The Game of Language

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

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2. Game-Theoretical Semantics: Insights and Prospects

   • Jaakko Hintikka

   Pages 1-31

3. Semantical Games and Transcendental Arguments

   • Jaakko Hintikka

   Pages 33-46

4. Semantical Games, Subgames, and Functional Interpretations

   • Jaakko Hintikka, Jack Kulas

   Pages 47-76

5. AnyProblems — No Problems

   • Jaakko Hintikka, Jack Kulas

   Pages 77-111

6. Temporal Discourse and Semantical Games

   • Jaakko Hintikka

   Pages 113-136

7. Definite Descriptions in Game-Theoretical Semantics

   • Jaakko Hintikka, Jack Kulas

   Pages 137-160

8. “Is”, Semantical Games, and Semantical Relativity

   • Jaakko Hintikka

   Pages 161-200

9. Semantical Games and Aristotelian Categories

   • Jaakko Hintikka

   Pages 201-229

10. On The Any-Thesis and the Methodology of Linguistics

    • Jaakko Hintikka

    Pages 231-257

11. Theories of Truth and Learnable Languages

    • Jaakko Hintikka

    Pages 259-292

12. Back Matter

    Pages 293-343

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Since the first chapter of this book presents an intro­ duction to the present state of game-theoretical semantics (GTS), there is no point in giving a briefer survey here. Instead, it may be helpful to indicate what this volume attempts to do. The first chapter gives a short intro­ duction to GTS and a survey of what is has accomplished. Chapter 2 puts the enterprise of GTS into new philo­ sophical perspective by relating its basic ideas to Kant's phi losophy of mathematics, space, and time. Chapters 3-6 are samples of GTS's accomplishments in understanding different kinds of semantical phenomena, mostly in natural languages. Beyond presenting results, some of these chapters also have other aims. Chapter 3 relates GTS to an interesting line of logical and foundational studies - the so-called functional interpretations - while chapter 4 leads to certain important methodological theses. Chapter 7 marks an application of GTS in a more philo­ sophical direction by criticizing the Frege-Russell thesis that words like "is" are multiply ambiguous. This leads in turn to a criticism of recent logical languages (logical notation), which since Frege have been based on the ambi­ guity thesis, and also to certain methodological sug­ gestions. In chapter 8, GTS is shown to have important implications for our understanding of Aristotle's doctrine of categories, while chapter 9 continues my earlier criticism of Chomsky's generative approach to linguistic theorizing.

• discourse
• interpret
• linguistics
• methodology
• oral discourse
• semantic
• semantics
• subject
• truth

`... required reading for philosophers of language and theoretical linguistics.'
Canadian Philosophical Reviews

• Department of Philosophy, Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA

  Jaakko Hintikka

Jaakko Hintikka is the author or co-author of thirty volumes and of some 300 scholarly articles in mathematical and philosophical logic, epistemology, language theory, philosophy of science, history of ideas and history of philosophy, including Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Peirce, The Bloomsbury Group, Husserl and Wittgenstein. He has also been active in international scholarly organizations, most recently as the First Vice-President of FISP, Vice-President of IIP and Co-Chair of the American Organizing Committee of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy. He has been Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal Synthese and the Managing Editor of Synthese Library since 1965.

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