Henry Nelson Goodman (7 August 1906 – 25 November 1998) was an American
philosopher, known for his work on
counterfactuals
Counterfactual conditionals (also ''subjunctive'' or ''X-marked'') are conditional sentences which discuss what would have been true under different circumstances, e.g. "If Peter believed in ghosts, he would be afraid to be here." Counterfactual ...
,
mereology, the
problem of induction
First formulated by David Hume, the problem of induction questions our reasons for believing that the future will resemble the past, or more broadly it questions predictions about unobserved things based on previous observations. This inferen ...
,
irrealism, and
aesthetics
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed thr ...
.
Life and career
Goodman was born in
Somerville,
Massachusetts, the son of Sarah Elizabeth (née Woodbury) and Henry Lewis Goodman. He was of
Jewish origins. He graduated from
Harvard University,
AB, ''
magna cum laude
Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...
'' (1928). During the 1930s, he ran an
art gallery
An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The lon ...
in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- most p ...
, Massachusetts, while studying for a Harvard
PhD in
philosophy, which he completed in 1941.
His experience as an
art dealer
An art dealer is a person or company that buys and sells works of art, or acts as the intermediary between the buyers and sellers of art.
An art dealer in contemporary art typically seeks out various artists to represent, and builds relationshi ...
helps explain his later turn towards
aesthetics
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed thr ...
, where he became better known than in
logic and
analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United Sta ...
. During
World War II, he served as a
psychologist in the
US Army.
He taught at the
University of Pennsylvania, 1946–1964, where his students included
Noam Chomsky,
Sydney Morgenbesser,
Stephen Stich, and
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Whitehall Putnam (; July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, and a major figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He made significant contributions ...
. 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.
In 1967, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, he was the founding director of Harvard Project Zero, a basic research project in artistic cognition and artistic education. He remained the director for four years and served as an informal adviser for many years thereafter.
Goodman died in
Needham, Massachusetts.
Philosophical work
Induction and "grue"
In his book ''
Fact, Fiction, and Forecast'', Goodman introduced the "
new riddle of induction
The new riddle of induction was presented by Nelson Goodman in '' Fact, Fiction, and Forecast'' as a successor to Hume's original problem. It presents the logical predicates grue and bleen which are unusual due to their time-dependence. Many hav ...
", so-called by analogy with
Hume's classical
problem of induction
First formulated by David Hume, the problem of induction questions our reasons for believing that the future will resemble the past, or more broadly it questions predictions about unobserved things based on previous observations. This inferen ...
. 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).
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 predicate
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. Thus, before time ''t'', the apparently law-like statements "All emeralds are green" and "All emeralds are grue" are equally well confirmed by observation, but obviously "All emeralds are grue" is not a law-like statement.
Goodman's example showed that the difficulty in determining what constitutes law-like statements is far greater than previously thought, and that once again we find ourselves facing the initial
dilemma that "anything can confirm anything".
Nominalism and mereology
Goodman, along with
Stanislaw Lesniewski Stanislav and variants may refer to:
People
*Stanislav (given name), a Slavic given name with many spelling variations (Stanislaus, Stanislas, Stanisław, etc.)
Places
* Stanislav, a coastal village in Kherson, Ukraine
* Stanislaus County, Cal ...
, is the founder of the contemporary variant of
nominalism
In metaphysics, nominalism is the view that universals and abstract objects do not actually exist other than being merely names or labels. There are at least two main versions of nominalism. One version denies the existence of universalsthings ...
, 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
W. V. O. Quine W. may refer to:
* SoHo (Australian TV channel) (previously W.), an Australian pay television channel
* ''W.'' (film), a 2008 American biographical drama film based on the life of George W. Bush
* "W.", the fifth track from Codeine's 1992 EP ''Bar ...
, Goodman ceased to trouble himself with finding a way to reconstruct mathematics while dispensing with
set theory – discredited as sole
foundations of mathematics
Foundations of mathematics is the study of the philosophical and logical and/or algorithmic basis of mathematics, or, in a broader sense, the mathematical investigation of what underlies the philosophical theories concerning the nature of mathe ...
as of 1913 (
Russell
Russell may refer to:
People
* Russell (given name)
* Russell (surname)
* Lady Russell (disambiguation)
* Lord Russell (disambiguation)
Places Australia
* Russell, Australian Capital Territory
* Russell Island, Queensland (disambiguation)
...
and
Whitehead, in ''
Principia Mathematica
The ''Principia Mathematica'' (often abbreviated ''PM'') is a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics written by mathematician–philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910, 1912, and 1913. ...
'').
The program of
David Hilbert to reconstruct it from logical axioms was proven futile in 1931 by
Gödel. Because of this and other failures of seemingly fruitful lines of research, 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.
According to
Thomas Tymoczko
A. Thomas Tymoczko (September 1, 1943August 8, 1996) was a philosopher specializing in logic and the philosophy of mathematics. He taught at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts from 1971 until his death from stomach cancer in 1996, aged 52. ...
's ''afterword'' in ''New directions in the philosophy of mathematics'', Quine had "urged that we abandon ad hoc devices distinguishing mathematics from science and just accept the resulting assimilation", putting the "key burden on the theories (networks of sentences) that we accept, not on the individual sentences whose significance can change dramatically depending on their theoretical context." In so doing, Tymoczko claimed,
philosophy of mathematics
The philosophy of mathematics is the branch of philosophy that studies the assumptions, foundations, and implications of mathematics. It aims to understand the nature and methods of mathematics, and find out the place of mathematics in people ...
and
philosophy of science were merged into
quasi-empiricism: the emphasis of
mathematical practice as effectively part of the
scientific method, an emphasis on method over result.
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 PhD thesis, makes no mention of the notion of set (while his PhD thesis still did). Simons (1987) and Casati and
Varzi
Varzi is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Pavia in the Italy, Italian region Lombardy, located about 70 km south of Milan and about 40 km south of Pavia.
Varzi borders the following municipalities: Bagnaria, Fabbrica Curon ...
(1999) show that the calculus of individuals can be grounded in either a bit of set theory, or monadic predicates, schematically employed. Mereology is accordingly "ontologically neutral" and retains some of Quine's pragmatism (which Tymoczko in 1998 carefully qualified as
American Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that considers words and thought as tools and instruments for prediction, problem solving, and action (philosophy), action, and rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, ...
).
Select bibliography
*"The Calculus of Individuals and Its Uses" (with Henry S. Leonard), ''
Journal of Symbolic Logic 5'' (1940): 45–55.
*''A Study of Qualities'' (
doctoral thesis). Diss. Harvard U., 1941. Reprinted 1990, by Garland (New York), as part of its Harvard dissertations in Philosophy Series.
A Query on Confirmation, ''
The Journal of Philosophy'' (1946): Vol.43, No.14, pp. 383–385.
"Steps Toward a Constructive Nominalism" co-authored with
W. V. O. Quine W. may refer to:
* SoHo (Australian TV channel) (previously W.), an Australian pay television channel
* ''W.'' (film), a 2008 American biographical drama film based on the life of George W. Bush
* "W.", the fifth track from Codeine's 1992 EP ''Bar ...
, ''Journal of Symbolic Logic'', 12 (1947): 105–122, Reprinted in Nelson Goodman, ''Problems and Projects'' (Bobbs-Merrill, 1972): 173–198.
*''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. .
*''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
*''Of Mind and Other Matters''. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1984.
*''Reconceptions in Philosophy and other Arts and Sciences'' (with
Catherine Elgin
Catherine Z. Elgin (born 1948) is a philosopher working in epistemology and the philosophies of art and science. She holds a Ph.D. from Brandeis University where she studied with Nelson Goodman and is currently a professor of philosophy of educati ...
). Indianapolis: Hackett; London: Routledge, 1988. Paperback Edition, London: Routledge, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1990.
Source: ''Complete International Bibliography''
See also
*
American philosophy
American philosophy is the activity, corpus, and tradition of philosophers affiliated with the United States. The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' notes that while it lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can nevert ...
*
List of American philosophers
Notes
References
* Casati, R., and Varzi, A., 1999. ''Parts and Places: the structures of spatial representation''. MIT Press.
* Cohnitz, Daniel, and Rossberg, Marcus, 2003. ''Nelson Goodman''. Chesham: Acumen & Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
* Gardner, H., and Perkins, D. "The Mark of Zero: Project Zero’s Identity Revealed." HGSE Alumni Bulletin, December 1994 39(1), 2–6.
* Shottenkirk, Dena, 2009. ''Nominalism and Its Aftermath: The Philosophy of Nelson Goodman''. Synthese Library, Vol. 343. Springer, .
* Simons, Peter, 1987. ''Parts: A Study in Ontology''. Oxford Univ. Press.
External links
Bibliographyof the complete primary and selected secondary literatures, by John Lee.
by
Catherine Elgin
Catherine Z. Elgin (born 1948) is a philosopher working in epistemology and the philosophies of art and science. She holds a Ph.D. from Brandeis University where she studied with Nelson Goodman and is currently a professor of philosophy of educati ...
.
*
*
*
The Unity of Goodman's Thought' by D Cohnitz, 2009.
Nelson Goodman Rememberedby
Curtis Carter, 1999
Nelson Goodman Interview (1989) - Induction, Worldmaking, & Symbolson
YouTube.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Goodman, Nelson
1906 births
1998 deaths
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