Jaakko Hintikka Selected Papers

5 primary works

Jaakko Hintikka Selected Papers (Set)

by Jaakko Hintikka

Published 30 September 1996

Vol. 1: Ludwig Wittgenstein: Half-Truths and One-and-a-Half-Truths

Because of his legendary impatience, Wittgenstein'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 in this volume, Jaakko Hintikka counteracts the difficulty which this peculiarity of Wittgenstein's poses to his readers by analysing in depth the crucial stages of Wittgenstein's philosophical career and the relation of his ideas to those of other philosophers, especially Russell, Carnap and Husserl, with sometimes surprising results.

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, Wittgenstein, 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, 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 Jaakko 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.

 

Language, Truth and Logic in Mathematics

by Jaakko Hintikka

Published 31 December 1997

One can distinguish, roughly speaking, two different approaches to the philosophy of mathematics. On the one hand, some philosophers (and some mathematicians) take the nature and the results of mathematicians' activities as given, and go on to ask what philosophical morals one might perhaps find in their story. On the other hand, some philosophers, logicians and mathematicians have tried or are trying to subject the very concepts which mathematicians are using in their work to critical scrutiny. In practice this usually means scrutinizing the logical and linguistic tools mathematicians wield. Such scrutiny can scarcely help relying on philosophical ideas and principles. In other words it can scarcely help being literally a study of language, truth and logic in mathematics, albeit not necessarily in the spirit of AJ. Ayer. As its title indicates, the essays included in the present volume represent the latter approach. In most of them one of the fundamental concepts in the foundations of mathematics and logic is subjected to a scrutiny from a largely novel point of view. Typically, it turns out that the concept in question is in need of a revision or reconsideration or at least can be given a new twist. The results of such a re-examination are not primarily critical, however, but typically open up new constructive possibilities. The consequences of such deconstructions and reconstructions are often quite sweeping, and are explored in the same paper or in others.

Paradigms for Language Theory and Other Essays

by Jaakko Hintikka

Published 30 November 1997

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, and the assumptions underlying the so-called New Theory of Reference. In their stead, new constructive ideas are proposed.

Inquiry as Inquiry: A Logic of Scientific Discovery

by Jaakko Hintikka

Published 30 June 1999

Is a genuine logic of scientific discovery possible? In the essays collected here, Hintikka not only defends an affirmative answer; he also outlines such a logic. It is 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. Questions to Nature, of course, must include observations and experiments. Hintikka shows, in fact, how the logic of experimental inquiry can be understood from the interrogative vantage point. Other important topics examined include induction (in a forgotten sense that has nevertheless played a role in science), explanation, the incommensurability of theories, theory-ladenness of observations, and identifiability.

Analyses of Aristotle

by Jaakko Hintikka

Published 31 March 2004

Aristotle thought of his logic and methodology as applications of the Socratic questioning method. In particular, logic was originally a study of answers necessitated by earlier answers. For Aristotle, thought-experiments were real experiments in the sense that by realizing forms in one's mind, one can read off their properties and interrelations. Treating forms as independent entities, knowable one by one, committed Aristotle to his mode of syllogistic explanation. He did not think of existence, predication and identity as separate senses of estin. Aristotle thus serves as an example of a thinker who did not rely on the distinction between the allegedly different Fregean senses, thereby shedding new light on our own conceptual presuppositions. This collection comprises several striking interpretations that Jaakko 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.