Goodman’s “Grue” Argument in Historical Perspective
نویسنده
چکیده
I will focus on arguments against classical deductive and inductive logic (“relevantist” and “grue” arguments). The talk is mainly defensive. I won’t offer positive accounts of the “paradoxical” cases I will discuss (but, see “Extras”). I’ll begin with Harman’s defense of classical deductive logic against certain (epistemological) “relevantist” arguments. Then, I’ll argue that if you like Harman’s defensive move in the deductive case, you should like a similar defense of inductive logic (from Goodman’s “grue”) even more. I will indicate how a “Harmanian maneuver” might be used to defend either Hempelian or Carnapian inductive logic. I will focus mainly on defending Carnapian IL from “grue”.
منابع مشابه
How the Formal Equivalence of Grue and Green Defeats What is New in the New Riddle of Induction
That past patterns may continue in many different ways has long been identified as a problem for accounts of induction. The novelty of Goodman’s ‘‘new riddle of induction’’ lies in a meta-argument that purports to show that no account of induction can discriminate between incompatible continuations. That metaargument depends on the perfect symmetry of the definitions of grue/bleen and green/blu...
متن کاملGreen is Simpler than Grue ∗
Goodman’s grue-bleen paradox relies on the claim that the predicate “green” is not simpler than the predicate “grue”, and that, for that reason, the choice between them is arbitrary. It is argued that this claim can only be made in a restricted model, in which functions have primitive names but particular values do not. In more natural models, which allow values to have proper names as well, th...
متن کاملGoodman's "New Riddle"
First, a brief historical trace of the developments in confirmation theory leading up to Goodman’s infamous “grue” paradox is presented. Then, Goodman’s argument is analyzed from both Hempelian and Bayesian perspectives. A guiding analogy is drawn between certain arguments against classical deductive logic, and Goodman’s “grue” argument against classical inductive logic. The upshot of this anal...
متن کاملResolving Goodman’s Paradox How to Defuse Inductive Skepticism
Subjective Bayesian inference is unsuitable as an ideal for learning strategies to approximate, as the arbitrariness in prior probabilities makes claims to Bayesian learning too easily vulnerable to inductive skepticism. An objective Bayesian approach, which determines priors by maximizing information entropy, runs into insurmountable difficulties in conditions where no definite background theo...
متن کاملSymmetry and Evidential Support
This article proves that formal theories of evidential favoring must fail because they are inevitably language dependent. I begin by describing Carnap’s early confirmation theories to show how language dependence problems (like Goodman’s grue problem) arise. I then generalize to show that any formal favoring theory satisfying minimal plausible conditions will yield different judgments about the...
متن کامل