In Memoriam: Jaakko Hintikka (1929-2015)

Our condolences go out to the surviving family and colleagues of world-renowned Finnish philosopher and logician, Dr. Jaakko Hintikka, who has passed away.

His obituary is linked here, in Finnish.

Having taught at Florida State University, Stanford, the University of Helsinki, and the Academy of Finland, Dr. Hintikka ended his career as a professor emeritus at Boston University.

Over his career, Dr. Hintikka made great contributions to mathematical logic, philosophical logic, the philosophy of mathematics, epistemology, language theory, and the philosophy of science. He is credited as the main architect of game-theoretical semantics and of the interrogative approach to inquiry. Dr. Hintikka is also revered as one of the main architects of distributive normal forms, possible-worlds semantics, tree methods, infinitely deep logics, and the present-day theory of inductive generalization.

To celebrate Dr. Hintikka’s long life and career, we’ve made free a small collection of his articles.

Photo Credit: Australasian Association of Philosophy

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Existence and Predication from Aristotle to Frege

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research | Volume 73, Issue 2, September 2006

 

Quine’s ultimate presuppositions

Theoria | Volume 65, Issue 1, April 1999

 

Wittgenstein on being and time

Theoria | Volume 62, Issue 1-2, April 1996

 

The Games of Logic and the Games of Inquiry

Dialectica | Volume 49, Issue 2-4, June 1995

 

On proper (popper?) and improper uses of information in epistemology

Theoria | Volume 59, Issue 1-3, April 1993

 

Overcoming “Overcoming Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language” Through Logical Analysis of Language

Dialectica | Volume 45, Issue 2-3, September 1991

 

Metaphor and the Varieties of Lexical Meaning*

Dialectica | Volume 44, Issue 1-2, June 1990

 

Kant on Existence, Predication, and the Ontological Argument

Dialectica | Volume 35, Issue 1, June 1981

 

Language-Games

Dialectica |Volume 31, Issue 3-4, December 1977

 

Partially Ordered Quantifiers vs. Partially Ordered Ideas

Dialectica | Volume 30, Issue 1, March 1976

 

Quine vs. Peirce?

Dialectica | Volume 30, Issue 1, March 1976

 

The Prospects for Convention T

Dialectica | Volume 30, Issue 1, March 1976

 

The Question of?: A Comment on Urs Egli

Dialectica | Volume 30, Issue 1, March 1976

 

Comment on Professor Bergström

Theoria | Volume 41, Issue 1, April 1975

 

Quantifiers vs. Quantification Theory

Dialectica | Volume 27, Issue 3-4, December 1973

 

‘Prima facie’ obligations and iterated modalities

Theoria | Volume 36, Issue 3, December 1970

 

“Knowing oneself” and other problems in epistemic logic

Theoria | Volume 32, Issue 1, April 1966

 

Distributive Normal Forms and Deductive Interpolation

Mathematical Logic Quarterly | Volume 10, Issue 13-17, 1964

 

Modality and Quantification

Theoria | Volume 27, Issue 3, December 1961

 

*Written by Jaakko Hintikka and Gabriel Sandu

Kit Fine on ‘Truth Making’

In 2011, dialectica held its 2011 annual lecture at the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division conference.

The lecture was given by Kit Fine, who is arguably the most important living philosopher, on the topic of ‘Truth Making’. A podcast of Kit Fine’s lecture is available for free below:

dialectica Essay Prize – Cognitive Penetration

The dialectica 2012 essay prize topic has been announced! Submit your article on the topic of Cognitive Penetration before November 1st for your chance to win £1,500!

Cognitive penetration refers to the influence of beliefs, expectations, moods, desires or background theories on the content of perceptual processes or conscious experiences. This phenomenon has been in the forefront of the philosophy of science, the philosophy of perception, and the foundations of cognitive science. Philosophers of science have warned that cognitive penetration might threaten the epistemic role of perception as an objective source of knowledge and have used it to explain radical paradigm shifts. Philosophers of perception have tried to characterize the various ways in which perceptual processes or conscious experiences can be altered by other mental states or activities. Cognitive scientists have exploited this phenomenon as a starting point to motivate claims on the architecture of the human mind, including modularity and plasticity.

We invite submissions on any aspect of this phenomenon. Possible questions include: How is the influence of various mental states on perceptual processes or experiences to be characterized in psychological terms? Are there principled differences between the cognitive penetration of conscious experiences and that of subpersonal perceptual processes? What is the impact (if any) of cognitive penetration on the individuation of mental states? What kinds of cognitive penetration are there? Does cognitive penetration lend support to relativism? How does cognitive penetration relate to the confirmation of scientific theories by experience? Does cognitive penetration undermine (or support) some models of perceptual justification? Does the use of instruments to observe phenomena presuppose any form of cognitive penetration? What sorts of evidence can support or disconfirm claims about cognitive penetration? Could it shed new light on Kuhnian incommensurability?

Please send your submissions in pdf format to Philipp Keller, philipp.keller@unige.ch, by the 1st of November 2012. The author of the winning entry will receive £1500. All papers submitted will be considered submissions to the journal and should not be published or under review elsewhere.

Dialectica presents a FREE virtual issue!

Founded in 1947, dialectica is the official journal of the European Society for Analytic Philosophy (ESAP), publishing first-rate articles predominantly in theoretical and systematic philosophy. Although edited in Switzerland with a focus on analytical philosophy undertaken on the continent, dialectica publishes articles from all over the world and has a truly global relevance. It is ranked A on the European Research Index for the Humanities of the European Science Foundation. Click here to view recent submission statistics and here to read some highlights from the journal over the years.

Continuing the work of its founding members, dialectica seeks a better understanding of the mutual support between science and philosophy and promotes that both disciplines need and enjoy in their common search for understanding. In this exciting virtual issue, the editorial team has selected some recent articles to showcase content from dialectica that particularly reflects the journal’s relevance to a US audience. These articles are representative of the many domains in which dialectica publishes, from ontology to epistemology and philosophy of mind or the theory of rationality. dialectica has recently published special issues on vectors, concepts, emotions, colours, and the philosophy of Kit Fine. We are confident that you will find this virtual issue interesting and informative.

Two Defenses of Common-Sense Ontology
Uriah Kriegel

Paderewski Variations
R. Mark Sainsbury

The Model-Theoretic Argument against Quantifying over Everything
Iris Einheuser

Relation-Based Thought, Objectivity and Disagreement
Christopher Peacocke

A Tale of Two Vectors
Marc Lange

On Some Recent Criticisms of the ‘Linguistic’ Approach to Ontology
Matti Eklund

Against Universal Mereological Composition
Crawford Elder

Rationality, Reasoning and Group Agency
Philip Pettit

Towards a Neo-Aristotelian Mereology
Kathrin Koslicki

Response to Kathrin Koslicki
Kit Fine

If you enjoyed these articles, why not activate a free 30-day trial to dialectica?

Round Table on Philosophy Publishing – from Theoria

As part of the conference commemorating Theoria’s 75th anniversary, a round table discussion on philosophy publishing was held in Bergendal, Sollentuna, Sweden, on 1 October 2010. Bengt Hansson was the chair, and the other participants were eight editors-in-chief of philosophy journals: Hans van Ditmarsch (Journal of Philosophical Logic), Pascal Engel (Dialectica), Sven Ove Hansson (Theoria), Vincent Hendricks (Synthese), Søren Holm (Journal of Medical Ethics), Pauline Jacobson (Linguistics and Philosophy), Anthonie Meijers (Philosophical Explorations), Henry S. Richardson (Ethics) and Hans Rott (Erkenntnis).

Journal Club: Read Top Philosophy Articles for Free

What is Journal Club?

‘The Philosopher’s Eye’ Journal Club will be bringing you top articles for discussion on a regular basis, selected from the prestigious Wiley-Blackwell Philosophy journals. The article will be made free to access for all, and engagement and commentary is encouraged.

This inaugural session of Journal Club opens with a paper from the journal Dialectica, which was nominated one of the ten best papers of 2009 by the Philosophers’ Annual:

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A Tale of Two Vectors

Dialectica

Volume 63, Issue 4, December 2009, Pages: 397–431, Marc Lange

• Full Article (HTML)
• PDF(382K)
• References