Philosopher of science and logician Nelson Goodman, famous for posing the so-called “new riddle of induction,” died on this day, 1998
The “old riddle of induction,” in this connection, refers to David Hume’s original proposition that “necessary” or causal connections between phenomena are unknown to us. As an Empiricist, Hume held that all knowledge is derived through sense contact and because causality per se cannot become an object of sense, ergo it cannot become an object of knowledge.
The “new riddle of induction,” introduced by Nelson Goodman in 1954, built off of Hume’s original position but changed the question from one of making predictions alone to one of understanding the criteria of evidence to support those eventual predications.
To convey the problem, Goodman coined a new predicate, "grue,” which before arbitrary time (t) refers to green objects but after refers to blue ones. In other words, a grue object will become blue after t whereas a green one will preserve its color. Induction is not a perfect science but a probabilistic one, and probabilities are established on the basis of observations and evidence. We would ordinarily predict that future emeralds (ie emeralds observed after t) will be green, but by the same logic, we could also predict they will be grue (and hence blue). Given the observation of a green emerald, should it be taken as evidence in support of a prediction that future emeralds will be green or grue?
Goodman’s solution is classically Humean, and hinges on the term “entrenchment,” which is nothing other than his technical term for the pragmatic and habitual use of language: just as we form habits of confidence in our expectation of future events based on patterns of regulatory observed in prior ones, so we also form habits of confidence in the function of predicates (ie words or terms) based on their reliability in the past. “Green” is entrenched for us and hence reliable whereas “grue” is not. Thus, despite that by inductive logic, an observation of a green emerald before t could constitute evidence for it greenness and its grueness after t, we ordinarily only expect the first thing and not the second one.
This is the problem with Empiricists: they never account for the fact that the mind is active already as a transcendental condition for the most rudimentary acts of perception. The fact is, we don’t know whether something is green or grue based on a discrete observation before t, but we do know that eventually it will manifest its nature to us with patience and that ultimately it will be neither green nor grue because no object is eternal and no object will endure the fires of Judgment Day. But who cares whether something is green or grue, given that the latter is just a made up predicate?
To illustrate the issue in concrete terms, consider, for example, the question of extrapolating the growth of organisms. A prediction on the basis of evidence gathered from juveniles of a species would lead to the expectation of tree frogs the size of Manhattan in the not-so distant future. Should we say, as with green and grue, that logically, it is the same? No, because we did not really perceive the phenomenon in question if we regarded it as a mechanical and linear increase in volume because that’s not what growth is. Growth is the manifestation, in space, of a structure or pattern in time. The significance of the new riddle of induction hinges on an understanding of the essential nature of our perceptual acts. If the Empiricist’s conceit is abandoned, the the problem of induction is returned to the domain of perception and attentive observation, which is by no means exclusive of intelligence but rather entails it as its very principle. Theoria is something very different than theorizing.
Goethe illustrates the difference in a short essay called “Significant Help Given by an Ingenious Turn of Phrase,” written in 1823:
In his Anthropology, Dr. Heinroth … speaks favorably of my work; in fact, he calls my approach unique and says that my thinking works objectively. Here he means that my thinking does not separate itself from objects; that the elements of the objects, the perceptions of the objects, flow into my thinking and are fully permeated by it; that my perception itself is a thinking, and my thinking a perception….
“He brought us from non-being into being; He dignified us with reason; He provided us with crafts to help sustain our lives; He causes food to spring up from the earth; He has given us cattle to serve us. For our sake there is rain, for our sake there is the sun; the hills and plains have been adorned for our benefit, affording us refuge from the peaks of the mountains. For our sake rivers flow; for our sake fountains gush forth; the sea is made calm for our trading; riches come from mines and delights from everywhere, and the whole of creation is offered as a gift to us, on account of the rich and abundant Grace of our Benefactor towards us.
But why speak of minor gifts? For our sake God lived among men; for the sake of our corrupt flesh, the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. To the thankless He was their Benefactor; to those sitting in darkness, the Sun of Righteousness; upon the Cross He was the Impassible One; in death, the Life; in Hades, the Light; the Resurrection for the fallen; the spirit of adoption into sonship, bestowals of spiritual gifts, and promises of crowns.
In addition to such great and splendid benefits, or rather, benefits par excellence, the benefits that He promises us in the future life are many times greater: the delight of Paradise, glory in the Kingdom of Heaven, honors equal to those of the Angels, and the vision of God, which, for those counted worthy of it, is the highest of all goods; every rational nature desires this, and may we also attain to it, after we have cleansed ourselves of carnal passions.”
—St Basil the Great
I would pose this as a brief remark to Nelson Goodman's "new riddle of Induction", which goes back to David Hume, and wherein we find that Immanuel Kant, who proposed that the so-called, "Ding an sich"
(Thing in itself) exists, but is not knowable to sense perception. Hume is known to have jumped all over this idea, and saying words that equivocate to this postulate: "If Kant's 'Ding an sich' is not knowable in itself, then let's not give it any more consideration. Let's favor the perceptions of the sense, and its attending logic. Thus, Logical Empiricism gained the major stepping stone it needed to align Kant with Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Yet, beginning in the last third of the 18th century, a movement of thinking arose in Germany that felt compelled to seek a more Realistic underlying compulsion to Kant's seeming "unknowable". This movement had its whole basis in the stimulus of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle of the Greek epoch. Thus, German Idealism, as we know it, arose as a recapitulation of the Greek epoch in which Deductive reasoning first came forth as a process of subtracting, out of "Nothing," the Elements that would bring forth a world of "Something", in which Induction could begins. As such, Goethe himself was a stabilizing influence for many years in establishing his "Primal Phenomenon" as the underlying causal connection that actually went back to Aristotle. This is what formed Rudolf Steiner's own catalyst for logical understanding, thanks to Karl Julius Schroer in the 1880's. We know that in the year 1900, Steiner blew the lid off of German Idealism with his own formulation from 1893, "The Philosophy of Freedom". By his own admission in his autobiography, when he was a boy living in Neudorfl, Hungary, he would go to a Realschule from 1872 to 1879. He had to cross the Leitha River every day in order to attend an Aristotelian style school near the Burgenland. There is an old story about this, in fact, it is the oldest epic known to humanity; the Epic of Gilgamesh, which involved two persons finding their way to this Burgenland. Steiner told this story for some reason; maybe, even, a very important reason.