Charles Sanders Peirce was one of the United States’ most original and profound thinkers, and a prolific writer. Peirce’s game theory-based approaches to the semantics and pragmatics of signs and language, to the theory of communication, and to the evolutionary emergence of signs, provide a toolkit for contemporary scholars and philosophers. Drawing on unpublished manuscripts, the book offers a rich, fresh picture of the achievements of a remarkable man.

The Craig Interpolation Theorem is intimately connected with the emergence of abstract logic and continues to be the driving force of the field. I will argue in this paper that the interpolation property is an important litmus test in abstract model theory for identifying “natural,” robust extensions of first order logic. My argument is supported by the observation that logics which satisfy the interpolation property usually also satisfy a Lindström type maximality theorem. Admittedly, the range of such logics is small.

In this paper I shall attempt to compare the dialogue approach originally advocated by Lorenz and Lorenzen and the game-theoretical approach of Hintikka with each other. I shall not try to present any survey of either one of the approaches and will assume that the reader is familiar with the basic ideas of these theories.The original works of Lorenzen and Lorenz have been reprinted in their while Stegmüller contains a survey (in English) of the basic ideas and results. Works in (...) this tradition which apply the approach to quantum logic include Denecke, Mittelstaedt Mittelstaedt and Stachow, Stachow. The reader will also find van Dunn, Krabbe, Lorenz and Stachow to be relevant.The literature on Hintikka’s game-theoretical semantics as applied both to different formal languages (including infinitary languages and intensional logic) and to natural language is rapidly growing. As for the latter, the reader is referred to papers by Hintikka, Carlson and myself reprinted in Saarinen, to Carlson and ter Meulen, and to Saarinen. (shrink)

This paper addresses the theoretical notion of a game as it arisesacross scientific inquiries, exploring its uses as a technical andformal asset in logic and science versus an explanatory mechanism. Whilegames comprise a widely used method in a broad intellectual realm(including, but not limited to, philosophy, logic, mathematics,cognitive science, artificial intelligence, computation, linguistics,physics, economics), each discipline advocates its own methodology and aunified understanding is lacking. In the first part of this paper, anumber of game theories in formal studies are critically (...) surveyed. Inthe second part, the doctrine of games as explanations for logic isassessed, and the relevance of a conceptual analysis of games tocognition discussed. It is suggested that the notion of evolution playsa part in the game-theoretic concept of meaning. (shrink)

Oikkonen, J. and J. Väänänen, Game-theoretic inductive definability, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 65 265-306. We use game-theoretic ideas to define a generalization of the notion of inductive definability. This approach allows induction along non-well-founded trees. Our definition depends on an underlying partial ordering of the objects. In this ordering every countable ascending sequence is assumed to have a unique supremum which enables us to go over limits. We establish basic properties of this induction and examine examples where it (...) emerges naturally. In the main results we prove an abstract Kleene Theorem and restricted versions of the Stage-Comparison Theorem and the Reduction Theorem. (shrink)

We prove that the class of trees with no branches of cardinality ≥κ is not RPC definable in L ∞κ when κ is regular. Earlier such a result was known for L κ + κ under the assumption $\kappa^{ . Our main result is actually proved in a stronger form which covers also L ∞λ (and makes sense there) for every strong limit cardinal $\lambda > \kappa$ of cofinality κ.

We define a subhierarchy of the infinitely deep languagesN described by Jaakko Hintikka and Veikko Rantala. We shall show that some model theoretic results well-known in the model theory of the ordinary infinitary languages can be generalized for these new languages. Among these are the downward Löwenheim-Skolem and o's theorems as well as some compactness properties.

Let U and B be two countable relational models of the same first order language. If the models are nonisomorphic, there is a unique countable ordinal α with the property that $\mathfrak{U} \equiv^\alpha_{\infty\omega} \mathfrak{B} \text{but not} \mathfrak{U} \equiv^{\alpha + 1}_{\infty\omega} \mathfrak{B},$ i.e. U and B are L ∞ω -equivalent up to quantifier-rank α but not up to α + 1. In this paper we consider models U and B of cardinality ω 1 and construct trees which have a similar relation (...) to U and B as α above. For this purpose we introduce a new ordering T ≪ T' of trees, which may have some independent interest of its own. It turns out that the above ordinal α has two qualities which coincide in countable models but will differ in uncountable models. Respectively, two kinds of trees emerge from α. We call them Scott trees and Karp trees, respectively. The definition and existence of these trees is based on an examination of the Ehrenfeucht game of length ω 1 between U and B. We construct two models of power ω 1 with 2 ω 1 mutually noncomparable Scott trees. (shrink)

Two expressive limitations of an infinitary higher-order modal language interpreted on models for higher-order contingentism – the thesis that it is contingent what propositions, properties and relations there are – are established: First, the inexpressibility of certain relations, which leads to the fact that certain model-theoretic existence conditions for relations cannot equivalently be reformulated in terms of being expressible in such a language. Second, the inexpressibility of certain modalized cardinality claims, which shows that in such a language, higher-order contingentists cannot (...) express what is communicated using various instances of talk of ‘possible things’, such as ‘there are uncountably many possible stars’. (shrink)

We often speak as if there are merely possible people—for example, when we make such claims as that most possible people are never going to be born. Yet most metaphysicians deny that anything is both possibly a person and never born. Since our unreflective talk of merely possible people serves to draw non-trivial distinctions, these metaphysicians owe us some paraphrase by which we can draw those distinctions without committing ourselves to there being merely possible people. We show that such paraphrases (...) are unavailable if we limit ourselves to the expressive resources of even highly infinitary first-order modal languages. We then argue that such paraphrases are available in higher-order modal languages only given certain strong assumptions concerning the metaphysics of properties. We then consider alternative paraphrase strategies, and argue that none of them are tenable. If talk of merely possible people cannot be paraphrased, then it must be taken at face value, in which case it is necessary what individuals there are. Therefore, if it is contingent what individuals there are, then the demands of paraphrase place tight constraints on the metaphysics of properties: either (i) it is necessary what properties there are, or (ii) necessarily equivalent properties are identical, and having properties does not entail even possibly being anything at all. (shrink)

This volume presents mathematical game theory as an interface between logic and philosophy.