Ilkka Maunu Olavi Niiniluoto (born 12 March 1946) is a Finnish philosopher and mathematician, serving as a professor of

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

at the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki (, ; UH) is a public university in Helsinki, Finland. The university was founded in Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo under the Swedish Empire, and moved to Helsinki in 1828 under the sponsorship of Alexander ...

since 1981. He was appointed as rector of the University of Helsinki on 1 August 2003 for five years. On 25 April 2008, he was chosen to succeed Kari Raivio as chancellor of the University of Helsinki, beginning 1 June 2008.

Work

A significant contribution to the philosophy of science, particularly to the topic of

verisimilitude In philosophy, verisimilitude (or truthlikeness) is the notion that some propositions are closer to being true than other propositions. The problem of verisimilitude is the problem of articulating what it takes for one false theory to be close ...

or truth approximation, is his ''Truthlikeness'' (Synthese Library, Springer, 1987). Another notable publication is ''Critical Scientific Realism'' (Oxford University Press, 2002). In the 1990s, Niiniluoto among other university employees organized a plea to the consistory of the university to abolish ecclesiastic remnants from the university ceremonies. Ilkka Niiniluoto is editor-in-chief of '' Acta Philosophica Fennica'', the leading philosophical journal of Finland. From 2008 to 2013, he served as the Chancellor of the University of Helsinki. In 2011 he gave a Turku Agora Lecture.

Books

References

External links

helsinki.fi

Ilkka Niiniluoto in 375 humanists 14.04.2015, Faculty of Arts, University of Helsinki
Analytic philosophers Finnish philosophers Finnish mathematicians Philosophers of science Atheist philosophers Finnish skeptics Academic staff of the University of Helsinki Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences Scientists from Helsinki 1946 births Living people Rectors of the University of Helsinki Chancellors of the University of Helsinki {{finland-philosopher-stub