Fact, Fiction, and Forecast

Fülszöveg

Fouiîh Edition
FACT, FICTION, AND FORECAST
NELSON GOODAAAN New foreword by Hilary Puînam
"Quite possibly the best book by a philosopher in the lost twenîy yeors. It chonged, probobly permanenfly, the way we think obout the problem of induction, and hence about o constellation of related problems like learning and the nature of rational décision. This is the work of contemporary philosophy that I would most like to have written."—J. A. Fodor
Here, in a new edition, is Nelson Goodman's provocative philo-sophical classic—a book that, according to Science, "raised a storm of controversy" when it was first published in 1954, and one that remains on the front lines of philosophical debate. How is it that we feel confident in generalizing from experience in some ways but not in others? How are generalizations that are warranted to be distinguished from those that are not? Goodman shows that these questions resist formai solution and his démonstration has been taken by nativists like... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Fouiîh Edition
FACT, FICTION, AND FORECAST
NELSON GOODAAAN New foreword by Hilary Puînam
"Quite possibly the best book by a philosopher in the lost twenîy yeors. It chonged, probobly permanenfly, the way we think obout the problem of induction, and hence about o constellation of related problems like learning and the nature of rational décision. This is the work of contemporary philosophy that I would most like to have written."—J. A. Fodor
Here, in a new edition, is Nelson Goodman's provocative philo-sophical classic—a book that, according to Science, "raised a storm of controversy" when it was first published in 1954, and one that remains on the front lines of philosophical debate. How is it that we feel confident in generalizing from experience in some ways but not in others? How are generalizations that are warranted to be distinguished from those that are not? Goodman shows that these questions resist formai solution and his démonstration has been taken by nativists like Chomsky and Fodor as proof that neifher scientific induction nor ordinary learning can proceed without an o priori, or innate, ordering of hypotheses. In his new foreword to this édition, Hilary Putnam forcefully rejects these nativist daims. The controversy surround-ing these unsolved problems is as relevant to the psychology of cognitive development as it is to the philosophy of science. No serious student of either discipline can afford to misunderstand Goodman's classic argument. Vissza