Nelson Goodman

Nelson Goodman

Henry Nelson Goodman (7 August 1906, Somerville, Massachusetts – 25 November 1998, Needham, Massachusetts) was an American philosopher, known for his work on counterfactuals, mereology, the problem of induction, irrealism and aesthetics.

Read more about Nelson Goodman:  Career, Induction and "grue", Nominalism and Mereology, Bibliography

Famous quotes by nelson goodman:

    You may decry some of these scruples and protest that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy. I am concerned, rather, that there should not be more things dreamt of in my philosophy than there are in heaven or earth.
    Nelson Goodman (b. 1906)

    The problem of induction is not a problem of demonstration but a problem of defining the difference between valid and invalid
    predictions.
    Nelson Goodman (1906)

    Any effort in philosophy to make the obscure obvious is likely to be unappealing, for the penalty of failure is confusion while the reward of success is banality. An answer, once found, is dull; and the only remaining interest lies in a further effort to render equally dull what is still obscure enough to be intriguing.
    Nelson Goodman (b. 1906)

    In the case of our main stock of well-worn predicates, I submit that the judgment of projectibility has derived from the habitual projection, rather than the habitual projection from the judgment of projectibility. The reason why only the right predicates happen so luckily to have become well entrenched is just that the well entrenched predicates have thereby become the right ones.
    Nelson Goodman (b. 1906)