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Questions of Epistemic Logic in Hintikka

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Jaakko Hintikka on Knowledge and Game-Theoretical Semantics

Part of the book series: Outstanding Contributions to Logic ((OCTR,volume 12))

Abstract

In his book Knowledge and Belief (1962), Jaakko Hintikka uses a model-theoretic approach of modal semantics as a theoretical basis for investigating the principles of epistemic logic. I shall first summarize the main points of Hintikka’s classic work and then address the most disputed themes raised by it in the 60s and later, such as logical omniscience and the KK-thesis, as well as Hintikka’s modifying his views on the basis of criticism. The last part of the book treats quantified epistemic logic, particularly quantifying into “intensional” or “referentially opaque” epistemic contexts defended against Quine’s objections. I deal with this topic in Sect. 17.3 and add some relevant comparisons with John Buridan’s medieval approach in Sect. 17.4. A survey of Hintikka’s later theory of modelling knowledge acquisition is presented in Sect. 17.5; this includes the semantics of questions and inquiry in terms of game-theoretical semantics (GTS) and their application to the logic of epistemology and scientific reasoning in the interrogative model of inquiry (IMI). Combining these results with the theory of independence friendly logic (IF) provides, Hintikka argues, a promising improvement of general epistemology which he calls a second-generation epistemic logic. The subject of the last section is “knowing who” in the sense of a basic epistemic attitude associated with identification which is the key notion in Hintikka’s epistemic theory of questions and answers, reference, and quantification. A central issue in this context is Hintikka’s discovery of the duality of cross-identification methods, the public or descriptive and the perspective ones.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Simo Knuuttila

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  1. Simo Knuuttila
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Correspondence to Simo Knuuttila .

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  1. LORIA, CNRS, Université de Lorraine, Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy, France

    Hans van Ditmarsch

  2. Department of Philosophy, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Gabriel Sandu

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Knuuttila, S. (2018). Questions of Epistemic Logic in Hintikka. In: van Ditmarsch, H., Sandu, G. (eds) Jaakko Hintikka on Knowledge and Game-Theoretical Semantics. Outstanding Contributions to Logic, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62864-6_17

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