Im assuming that the villain isnt a complete idiot..So raising here 1/2 of his stack instead of the whole thing must mean something. The best chance of getting people to fold the blinds to him is an all in, obviously. 12,000 to win $3,000..I can see that easily being a profitable play over time with only 2 players left to act. We assume he knows that, and since hes an aggressive player hes not the type of person that doesnt want to risk their stack in case they get re-raised all in BS.

An all in raise here would be directed at the SB..12,000 would more than cut his stack in half..A raise of 6,000 is half of your stack so he must assume that if you're going to play you're going to play for all your money.

But it means the SB only needs to call another 5,000, which is around 1/5th of his remaining stack. On the balance it would seem to me at least hes looking action on the hand. Hes looking for someone to pop him all in.

Im not very sure about this hand because of the very skimpy details, but there is one overriding factor in all of this. With blinds at 1000-2000 your M (Stack/(BB+SB)) is only 4, and your effective M is more like 3(7 players left). With an M of 3 im looking to go all in with any two cards basically. 88 is a much better hand than I would need for a push, especially when blinds are doubling soon.

My read on the situation is to go ahead and hope hes holding something like AK. I don't think there is much you can do, you need to take the chance that he might have a higher pair. Harrington says "Beware the overthink". Your play is always dictated by the level of the blinds.