Ways of pastmaking

History of the Human Sciences 15 (4):125-143 (2002)
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Abstract

Riddles of induction – old or new, Hume’s or Goodman’s – pose unanswered challenges to assumptions that experiences logically legitimate expectations or classifications. The challenges apply both to folk beliefs and to scientific ones. In particular, Goodman’s ‘new riddle’ famously confounds efforts to specify how additional experiences confirm the rightness of currently preferred ways of organizing objects, i.e. our favored theories of what kinds there are.1 His riddle serves to emphasize that neither logic nor experience certifies accepted groupings of objects into kinds.2 Hacking strongly endorses Goodman’s riddle and its chief consequences – nature does not dictate any organizing scheme to us, and different schemes need have no connection to one another.

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Paul A. Roth
University of California, Santa Cruz

Citations of this work

Essentially narrative explanations.Paul A. Roth - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 62 (C):42-50.
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Within a single lifetime: Recent writings on autism.Gregory Hollin - 2020 - History of the Human Sciences 33 (5):167-178.

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References found in this work

Fact, Fiction, and Forecast.Nelson Goodman - 1965 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
The social construction of what?Ian Hacking - 1999 - Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Ways of worldmaking.Nelson Goodman - 1978 - Hassocks [Eng.]: Harvester Press.
Representing and Intervening.Ian Hacking - 1983 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 35 (4):381-390.

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