The Logic of Epistemology and the Epistemology of Logic: Selected Essays

255 Pages·1989·8.781 MB·English

by  Jaakko Hintikka, Merrill B. Hintikka (auth.)

THE LOGIC OF EPISTEMOLOGY AND THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF LOGIC
A PALLAS PAPERBAeK
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THE LOGIC OF
EPISTEMOLOGY AND
THE EPISTEMOLOGY
OF LOGIC
Selected Essays
JAAKKO HINTIKKA
Florida State University, Tallahassee
and
MERRILL B. HINTIKKA t
KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS
DORDRECHT I BOSTON I LONDON
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Hlntlkka, Jaakko, 1929-
The logIc of eplstelology and the eplstelology of logIc selected
essays I by Jaakko Hlntlkka, MerrIll B. Hlntlkka.
p. CI. -- (Syothese lIbrary)
1. Knowledge, Theory of. 2. Lagle. 3. Eptstellcs. 1. Htnttkka,
MerrIll B., 1939- II. Tttle. III. SerIes.
BD161.H535 1988
121--dcI9 88-39953
ISBN-13: 978-0-7923-0041-0 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-2647-9
DOl: 10.1007/ 978-94-009-2647-9
Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers,
P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
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Also published in 1989 in hardbound edition
in the series Synthese Library, Volume 200
All Rights Reserved
© 1989 by Kluwer Academic Publishers
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1989
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
To
Patrick Suppes
a mentor and a friend
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Origin of the Essays ix
Errata xi
Introduction xiii
Essay 1. Is Alethic Modal Logic Possible?
Essay 2. Reasoning About Knowledge in Philosophy: The Paradigm of
Epistemic Logic 17
Essay 3. Are There Nonexistent Objects? Why Not?But WhereAre They? 37
Essay 4. On Sense, Reference, and the Objects of Knowledge 45
Essay 5. Impossible Possible Worlds Vindicated 63
Essay 6. Towards a General Theory of Individuation and Identification 73
Essay 7. On the Proper Treatment of Quantifiers in Montague Semantics 97
Essay 8. The Cartesian cogito, Epistemic Logic and Neuroscience: Some
Surprising Interrelations 113
Essay 9. Quine on Who's Who 137
Essay 10. How Can Language Be Sexist? 155
Essay 11. On Denoting What? 165
Essay 12. Degrees and Dimensions of Intentionality 183
Essay 13. Situations, Possible Worlds and Attitudes 205
Essay 14. Questioning as a Philosophical Method 215
Index of Subjects 235
Index of Names 243
ORIGIN OF THE ESSAYS
The author is Jaakko Hintikka unless otherwise indicated.
Essay 1. Is Alethic Modal Logic Possible?, by I. Niiniluoto and E. Saarinen,
eds., Intensional Logic: Theory and Applications, Acta Philosophical Fennica,
vol. 35, Societas Philosophica Fennica, Helsinki, 1982, pp. 89-105.
Essay 2. Reasoning About Knowledge in Philosophy: The Paradigm ofEpis
temic Logic, in Joseph Y. Halpern, ed. Reasoning About Knowledge: Proceed
ings of the 1986 Conference, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Los Altos, CA,
1986, pp. 63-80.
Essay 3. Are There Nonexistent Objects? Why Not? But Where Are They?,
Synthese vol. 60 (1984), pp. 451-458.
Essay 4. On Sense, Reference and the Objects of Knowledge, Epistemologia
vol. 3 (1980), pp. 143-162.
Essay 5. Impossible Possible Worlds Vindicated, Journal of Philosophical
Logic, vol. 4 (1975), pp. 475-484; reprinted in a revised and expanded form in
Esa Saarinen, ed., Game-theoretical Semantics, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1979, pp.
367-379. (This revised version is what is reprinted here.)
Essay 6. (with Merrill B. Hintikka) Towards a General Theory ofIndividua
tion and Identification, in Werner Leinfellner et. al., eds., Language and Ontol
ogy, Proceedings of the Sixth International Wittgenstein Symposium,
Holder-Pichler-Tempsky, Vienna, 1982, pp. 137-150.
Essay 7. On the Proper Treatment of Quantifiers in Montague Semantics, in
S. Stenlund, ed., Logical Theory and Scientific Analysis, D. Reidel, Dordrecht,
1974, pp. 45-60.
Essay 8. The Cartesian cogito, Epistemic Logic and Neuroscience: Some
Surprising Interrelations. Unpublished, but scheduled to appear also in Syn
these.
ix
x ORIGIN OF THE ESSA YS
Essay 9. Quine on Who's Who, in L.E. Hahn and P.A. Schilpp, eds., The
Philosophy ofWV. Quine, Library of Living Philosophers vol. 18, Open Court,
La Salle, Illinois, 1986, pp. 209-226.
Essay 10. (with Merrill B. Hintikka), How Can Language Be Sexist?, in
Sandra Harding and Merrill B. Hintikka, eds., Discovering Reality: Feminist
Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of
Science, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1983, pp. 139-148.
Essay 11. On Denoting What? Synthese vol. 46 (1981), pp. 167-183.
Essay 12. Degrees and Dimensions of Intentionality, in R. Haller and R.
Grassl, eds., Language, Logic, and Philosophy, Proceedings of the Fourth In
ternational Wittgenstein Symposium, Holder-Pichler-Tempsky, Vienna, 1980,
pp.69-82.
Essay 13. Situations, Possible Worlds and Attitudes, Synthese vol. 54 (1983),
pp. 153-162.
Essay 14. Questioning as a Philosophical Method, in James H. Fetzer, ed.,
Principles of Philosophical Reasoning, Rowan & Allanheld, Totowa, N.J.,
1984, pp. 25-43.
All previously published papers are reproduced here with the permission of
the copyright owners, which is hereby gratefully acknowledged.
ERRATA
The following are corrections for typographical errors that appear in these collected
essays.
Introduction
P. xvi, line 7 from bottom, "intentional" should read "intensional".
Essay 2
P. 19, title to section 2 should read "Indirect Wh-Questions".
P. 29, line 22, after "steps of deduction" add "and steps of reasoning".
P. 29, lines 23-24, "purposes" should read "purpose".
Essay 3
P. 42, line 8 from bottom, omit the word "not".
Essay 4
P. 49, line 7, italicize the book titles Begriffsschrift and Grundgesetze.
Essay 5
P. 63, line 5 from bottom, "imcompatibility" should read" incompatibility".
Essay 6
P. 82, line 4 of section 5, "cross-identity" should read "cross-identify".
P. 84, line 1, "one solution" should read "two solutions".
P. 93, note 30 (line 8), after "basket" add "known".
Essay 7
P. 105, line 14, "contradiction" should read "construction".
Essay 8
P. 129, line 14, "contrast" should read "contrasting".
P. 133, note 4, add quotation marks to "existentially self-verifying".
Essay 9
P. 146, lines 18-19, "cross-reference" should read "cross-identification".
Essay 10
P. 162, line 11, change "as" to "or".
Essay 11
P. 178, lines 7-8, "individualization (non-identification)" should read "individuation
(cross-identification)".
Essay 12
P. 196, line 4, "splitting" should read "merging".
P. 197, line 9, after "dimensions" add "of'.
xi
INTRODUCfION
I almost gave this collection of essays the title "Seven Theories in Search of an
Author" or "Seven Ideas in Search of a Theory". In each of the central essays
reproduced here, one major new idea is proposed and outlined. Each such idea
appears eminently capable of sustaining the weight of a full-fledged logico
philosophical theory (of the same order, say, as the so-called situation seman
tics) and also interesting enough to merit such a development. We saved for
years some of these ideas and some of these papers, in the sense of not having
them reprinted, in the hope of later having an opportunity of letting them grow
into the theory each of them potentially is. Alas, for a variety of reasons these
hopes have not yet been realized. There have been dramatic changes in my life,
including Merrill's death on January I, 1987. I have also got interested and in
volved in a number of new projects, some of them outgrowths of the ideas rep
resented in the present volume. All these developments have left our ideas still
searching for an author of a full-fledged theory. One of the reasons why I am
putting together the present volume is that I have changed my mind. I now
hope that this republication would prompt authors other than myself to develop
these brave new theories, for there does not seem to be any realistic prospect
that I would find the time to do the job alone.
These incipient theories are, by and large, aspects or further developments
of the complex of ideas usually but misleadingly called "possible-worlds
semantics". It started its career in the late fifties and eariy sixties as the seman
tical (model-theoretical) basis for the then existing syntactical (axiomatic and
deductive) systems of modal logics, especially perhaps the Lewis systems.
These were intended in the first place as logics of logical modalities, that is, of
logical necessity and logical possibility, sometimes also known under the alias
"alethic modalities".
In the first essay of this volume, entitled "Is Alethic Modal Logic Possible?",
it is shown that the most common type of semantics for modal logics, the one
ahistorically known as Kripke semantics, is not, and cannot be, a viable model
theory of logical modalities. This observation opens the door to the first of our
Pirandello-like theories-in-spe. Can we develop a better logic of logical
modalities? It turns out that the right logic cannot be axiomatized. It would
nevertheless be highly interesting to develop a theory of how this true alethic
logic could somehow be approximated. This idea is made especially intrigu
ing by a possibility also pointed out in the first essay. It is the possibility of in
terpreting Kripke semantics as-a kind of nonstandard semantics in a sense
Xlii