Jaakko Hintikka Quotes
Kaarlo Jaakko Juhani Hintikka was a Finnish philosopher and logician and one of the most prolific and inventive logicians of the late twentieth century. Trained at Helsinki and at Harvard under Quine, he held chairs in Finland, Stanford, Florida State, and Boston University, and produced foundational work in epistemic logic, possible-worlds semantics, the interrogative model of inquiry, and independence-friendly logic. The quotes below are attributed to Jaakko Hintikka, organized by topic.
Jaakko Hintikka on Knowledge
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Attributed to Jaakko Hintikka:
“Knowledge is closure under known implication.”
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Attributed to Jaakko Hintikka:
“Inquiry is a structured game of question and answer.”
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Attributed to Jaakko Hintikka:
“To know who someone is is to be able to identify them across possible situations.”
Jaakko Hintikka on Truth
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Attributed to Jaakko Hintikka:
“Logic is the art of making explicit what reasoning already requires.”
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Attributed to Jaakko Hintikka:
“Possible worlds are the resources by which logic does its work.”