Grue ! : New Riddle Of Induction, The

Description:
If every observed emerald is green, and if this supports the conclusion 'All emeralds are green', does it equally support the conclusion 'All emeralds are grue' - where 'grue' is defined as green before a certain date and blue thereafter? Since its publication in 1955, Nelson Goodman's 'Paradox', the new riddle of induction, has emerged as one of the most stimulating philosophical problems of the 20th century. It has exercised some of the best minds of our generation, and drawn a surprising variety of approaches, ranging from artificial intelligence to Bayesianism. This volume contains 14 essays on the grue paradox, seven of them previously published, and seven written specially for this volume. The work includes a detailed history and exposition, and an annotated bibliography of virtually all the literature on the problem to date.

Table of Contents:
Concepts of projectibility and the problems of induction, John Earman; induction, conceptual spaces and AI, Peter Gardenfors; holding statistics together with real grue, Clark Glymour and Peter Spirtes; simplicity and grue, Gilbert Harman; grue, Frank Jackson; constraints on solutions to the new riddle of induction, John L. Pollock; natural kinds, W.V. Quine; 'grue' as a disjunctive predicate, David H. Sanford; inductive inference - a new approach, Israel Scheffler; the new riddle of induction and Bayesian statistics, Bryan Skyrms; grue was groovy until 1967, but not thereafter, Elliot Sober; a perspective on the new riddle of induction, Patrick Suppes; luck, license and lingo, Joseph Ullian; concerning a fiction about how facts are forecast, Andrzej Zabludowski.