
working mainly in logic, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and
history of philosophy.
The Academy of Finland owes its name to the Academy of Athens founded by
Plato. Most countries have Academies: Greece first, then Rome, then Italy,
then France. Then Finland. Even Britain has its academy and Grice was
appointed FBA in 1966 but he delayed the deliverance of his philosophical lecture
for the British Academy to 1971, when he came up with "Intention and
Uncertanity": a parody on Hart and Hampshire's 'slightly ridiculous' claims in
their joint essay for "Mind" on intention and certainty.
As a teacher and supervisor, Hintikka was highly influential though the
richness of his new ideas and research initiatives.
Many of the former students of Hintikka have been appointed to chairs in
philosophy. To wit: Risto Hilpinen, Raimo Tuomela, Juhani Pietarinen, Ilkka
Niiniluoto, Simo Knuuttila, Veikko Rantala, Juha Manninen, Lauri Carlson,
Esa Saarinen, Matti Sintonen, Gabriel Sandu.
Lauri Carlson wrote a Synthese Library essay on "Dialogue games" -- the
ideas will be later developed by Hintikka himself in his contribution to P. G.
R. I. C. E., the Grice festschrift edited by Grandy and Warner.
Hintikka divorced his first wife Soili.
Hintikka married Merrill Bristow Provence -- Mrs. Hintikka willl later
co-edit with Vermazen a festschrift for Davidson and they invited H. P. Grice
to contribute. He did with a brilliant essay on 'akrasia'.
Hintikka and Provence were appointed at Tallahassee, Florida.
Hintikka married Ghita Holmström.
Hintikka became philosophy professor at Boston -- not far from where he
had been a fellow in the next town -- when he was in Harvard, Massachussets
-- He would walk from Boston to Cambridge, and back, as he seemed to prefer
the bookshops in Cambridge than those in Boston.
During his Boston pewriod, Hintikka resided in a 'cottage' (as
non-New-Englanders call them) at Marlborough.
Marlborough was not named after the person -- via rigid designation -- but
after the borough.
Hintikka retired from Boston and moved back to Finland.
Besides his activities in research, teaching, and publication, Hintikka
served in many important positions in international organizations, among
others vice president of The Association for Symbolic Logic, vice-president and
later president of the Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of
Science of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science
(DLMPS/IUHPS), president of the Charles S. Peirce Society -- D. Ritchie was
mentioning this genial philosopher recently -- and the chairman of the
organizing committee of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy.
As a proof of the appreciation of Hintikka’s work, a volume dedicated to
him in "The Library of Living Philosophers" was published.
Hintikka’s publications cover an exceptionally wide range of topics.
During his career he published lots of books or monographs, edited lots of
books, and authored lots of essays in international journals or
collections.
His main works deal with:
-- mathematical logic (proof theory, infinitary logics, IF-logic)
-- intensional logic and propositional attitudes
-- philosophy of logic and mathematics
-- philosophy of language (game-theoretical semantics, quantifiers,
anaphora)
-- philosophy of science (interrogative model of inquiry)
-- epistemology, and
-- history of philosophy (Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Peirce, Frege,
Wittgenstein, Grice -- in the P. G. R. I. C. E. festschrift).
A genius.
Kaarl Jaakko Juhani Hintikka was born in Vantaa, Helsinki, Finland.
Hintikka studied mathematics with Rolf Nevanlinna and philosophy with
Georg Henrik von Wright at the University of Helsinki where defended his
doctoral dissertation on distributive normal forms.
So we see the cross-reference mathematics -- as per mathematics logic, that
today, for example, is taught at Oxford not within the Sub-Faculty of
Philosophy but across the street, so that people enrolled in disciplines other
than Philosophy can attend. The chair is called "Mathematical logic" -- and
philosophy.
Grice loved Wright and he borrowed from him (but never returned) the word
'alethic'. That Hintikka was inspired by these two people (and these two
fields: mathematical logic and philosophy -- moral theory --) to write his
essay on 'distributive normal forms' is interesting.
Geary commented: "A distributive normal form is not as normal as it
seems," and adds with sarcasm: "especially if you catch it undistributed!".
After his Ph.D. studies Hintikka worked as junior fellow at Harvard and
became (independently of Stig Kanger) the founder of possible world
semantics.
The keyterm is Leibniz, as in Leibniz's world: the best of all possible
worlds. Woody Allen (who wrote "Irrational man") and Barrett (who wrote
"Irrational man") have something to say about this, because Leibniz is concerned
with the "best" (morally best) of all possible worlds and Lucas (the
character in Allen's film fallaciously thinks he has discovered it!). Hintikka's
treatment is more abstract: he uses subindexes w1 w2 w3 wn to represent
each world. Thus
"All man is rational"
is true in all possible worlds if for any world n, man is rational.
Hintikka published his groundbreaking work "Knowledge and Belief" on
epistemic logic -- the semantics of which is 'possible-worlds'. He uses now two
dyadic operators:
B(A, p)
and
K(A, p)
to represent that A believes and knows that p respectively. He liked to
play with 'paradoxes' like
K(A, p) --> KK(A, p)
i.e. if you know that God exists, you know that you know that God exists.
Hintikka was appointed professor of Practical Philosophy at Helsinki --
which was a good thing since, having been born there, he never got lost! In
fact, he moved not far from the house where he had been born. And a nice
house it was, too!
Hintikka later became professor of philosophy at Stanford -- which is a
bit away from Helsinki, if just more or less at the same distance from the
beach (different beaches, admittedly).
Stanford, with Hintikka, Patrick Suppes and Dagfinn Föllesdal, and the
programme initiated by Grice "Hands across the Bay" from across the Bay in
UC/Berkeley -- became one of the leading centres of philosophy of science and
philosophical logic, if not conceptual analysis: Urmson and S. N. Hampshire
also taught there.
Hintikka’s new interests included inductive logic and semantic information.
He would say, "What's the good of a philosopher if you don't have a new
interest?"
He shared his time between Stanford and Helsinki for a while.
Later Hintikka started his work with D. Reidel’s Publishing Company (later
Kluwer Academic Publishers) in Holland as the editor-in-chief of the
journal "Synthese" and the book series "The Synthese Library" -- which Geary
calls "hardly synthetic".
This activity made Hintikka the most influential editor of philosophical
works. In fact, he was co-editor of a festschrift, as it were, for Quine, who
had written "Words and Objections". This came out in Reidel as Words and
ObjectIONS -- what's the good of a philosophical theory if you are not going
to criticise it, as Joaquin Phoenix says in "Irrational man"? -- and they
invited H. P. Grice to contribute. Grice took his time -- which delayed the
publication of the thing -- and Hintikka was strict with deadlines -- but
eventually the thing came out with Grice's "Vacuous Names" in it, and a
short reply by Quine crediting Grice's brilliancy.
Hintikka was appointed to a Research Professorship in the Academy of
Finland which allowed him to establish a research group of Finnish scholars
working mainly in logic, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and
history of philosophy.
The Academy of Finland owes its name to the Academy of Athens founded by
Plato. Most countries have Academies: Greece first, then Rome, then Italy,
then France. Then Finland. Even Britain has its academy and Grice was
appointed FBA in 1966 but he delayed the deliverance of his philosophical lecture
for the British Academy to 1971, when he came up with "Intention and
Uncertanity": a parody on Hart and Hampshire's 'slightly ridiculous' claims in
their joint essay for "Mind" on intention and certainty.
As a teacher and supervisor, Hintikka was highly influential though the
richness of his new ideas and research initiatives.
Many of the former students of Hintikka have been appointed to chairs in
philosophy. To wit: Risto Hilpinen, Raimo Tuomela, Juhani Pietarinen, Ilkka
Niiniluoto, Simo Knuuttila, Veikko Rantala, Juha Manninen, Lauri Carlson,
Esa Saarinen, Matti Sintonen, Gabriel Sandu.
Lauri Carlson wrote a Synthese Library essay on "Dialogue games" -- the
ideas will be later developed by Hintikka himself in his contribution to P. G.
R. I. C. E., the Grice festschrift edited by Grandy and Warner.
Hintikka divorced his first wife Soili.
Hintikka married Merrill Bristow Provence -- Mrs. Hintikka willl later
co-edit with Vermazen a festschrift for Davidson and they invited H. P. Grice
to contribute. He did with a brilliant essay on 'akrasia'.
Hintikka and Provence were appointed at Tallahassee, Florida.
Hintikka married Ghita Holmström.
Hintikka became philosophy professor at Boston -- not far from where he
had been a fellow in the next town -- when he was in Harvard, Massachussets
-- He would walk from Boston to Cambridge, and back, as he seemed to prefer
the bookshops in Cambridge than those in Boston.
During his Boston pewriod, Hintikka resided in a 'cottage' (as
non-New-Englanders call them) at Marlborough.
Marlborough was not named after the person -- via rigid designation -- but
after the borough.
Hintikka retired from Boston and moved back to Finland.
Besides his activities in research, teaching, and publication, Hintikka
served in many important positions in international organizations, among
others vice president of The Association for Symbolic Logic, vice-president and
later president of the Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of
Science of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science
(DLMPS/IUHPS), president of the Charles S. Peirce Society -- D. Ritchie was
mentioning this genial philosopher recently -- and the chairman of the
organizing committee of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy.
As a proof of the appreciation of Hintikka’s work, a volume dedicated to
him in "The Library of Living Philosophers" was published.
Hintikka’s publications cover an exceptionally wide range of topics.
During his career he published lots of books or monographs, edited lots of
books, and authored lots of essays in international journals or
collections.
His main works deal with:
-- mathematical logic (proof theory, infinitary logics, IF-logic)
-- intensional logic and propositional attitudes
-- philosophy of logic and mathematics
-- philosophy of language (game-theoretical semantics, quantifiers,
anaphora)
-- philosophy of science (interrogative model of inquiry)
-- epistemology, and
-- history of philosophy (Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Peirce, Frege,
Wittgenstein, Grice -- in the P. G. R. I. C. E. festschrift).
A genius.
Kaarlo Jaakko Juhani Hintikka and Herbert Paul Grice: IMPLICATURE AS A GAME
Speranza
For the record, J. Hintikka contributed a piece on the logic of
conversation to Grandy/Warner, "P. G. R. I. C. E.", short for "Philosophical Grounds
of Rationality: Categories, Intentions, Ends. (*)
Most say that Hintikka was a genius.
Oops, another -iana!
The volume was meant as a festschrift for P. Grice, but The Clarendon
Press said that they would not publish anything with "P. Grice" in the
title, as it would decrease sales. So Grandy and Warner came up with the
acronym. Grice was supposed to answer individually to each contribution (as Popper
does in his festschrift that McEvoy often quotes) but changed his mind --
implicating: he didn't. But the ultimate implicature seems to be that
"Yeah, I like Hintikka's piece!" (only Grice would rather be seen dead than
uttering "Yeah").
For the record, J. Hintikka contributed a piece on the logic of
conversation to Grandy/Warner, "P. G. R. I. C. E.", short for "Philosophical Grounds
of Rationality: Categories, Intentions, Ends. (*)
Most say that Hintikka was a genius.
Oops, another -iana!
The volume was meant as a festschrift for P. Grice, but The Clarendon
Press said that they would not publish anything with "P. Grice" in the
title, as it would decrease sales. So Grandy and Warner came up with the
acronym. Grice was supposed to answer individually to each contribution (as Popper
does in his festschrift that McEvoy often quotes) but changed his mind --
implicating: he didn't. But the ultimate implicature seems to be that
"Yeah, I like Hintikka's piece!" (only Grice would rather be seen dead than
uttering "Yeah").
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