Nelson Goodman (7 August 1906, Somerville, Maryland – 25 November 1998) was an American philosopher, known for his work on counterfactuals, mereology, the problem of induction, and aesthetics. August 7 is the 219th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (220th in leap years), with 146 days remaining. ... 1906 (MCMVI) was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... November 25 is the 329th (in leap years the 330th) day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ... A philosopher is a person who thinks deeply regarding people, society, the world, and/or the universe. ... A counterfactual conditional (sometimes called a subjunctive conditional) is a logical conditional statement whose antecedent is (ordinarily) taken to be contrary to fact by those who utter it. ... Mereology is a collection of axiomatic formal systems dealing with parts and their respective wholes. ... The problem of induction is the philosophical issue involved in deciding the place of induction in determining empirical truth. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

Career

Goodman graduated from Harvard University in 1928. During the 1930s, he ran an art gallery in Boston, Massachusetts while studying for a Harvard Ph.D. in philosophy, which he completed in 1941. His experience as an art dealer helps explain his later turn towards aesthetics, where he became better known than in logic and analytic philosophy. During World War II, he served in the US Army. Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League. ... Nickname: City on a Hill, Beantown, The Hub (of the Solar System), Athens of America Motto: Official website: www. ... Logic, from Classical Greek λόγος (logos), originally meaning the word, or what is spoken, (but coming to mean thought or reason) is most often said to be the study of criteria for the evaluation of arguments, although the exact definition of logic is a matter of controversy among philosophers. ... Analytic philosophy is the dominant philosophical movement in University philosophy departments in English-speaking countries, although one of its founders, Gottlob Frege, was German, and many of its leading proponents, such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rudolf Carnap, Kurt Gödel and Karl Popper, were Austrian. ... Combatants Allies: • Poland, • UK & Commonwealth, • France/Free France, • Soviet Union, • USA, • China, ...and others• Axis: • Germany, • Italy, • Japan, • ...and others Casualties Military dead: 17 million Civilian dead: 33 million Total: 50 million Full list Military dead: 8 million Civilian dead: 4 million Total: 12 million Full list World War II... The Army is the branch of the United States armed forces that has primary responsibility for land-based military operations. ...

He taught at the University of Pennsylvania, 1946-64, where his students included Noam Chomsky and Hilary Putnam. He left Penn because he was not granted the control he desired over the philosophy department. He was a research fellow at the Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies from 1962 to 1963 and was a Professor at several universities from 1964 to 1967, before being appointed Professor of Philosophy at Harvard in 1968. The University of Pennsylvania (Penn is the moniker used by the university itself; UPenn is also in common usage) is a private, nonsectarian research university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. ... Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is the Institute Professor Emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ... Hilary Whitehall Putnam (born July 31, 1926) is a key figure in the philosophy of mind during the 20th century. ...

Induction and "grue"

In his book Fact, Fiction, and Forecast, Goodman introduced the "new riddle of induction", so-called by analogy with Hume's classical problem of induction. He accepted Hume's observation that inductive reasoning (i.e. inferring from past experience about events in the future) was based solely on human habit and regularities to which our day to day existence has accustomed us. Goodman argued, however, that Hume overlooked the fact that some regularities establish habits (a given piece of copper conducting electricity increases the credibility of statements asserting that other pieces of copper conduct electricity) while some do not (the fact that a given man in a room is a third son does not increase the credibility of statements asserting that other men in this room are third sons). How then can we differentiate between regularities or hypotheses which construe lawlike statements from those which are contingent or based upon accidental generality? David Hume (April 26, 1711 – August 25, 1776)[1] was a Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian who was one of the most important figures of the Scottish Enlightenment. ... The problem of induction is the philosophical issue involved in deciding the place of induction in determining empirical truth. ... The term induction has more than one meaning in the English language. ... A hypothesis (= assumption in ancient Greek) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. ... Modal logic, or (less commonly) intensional logic is the branch of logic that deals with sentences that are qualified by modalities such as can, could, might, may, must, possibly, and necessarily, and others. ...

Hempel's confirmation theory argued that the solution is to differentiate between hypotheses, which apply to all things of a certain class, and evidence statements, which apply to only one thing. Goodman's famous counterargument was to introduce the color grue, which applies to all things examined before a certain time t just in case they are green, but also to other things just in case they are blue and not examined before time t. If we examine emeralds before time t and find that emerald a is green, emerald b is green, and so forth, each will confirm the hypothesis that all emeralds are green. However, emeralds a, b, c,..etc. also confirm the hypothesis that all emeralds are grue. In this case emeralds a,b,c, examined after time t should be grue, and therefore blue! Carl Gustav Hempel (* January 8th, 1905 in Oranienburg, Germany † November 9th, 1997 in Princeton, New Jersey) was a philosopher of science and a student of logical positivism. ... Grue is an artificial adjective, coined from green and blue by philosopher Nelson Goodman in one of the seminal works in the philosophy of science, Fact, Fiction, and Forecast. ... Grue is an artificial adjective, coined from green and blue by philosopher Nelson Goodman in one of the seminal works in the philosophy of science, Fact, Fiction, and Forecast. ...

Goodman's example showed that the difficulty in determining what constitutes lawlike hypotheses is far greater than previously thought, and that once again we find ourselves facing the initial dilemma that "anything can confirm anything". Look up Dilemma in Wiktionary, the free dictionary For the Nelly song, see Dilemma (song). ...

Nominalism and mereology

Goodman, along with Stanislaw Lesniewski, is the founder of the contemporary variant of nominalism, which argues that philosophy, logic, and mathematics should dispense with set theory. Goodman's nominalism was driven purely by ontological considerations. After a long and difficult 1947 paper coauthored with Quine, Goodman ceased trouble himself with finding a way to reconstruct mathematics while dispensing with set theory. Quine soon came to believe that such a reconstruction was impossible, but Goodman's Penn colleague Richard Milton Martin argued otherwise, writing a number of papers suggesting ways forward. Stanisław Leśniewski (March 30, 1886–May 13, 1939) was a Polish mathematician, philosopher and logician. ... Nominalism is the position in metaphysics that there exist no universals outside of the mind. ... Set theory is the mathematical theory of sets, which represent collections of abstract objects. ... Ontology (from the [Greek on, ontos being, existence + logia <logos word, study]) is the philosophical science of reality. ... Richard Milton Martin (1916-11. ...

The Goodman-Leonard (1940) calculus of individuals is the starting point for the American variant of mereology. While the exposition in Goodman and Leonard invoked a bit of naive set theory, the variant of the calculus of individuals that grounds Goodman's 1951 The Structure of Appearance, a revision and extension of his Ph.D. thesis, makes no mention of the notion of set. Simons (1987) and Casati and Varzi (1999) show that the calculus of individuals can be grounded in either in a bit of set theory, or in monadic predicates, schematically employed. Mereology is indeed "ontologically neutral." Mereology is a collection of axiomatic formal systems dealing with parts and their respective wholes. ...

Irrealism

Goodman coined the term Irrealism in "Of Mind and Other Matters". Irrealism is a philosophical term which seems to have been coined in the 1980s by Nelson Goodman to refer to the belief that the debate between realism and anti-realism was based on poor assumptions. ...

Clarence Irving Lewis (April 12, 1883 _ February 3, 1964) was a pragmatist philosopher. ... Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is the Institute Professor Emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ... Hilary Whitehall Putnam (born July 31, 1926) is a key figure in the philosophy of mind during the 20th century. ...

Bibliography

Click here for information about translations of Goodman's books.

• "The Calculus of Individuals and Its Uses" (with Henry S. Leonard), Journal of Symbolic Logic 5 (1940): 45-55.
• A Study of Qualities. Diss. Harvard U., 1941. Reprinted 1990, by Garland (New York), as part of its Harvard dissertations in Philosophy Series.
• The Structure of Appearance. Harvard UP, 1951. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966. 3rd ed. Boston: Reidel, 1977.
• Fact, Fiction, and Forecast. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1955. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965. 3rd. ed. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973. 4th ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1983.
• Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976. Based on his 1960-61 John Locke lectures.
• Problems and Projects. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972. Currently available from Hackett.
• Basic Abilities Required for Understanding and Creation in the Arts: Final Report (with David Perkins, Howard Gardner, and the assistance of Jeanne Bamberger et al.) Cambridge: Harvard University, Graduate School of Education: Project No. 9-0283, Grant No. OEG-0-9-310283-3721 (010), 1972.
• Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978. Paperback: Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985.
• Of Mind and Other Matters. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1984.
• Reconceptions in Philosophy and other Arts and Sciences (with Catherine Z. Elgin). Indianapolis: Hackett; London: Routledge, 1988. Paperback Edition, London: Routledge, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1990.

The John Locke lectures are a series of annual lectures in philosophy given at the University of Oxford. ...

External links

• Bibliography of the complete primary and selected secondary literatures, by John Lee.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Goodman's aesthetics by Alessandro Giovannelli.