What is Goodmans New Riddle of Induction?

Question

No capisco.

Answer 1

Look... induction really only has one problem. And that problem is that it doesn't logically work.

Induction is the process of drawing conclusions about overall trends based on a limited sample size. Picturing the large from the small. For example, every day the sun rises, thus inductive reasoning tells you that they sun ALWAYS rises every day, even though you don't have the evidence of all future days to prove it.

Now that SEEMS reasonable, but consider another case. You flip a coin a thousand times, and every time it comes up heads. Inductive reasoning would suggest that this coin therefore ALWAYS comes up heads. But we know that the above case is a statistically possible one and the chance of heads on the next flip is still 50%, not 100%.

Goodman's 'new' riddle is just another version of this. Basically asking how you are SURE something will be green tomorrow if it was green today. He suggests that maybe there's some other, unknown color called 'grue', and that at midnight all the grue objects will change and NOT be green tomorrow. How do you KNOW this won't happen?

The answer is that you don't. There's no way you can be SURE of the future, no matter how much induction you do. And people who really like inductive reasoning don't like that answer. The whole question doesn't get too much respect these days, however (I guess we're not so stuck on trying to reason everything out).

Hope that helps!

Answer 2

Nelson Goodman seems quite keen
Induction yet to show anew
Is somewhat sick as will be seen
And may not be completely true.

Is this leaf a lovely green?
Or is it rather colored grue?
Is the sky above quite bleen?
Or am I right in seeing blue?

I really don't care to be mean
And have no wish to Goodman skew;
But childish puzzles can demean;
Has he nothing else to do??

Answer 3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grue_%28color%29

Answer 4

You can find this out easily online. It involves "grue".

Answer 5

ibed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_(philosophy)