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

Surrealism and Philosophy

With the Tate Galleries showcasing a pair of exhibitions dedicated to two of its most cherished exponents this summer, Surrealism is back. The truth is, it never went anywhere. Ever since it was unleashed by the influential French poet Guillaume Apollinaire – perhaps from somewhere deep in our collective unconscious – the term Surreal has paradoxically become a common part of our everyday language.

The wild geometries and rural Catalonian landscapes of the painter Joan Miró hang currently on the walls at the Tate Modern in London, and Tate Liverpool are expecting an abundance of bowler hats, blue skies and pipes imminently for their René Magritte exhibition in June. Ahead of these events, however, one blogger reminds us that far from originating with figures like Miró and Magritte, or even André Breton, author of the Surrealist Manifesto and self-styled leader of the Surrealist group, the ethos of the surreal had been in the air of the art world from as early as 1860. The French Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau is highlighted as a particularly strong precursory example. (In fact, something of the surreal aesthetic occurs as far back as the mid-1500s, in the unique work of the Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo).

Let’s Talk About…Monogamy?

In the spirit of St. Valentine’s Day, we turn to the subject of romance. But the outlook for monogamy seems to be bleak. In a study conducted by researchers at Oregon State University, soon to be published in the Journal of Sex Research, 40% of a sample of 434 young heterosexual couples, married and unmarried, gave conflicting answers when partners were asked individually whether they had agreed to be monogamous. Furthermore, of those who were in agreement about monogamy at least in principle, 30% reported that at least one partner had not kept to it.

The Beauty of Distance in Kant’s aesthetics

I was lucky enough to have recently visited the 17th Biennale of Sydney with this year’s theme THE BEAUTY OF DISTANCE: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age. One aspect of the theme is the intention to consider the distance between Australia and other major countries in a positive light by comparing it with the notion of distance that has been held central to the experience of beauty in traditional aesthetic theory. This is exemplified by the notion of disinterestedness in Kant’s theory of the beautiful described in The Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790).

Finnish film and photography artist Salla Tykkä explores the relationship between the colour white and beauty in two films presented at the biennale: Victoria which shows the life cycle of a giant water lily and Airs Above the Ground which records the training of magnificent Lipizzaner stallions. Her investigation is inspired by the aesthetic theory of Victorian artist John Ruskin.

FREE Syllabus: The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction

Teaching & Learning Guide for: The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction
By Gillian Russell, Washington University in St Louis (December 2007)

Keywords:

Section: Logic & Language
Subjects: Philosophy, Logic and Language, Logic.
People: Quine, Willard , Kant, Immanuel , Frege, Gottlob , Hume, David
Key Topic: empiricism