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