Who is right: Hintikka, Grice, or Popper. We are talking about 'know', that
the Greeks -- pretentious as they were, called 'episteme -- and possibly
built a female nude statue to represent it -- it's a feminine noun.
In a message dated 8/18/2015 2:33:42 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Unless Popper and others are right, and "epistemic logic" is an
irrelevance and part of the "subjectivist blunder" of JTB-theory, to be
replaced with
an understanding of "objective knowledge".
This is aimed at a commentary on the importance of Hintikka's contributions
to 'epistemics', i.e the formalisation of things like Grice said without
using symbols as such:
K(A,p)
A knows that p iff
B(A,p)
A believes that p
p
p is the case
and
J(A, p)
A is justified in uttering in believing p.
Or
p --> B(A, p)
It is the fact that p that CAUSES in A A's belief that p.
(as in Grice's example, "The student knew the answer to the question as to
when the Battle of Waterloo was fought", i.e., the student, after some
hesitation, knows that the battle of Waterloo was fought on June 18, 1815, near
Waterloo --. While the battle was NOT fought IN Waterloo, it is STILL
called "Waterloo", Grice said, "for convenience".)
Grice was worried, but not too much, by what he saw a 'regressive' problem,
in Hintikka's approach: If the student knows that the battle of Waterloo
was fought on June 18, 1815, MUST he know this, too, i.e. that he knows that
the battle of Waterloo was fought on June 18, 1815?
McEvoy goes on:
"In this latter conception, [Popper's and others's -- where others means
"post-Popperians"], human knowledge is distinct from animal knowledge"
This reminds me of folksongs.
An American once protested: I don't see why they keep qualifying this type
of song as folksong (Must be a German thing: cfr. Volk vs. Kunst Lieder): I
never heard a HORSE sing one!
Animal knowledge Hintikka calls doxastic, and Stephen Stich sub-doxastic.
Again, the root is the pretentious Greek language. They possibly had a minor
female statue next to EPISTEME, since "Doxa", another female noun, was
below Episteme.
McEvoy:
"where it formulates knowledge-claims so that they have an "objective" W3
status beyond the W2 belief-states and processes of the knower: what
underlies the runaway success of human knowledge, compared with animal
knowledge,
is how this objectification of knowledge as W3 content permits us to
examine and develop that content critically and in ways not available where
"knowledge" is merely a subjective state or process (as it is for other
animals)."
Perhaps Popper would say that it would be TRIVIAL to think that animals
(except man) can objectivise stuff like that. But there is evidence that
animals (except man) teach other animals to do things, and note also the
abudance of literature (granted: children's literature on the most part) where
animals talk and engage in discussions about objective knowledge. Notably:
Dodgson, who becomes the Dodo in "Alice in Wonderland", where you see cats
inferring things -- the Cheshire Cat -- and mice telling tales (not tails),
and hares going mad after some philosophical discussion with dormmice. (A
second example would be the worlds of Grahame, of "Wind of the Willows" fame,
and Beatrix Potter -- and a scientific counterpart would be the ethological
studies of different authors).
One of Grice's posthumous publications was written on a cigarette box: it
reads: "Read chimp literature". He felt that after all Noam Chomsky was
wrong and Nim Chimpsky was right!
McEvoy:
"This runaway success is perhaps best exemplified by scientific knowledge,
and "epistemic logic" proves an irrelevance to understanding scientific
knowledge."
Well, Hintikka distinguishes between 'epistemics' and 'science', for which
he sticks with what he calls an 'inquiry' model -- he wrote "A logic of
scientific discovery" just to tease Popperians. Hintikka thinks science
proceed by dialogue (questions and answers) with Nature herself. And I
wouldn't
be surprised if the Greeks, pretentious as they were, built a female nude
statue and called it "Physis", since Natura and Physis are again female nouns.
Hintikka borrows (but never returns) this idea from Hobbes.
Hintikka was first professor of "PRACTICAL" philosophy at Helsinki. So his
first interest was norms (which is not to surprise us since his mentor was
von Wright, the inventor of 'deontics'). It was later, in his essay on
"Knowledge and belief" that he turned his model-theoretic semantics to the
study of what Dennett calls a 'hintikka':
hintikka, n. A measure of belief, the smallest logically discernible
difference between beliefs. "He argued with me all night, but did not alter my
beliefs one hintikka."
Hintikka's three wives assumed the name "Hintikka", but I don't think
Dennett means by 'hintikka' anything to do with Soili Hintikka, Merrill
Hintikka
or Ghita Hintikka.
Hintikka was interested in names and wrote a memoir of his second wife,
entitled, "She chose Merrill Hintikka as her name" (*)
Cheers,
Speranza
*It was the end the year. Philosophers were gathered in Statler Hilton
Hotel in New York. At the dinner, Hintikka bumped into Merrill Provence, whom
he had met already. During their conversation, Hintikka discovered that
Provence was going through a divorce, while Hintikka was married. After the
dinner, Hintikka and Provence carry on their chat in the hotel lobby. The
conversation (with its impicatures) continued in Hintikka’s hotel room and
finally in Hintikka's bed where Hintikka and Provence got to know each other
better, "tenderly, albeit clumsily", Jaakko Hintikka recollects.
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