Product Description

Here, in a new edition, is Nelson Goodman's provocative philosophical classic--a book that, according to Science, "raised a storm of controversy" when it was first published in 1954, and one that remains on the front lines of philosophical debate. How is it that we feel confident in generalizing from experience in some ways but not in others? How ore generalizations that ore warranted to be distinguished from those that are not? Goodman shows that these questions resist formal solution and his demonstration has been taken by nativists like Chomsky and Fodor as proof that neither scientific induction nor ordinary learning can proceed without an a priori, or innate, ordering of hypotheses. In his new foreword to this edition, Hilary Putnam forcefully rejects these nativist claims. The controversy surrounding these unsolved problems is as relevant to the psychology of cognitive development as it is to the philosophy of science. No serious student of either discipline can afford to misunderstand Goodman's classic argument.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #184649 in Books
• Published on: 1983-03-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Review
Quire possibly the best book by a philosopher in the last twenty years. It changed, probably permanently, the way we think about the problem of induction, and hence about a constellation of related problems like learning and the nature of rational decision. This is the work of contemporary philosophy that I would most like to hove written.
--J. A. Fodor

Review
Quire possibly the best book by a philosopher in the last twenty years. It changed, probably permanently, the way we think about the problem of induction, and hence about a constellation of related problems like learning and the nature of rational decision. This is the work of contemporary philosophy that I would most like to hove written.
--J. A. Fodor

About the Author
Nelson Goodman is Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, Harvard University.

Hilary Putnam is Cogan University Professor Emeritus, Harvard University.

Customer Reviews

Simply brilliant!
Goodman starts out with an attempt to tackle the problem of interpreting counterfactuals ("What would happen if X would be the case instead of Y."). He doesn't solve the problem but gives some deep insights, especially on the connection between counterfactuals and scientific laws. In the next section he tries to tackle the problem by taking a look at a specific sort of counterfactuals, dispositional predicates. These are predicates like "flexibility" ("If I would bend this..."). He does tackle that problem. He doesn't use strange concepts like "possible worlds", that are more problematic than the original problem, but shows how dispositional predicates can be interpreted as statements about past observations, which reduces the problem to the good old problem of induction, which he adresses in the third section. He argues that Hume has solved the problem on how we can know that the future will behave like the past (we simply can't). The real question is not justifying induction but describing how it is done. Several people have attempted to do just that and Goodman discusses their work in some detail. He shows that there is a new, deeper problem: How can we separate theories about predicates ("All X are Y.") from these predicates. He constructs a strange predicate, grue, that is green until some future time t and blue afterwards. The theory "All emeralds are green." is as well supported as the theory "All emeralds are green." One can also construct "blue" and "green" from "bleen" and "grue", so the choice of predicates seems to be somewhat arbitrary. It is easy to construct similar predicates and noone has found a general way to rule them out yet. So how can we decide what predicates we should use in our theories? Goodman argues that this is pure convention, based on tradition. Not everyone will accept this answer (I don't), but this isn't necessary for seeing the brilliance of this work.

A new look at the problem of induction
This book is clearly written and undeniably rigorous. In his first chapters, Goodman examines problems in counterfactual conditionals and sets up the problem of what he calls 'projectibility'. But, it is the chapter entitled "The New Riddle of Induction" where the book takes off. In this chapter, Goodman takes the reader through, first, the common misconceptions of the problem of induction. The way that Goodman perceives our inductive system is unique and refreshingly simplistic. (John Rawls later names Goodman's picture 'reflective equilibrium'.) Next, Goodman takes you through a journey of rule-finding for our inductive system; which includes examining Hempel's famous Raven's Paradox. Goodman ends the journey with discovering his own paradox, which he calls his 'Grue' argument. He demonstrates that predicates like 'grue' are the lingering problem with constructing a valid inductive system. In his last chapter, Goodman attempts to resolve the grue dilemma. It is in this chapter that we see the full philosophic mind of Goodman. The depth and relentless thought that Goodman puts into this chapter will forever 'entrench' his name in the philosophic discipline.