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Fact, Fiction, and Forecast, Fourth Edition

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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.

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.

This book fails to meet the requirement for the semantic agreement. Goodman talks about the "verification theory of meaning" and then proceeds to use words in ways which are contradictory to their definition. There is a good deal of manipulation used by the author, which leaves the reader wondering about the basis for this book's publication. There may be a method of philosophy which relies of fictive circumstances but this does not determine any progressive routes. I was disappointed in this book being assigned at the college level. The problem of "grue" is merely a question of stasis and is no more than a phonetic invention which aims at a temporal control via mutable definition. Skip in favor of more effective works.