Comparing Hume And Goodman's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
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1. Introduction
In his “New Riddle of Induction”, Goodman provides further analysis of Hume’s claims in his “Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding”, by claiming that Hume’s problem with induction is a problem with the validity of predictions that humans make. In this paper, I will first begin by defining what both Hume and Goodman’s arguments are, as Goodman derives his conclusions from the premises that Hume puts forward. Then I will explain why Goodman’s claims, and “grue” example, are illegitimate about the source of our beliefs of the unobserved because his categorization of generalizations fail to address the way that humans evolve their knowledge with new conceptions that they discover.
2. Hume and Goodman’s Problems with Induction…show more content… He asks us to consider the evidence that all emeralds in the world examined thus far have been green. In accordance with our inductive way of thinking, this leads us to conclude that all future emeralds will be green. However, whether the validity of this prediction is lawlike and subscribing to a general rule of nature is dependent on predicates that are used. Goodman provides a counter example that under the assumption that t has yet to pass, it is equally true that every emerald that has been observed is blue, which he coins as the concept of grue. Therefore, if the emerald was green before time t then we would call it grue, and if the emerald was blue after time t then it would also be grue. Under this assumption, all the emeralds we have observed have been both green and grue, which supports the hypothesis that all emeralds are green and all emeralds are grue; therefore we will make the prediction at time t-1, that the next emerald we will see will be green but also we could make the prediction that the next emerald will be grue. Both inductions are logically backed up and follow a law-like premise but the two concepts cannot exist together. The converse would be true if the emerald was blue before time t, and green after t, resulting in bleen. The new problem of induction becomes one of distinguishing projectable predicates such as "green" and "blue" from non-projectable predicates such as grue and bleen. In so far as it is possible to derive law-like generalizations from either predicates that are “non-existent”, there exists a problem in how we form these