Abstract
The most important recent development that falls within the scope of this meeting, “Language and Ontology”, is the somewhat amorphous body of ideas, conceptualizations, and results which is best known aspossible-worlds semantics.1 Its eminence is well founded. We consider it as self-evident as anything in philosophy that one cannot do justice to actual human experience without a conceptual system that includes possibilia. It does not suffice to speak of different objects, different properties, different relations, etc.; at some point we also have to speak of different things that can happen or could have happened. To put the same point in more vivid terms, our life is intrinsically and inevitably acted against a backdrop of unrealized possibilities. Jaakko Hintikka has articulated this idea by connecting the use of unrealized possibilia with the concept of intentionality in which several philosophers, notably Husserl, have seen the gist of human thinking, and outlined a theory of intentionality based on this relationship.2
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Notes
This approach exists in many different variants. Here we have in the first place in mind the version formulated by Richard Montague; see R. Thomason (ed.): 1974, Formal Philosophy: Selected Papers of Richard Montague, Yale University Press, New Haven;
D. R. Dowty, R. E. Wall, and Stanley Peters (eds.): 1981, Introduction to Montague Semantics, D. Reidel, Dordrecht For other approaches, see, e.g.,
D. Lewis: 1972, ‘General Semantics’ in Donald Davidson and Gilbert Harman (eds.), Semantics of Natural Language, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 169–218;
Jaakko Hintikka: 1969, Models for Modalities D. Reidel, Dordrecht; and
Jaakko Hintikka: 1975, The Intentions of Intentionality, D. Reidel, Dordrecht.
See Jaakko Hintikka: 1975, ‘The Intentions of Intentionality’, in op. cit, and
Jaakko Hintikka: 1980, ‘Degrees and Dimensions of Intentionality’, in Rudolf Hallerand Wolfgang Grassl (eds). Language, Logic, and Philosophy: Proceedings of the Fourth International Wittgenstein Symposium, Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, Vienna 69–82, reprinted in this volume.
Cf. here Jaakko Hintikka: 1980, ‘On Sense, Reference, and the Objects of Knowledge’, Epistemologia, 3, 143–64, reprinted in this volume.
These problems have been discussed in Jaakko Hintikka: 1982, ‘Is Alethic Modal Logic Possible?’, Acta Philosophica Fennica 35, 89–105, reprinted in this volume; and in
Jaakko Hintikka: 1980, ‘Standard vs. Nonstandard Logic’, in E. Agazzi (ed.), Modern Logic: A Survey, D. Reidel, Dordrecht 283–296.
Cf. here Jaakko Hintikka: 1983, ‘Situations, Possible Worlds, and Attitudes’, Synthese 54, pp. 153–62, reprinted in this volume.
See Jaakko Hintikka: 1975, ‘Knowledge, Belief, and Logical Consequence’, in Hintikka, op. cit., Ch. 9, and
Jaakko Hintikka: 1973, Logic, Language-Games, and Information, Clarendon Press, Oxford, especially Ch. 7 and 11.
Rantala, V.: 1975, ‘Urn Models’, Journal of Philosophical Logic, 4, 455–74; reprinted in E. Saarinen (ed.): 1979, Game-Theoretical Semantics, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 347–66.
Hintikka, Jaakko: 1975, ‘Impossible Possible Worlds Vindicated’, Journal of Philosophical Logic, 4, 475–84; reprinted in this volume.
See Jaakko Hintikka: 1973, Logic, Language-Games, and Information, Clarendon Press, Oxford, Ch. 7–9;
Jaakko Hintikka: 1974, Knowledge and the Known, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, Ch. 6–10.
See Jaakko Hintikka: 1978, ‘Aristotle’s Incontinent Logician’, Ajatus, 37, 48–65.
See Jaakko Hintikka: 1980, ‘C.S. Peirce’s “First Real Discovery” and its Contemporary Relevance’, The Monist, 63, 304–15.
See Jaakko Hintikka: 1976, The Semantics of Questions and the Questions of Semantics, North-Holland, Amsterdam.
On the importance of this principle, cf. e.g. B. Hall Partee: 1977, ‘Possible Worlds Semantics and Linguistic Theory’, The Monist, 60, 302–26 and 306–08;
B. Hall Partee: 1975, ‘Montague Grammar and Transformational Grammar’, Linguistic Inquiry, 6, 203–300.
See Jaakko Hintikka: 1981, ‘Theories of Truth and Learnable Languages’, in S. Kanger and S. Öhman (eds.), Philosophy and Grammar, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 37–57.
Wittgenstein, L.: 1961, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
Cf. here our book: 1986, Investigating Wittgenstein, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
Cf. A. Tarski: 1956, ‘The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages’, Woodger (ed.), Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics Clarendon Press, Oxford and the German version,
A. Tarski: 1936, ‘Der Wahrheitsbegriff in den formalisierten Sprachen’, Studia Philosophia 1, 261–405. Tarski’s procedure in defining truth for quantified sentences even involves quantifying over evaluation functions, which hence cannot be said to be analyzed by means of truth-definitions.
See e.g. W. V. Quine: 1976, ‘Worlds Away’, Journal of Philosophy, 73,859–63.
Cf. Jaakko Hintikka: 1986, ‘Quine on Who’s Who’, in P. Schilpp and L. Hahn (eds.), The Philosophy of W. V. Quine, The Library of Living Philosophers, Vol. XVIII, Open Court, LaSalle, Ill., 209–26.
See especially Jaakko Hintikka: 1972, ‘Knowledge by Acquaintance-In-dividuation by Acquaintance’, in D. Pears (ed.), Bertrand Russell: A Collection of Critical Essays Doubleday, Garden City, 52–79, reprinted in Hintikka: 1974, op. cit., 212–33.
This promising idea has never been pursued in the literature. For the materials to be dealt with, cf. A. Kaplan: 1977, In Pursuit of Wisdom, Los Angeles, secs. 46 and 47.
Kripke, S.: 1979, ‘Identity Through Time’, paper delivered at the Seventy-Sixth Annual Meeting of APA Eastern Division New York 1979.
See especially Jaakko Hintikka: 1975, ‘Quine on Quantifying In’, in Hintikka, op. cit.
Cf. here Hintikka: 1980, op. cit.
See Quine, 1976.
Ian Hacking has aptly pointed out the kinship between Leibniz and such modern possible-world theorists (in effect) as Rudolf Carnap. See, e.g., I. Hacking: 1971, ‘The Leibniz-Carnap Program for Inductive Logic’, Journal of Philosophy, 68, 597–610. What remains to be added is merely that this emphasis on “large worlds” is not intrinsic to the contemporary twentieth-century possible-worlds approach, only to some particular forms of it (such as Carnap’s).
See B. Mates: 1968, ‘Leibniz on Possible Worlds’, in B. van Rootselaar and J. F. Staal (eds.), Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science III, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 507–29; reprinted in H. G. Frankfurt (ed.): 1912, Leibniz: A Collection of Critical Essays, Doubleday, Garden City, 335–64.
Cf., e.g: 1975, ‘Quine on Quantifying In’, in Hintikka, op. cit.
Locke, J., An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, p. 440 of the A. C. Fraser edition.
See, e.g., S. Kripke: 1972, ‘Naming and Necessity’, in Davidson and Harman (eds.), op. cit., 253–355, especially p. 314.
See Kripke, 1979.
See Quine, 1976.
Saarinen, E.: 1979, ‘Continuity and Similarity in Cross-Identification’, in Esa Saarinen et al. (eds.), Essays in Honour of Jaakko Hintikka D. Reidel, Dordrecht 189–215.
See Quine, 1976, and Kripke, 1979, respectively.
Abbott, E. A.: 1952, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, Dover, New York.
See, e.g., E. L. Ince: 1956, Ordinary Differential Equations, Dover, New York 71–72.
Kripke, 1979.
For the basic ideas see e.g.E.T. Whittaker and G.N. Watson: 1927, ACourse of Modern Analysis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 96–98.
Cf. here H. J. Sussmann’s useful survey papen 1975, ‘Catastrophe Theory’, Synthese, 31, 229–70, especially 230–32.
See e.g., Yung-Chen Lu: 1976, Singularity Theory and an Introduction to Catastrophe Theory, Springer Verlag, New York/Heidelberg, or
P. T. Saunders: 1980, An Introduction to Catastrophe Theory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Sussmann, 1975.
Cf. e.g., R. Thorn: 1975, Structural Stability and Morphogenesis, Reading,
(but cf. H.J. Sussmann and R. Zahler: 1978, ‘Catastrophe Theory as Applied to the Social and Biological Sciences: A Critique’, Synthese, 37, 117–26). Thorn comes closest to our present subject in his papers ‘Topologie et Linguistique’, in: 1970, Essays on Topology, Dedicated to G. de Rham, Springer Verlag, New York/Hedelberg 226–48; and ‘Langue et Catastrophes: Éléments pour une Semantique Topologique’, in M.M. Peixoto (ed.): 1973, Dynamical Systems, New York/London 619–54.
Cf. Quine, 1976.
Cf. e.g. Sussmann, 1975.
For the role of this paradigm in recent language theory and for logicians’ gradual disenchantment with it, see Jaakko Hintikka: 1981, “Semantics: A Revolt Against Frege”, in Guttorm Floistad and G.H. von Wright (eds.), Contemporary Philosophy: A New Survey, I, Nijhoff, The Hague, 57–82.
Cf. Jaakko Hintikka: 1969, ‘On Kant’s Notion of Intuition (Anschauung)’, in T. Penelhum and J.J. MacIntosh (eds.), The First Critique: Reflections on Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’, Wadsworth, Belmont 38–53.
See Jaakko Hintikka: 1973, ‘Quantifiers, Language-Games, and Transcendental Arguments’, in Jaakko Hintikka, Logic, Language-Games, and Information, Clarendon Press, Oxford;
Jaakko Hintikka: 1974, ‘Kant on the Mathematical Method’, in Jaakko Hintikka, Knowledge and the Known, op. cit.;
Jaakko Hintikka: 1982, ‘Semantical Games and Transcendental Arguments’ in E.M. Barth and J.L. Martens (eds.) Argumentation: Approaches to Theory Formation, Benjamins, Amsterdam, 77–91.
For the semantical history of the term “world”, see C.S. Lewis: 1967, Studies in Words, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, chapter 2.
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Hintikka, J., Hintikka, M.B. (1989). Towards a General Theory of Individuation and Identification. In: The Logic of Epistemology and the Epistemology of Logic. Synthese Library, vol 200. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2647-9_6
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