Nelson Goodman
1906-1998 · Analytic Metaphysics · Known
Goodman was an American analytic philosopher who denied that anything has a fixed essence. Call something grue if it is green up to now and blue from here on: every emerald you have seen fits both words, so evidence alone cannot tell you which prediction to make. He called that the new riddle of induction, and held there is no one ready-made world, only versions built with symbols.
Signature
The position Goodman is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Universals
- leans Nominalism
- Language
- Language-Game
Positions on the 2 axes the sources answer
- Universals
- leans Nominalism (87 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Nature of Reality
- strongly leans Multiplicity (92 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
18 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Goodman refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Atheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Representative Democracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Knowledge / Beauty
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Social Invention
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Open Future
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Perception
- Symbolic Forms
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Coherence
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Other
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Compatibilism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Mind-Only
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Phenomenological Time
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Economy
- Welfare Capitalism
What is the ideal organization of economic life? - Authority
- Consent of the Governed
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Language-Game
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Role of Emotion
- Obstacle to Reason
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Symbol-Maker
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- All Beings
What is your primary bond and loyalty?