Grazer Philosophische Studien

Volume 49, 1994/95

Investigating Hintikka

A Note on Jaakko Hintikka's "Knowledge and Belief"

Jaakko Hintikka's concept of belief (aBp) as presented in his Knowledge and Belief is such that in his epistemic logic aKp —> aBp is a thesis. This concept (B-belief) is one important kind of belief and can be contrasted with a different concept of belief (G-belief, denoted by 'aOp') not discussed in Hintikka's book. It is to some extent opposite to the one above in the sense that it is knowledge-exclusive, whereas Hintikka's is knowledge-inclusive. This is shown by the thesis aKp —> —laGp or aGp —> —laKp. My thesis is that this kind of belief is used as the belief in scientific hypothesis and as religious belief. Both G-belief and B-belief are applied to examples from physics and religion and consistency criteria are discussed for either concept.