Online research in philosophy

Goodman and Elgin want truth to be demoted and rightness to be promoted. In the first part of this paper the main reasons they offer for this reorientation are discussed. Goodman once suggestedthat one construe truth as acceptability that is not subsequently lost, but later he quietly dropped this proposal. In the second part of this paper it is argued that ultimate acceptability is indeed neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for truth.

In Between the Absolute and the Arbitrary, Catherine Z. Elgin maps a constructivist alternative to the standard Anglo-American conception of philosophy's ...

v. 1. Nominalism, constructivism, and relativism in the work of Nelson Goodman -- v. 2. Nelson Goodman's new riddle of induction -- v. 3. Nelson Goodman's philosophy of art -- v. 4. Nelson Goodman's theory of symbols and its applications.

Nelson Goodman and, following him, Catherine Z. Elgin and Keith Lehrer have claimed that sometimes a sample is a symbol that stands for the property it is a sample of. The relation between the sample and the property it stands for is called 'exemplification' (Goodman, Elgin) or 'exemplarisation' (Lehrer). Goodman and Lehrer argue that the notion of exemplification sheds light on central problems in aesthetics and the philosophy of mind. However, while there seems to be a phenomenon to be captured, Goodman's account of exemplification has several flaws. In this paper I will offer an alternative account of exemplification that is inspired by Grice's idea that one can communicate something by providing one's audience with intention-independent evidence and letting them draw the obvious conclusion for themselves. This explication of exemplification will solve the problems that arose for Goodman's theory in the spirit of his approach.1.