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Nelson Goodman's New Riddle Of Induction

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Throughout this paper, I will simplify and explain Nelson Goodman’s take with the problem of induction. Nevertheless, a concept known as PUN, if proven true, has been asserted by many philosophers to be the answer to such problem. However, this is where I will introduce and clarify upon Goodman’s New Riddle of Induction and its claim that PUN by itself is not enough to act as a solution for this case. For starters, the problem is not that we know for sure that something is going to happen, that is the case for deductive arguments. Instead, the problem in simple terms is that it is not justifiable like that of deductive arguments. What I mean by this is, in deduction, if the premises are true , the conclusion is also true, yet the same cannot …show more content…

Nevertheless, in order for Goodman to refute PUN, he focuses on a thought experiment that puts green up against a new predicate known as grue. Now one must think as grue as a combination between green and blue, but basically an object is grue if it is first observed before the year 2050, and green, or if it is not observed before 2050, and blue. However, this is where it gets tricky when applying PUN because if I say all observed emeralds are green, then according to PUN all unobserved emeralds will also be green. Yet if I say all observed emeralds are grue, then the conclusion that all unobserved emeralds are grue is also true. Remember though that a grue object is only green if observed before 2050, otherwise its blue. Therefore, with grue, the past does not always replicate the future, yet PUN says both cases do work. Essentially, because of this, PUN cannot distinguish between good and bad inductive arguments. Because of PUN’s vacuous nature, a whole world of either good predicates and bad predicates are equally justified, which should not be the case since it only results in the contradiction of one another. All things considered, Goodman believes in order to justify induction, there needs to be some sort of method that will be able to tell why green is a good predicate, or a projectible, and why grue is a bad predicate or a

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