Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Bert Leuridan, Laurence Bonjour and Nelson Goodman

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4 ideas

14. Science / C. Induction / 2. Aims of Induction
Induction must go beyond the evidence, in order to explain why the evidence occurred [Bonjour]
     Full Idea: Inductive explanations must be conceived of as something stronger than mere Humean constant conjunction; …anything less than this will not explain why the inductive evidence occurred in the first place.
     From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §7.7)
14. Science / C. Induction / 5. Paradoxes of Induction / a. Grue problem
Goodman argued that the confirmation relation can never be formalised [Goodman, by Horsten/Pettigrew]
     Full Idea: Goodman constructed arguments that purported to show that a satisfactory syntactic analysis of the confirmation relation can never be found. In response, philosophers of science tried to model it in probabilistic terms.
     From: report of Nelson Goodman (Fact, Fiction and Forecast (4th ed) [1954]) by Horsten,L/Pettigrew,R - Mathematical Methods in Philosophy 4
     A reaction: I take this idea to say that Bayesianism was developed in response to the grue problem. This is an interesting light on 'grue', which never bothered me much. The point is it scuppered formal attempts to model induction.
Goodman showed that every sound inductive argument has an unsound one of the same form [Goodman, by Putnam]
     Full Idea: Goodman has shown that no purely formal criterion can distinguish arguments that are intuitively sound inductive arguments for unsound ones: for every sound one there is an unsound one of the same form. The predicates in the argument make the difference.
     From: report of Nelson Goodman (Fact, Fiction and Forecast (4th ed) [1954]) by Hilary Putnam - Why there isn't a ready-made world 'Causation'
     A reaction: This is to swallow grue whole. I think a bit more chewing is called for. By this date Putnam strikes me as a crazy relativist who has lost his grip on the world. Note the word 'formal' - but Putnam seems to think the argument is important.
Grue and green won't be in the same world, as that would block induction entirely [Goodman]
     Full Idea: Grue cannot be a relevant kind for induction in the same world as green, for that would preclude some of the decisions, right or wrong, that constitute inductive inference.
     From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.4b)
     A reaction: This may make 'grue' less mad than I thought it was. I always assume we are slicing the world as 'green, blue and grue'. I still say 'green' is a basic predicate of experience, but 'grue' is amenable to analysis.