Hintikka’s Theory of Questions

Abstract

Hintikka's analysis of questions is based on aqvist's imperative-epistemic logic. roughly, an interrogative says "make me know..."; an answer makes the questioner know. this approach may be fruitful for modelling certain kinds of information-seeking situations, but there appear to be several types of questions in natural language for which it is not suitable. also, it is not clear that hintikka's approach allows his system to have certain desirable properties (e.g., effectiveness).