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.
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