Ways of Worldmaking

Rating:
Summary: Confusion
Review: Although Goodman is generally attributed as on of the leaders of the Anti-Realist position, Ways of Worldmaking does not provide a good argument for that position. Goodman's talk is highly open to interpretation, but most interpretations lead to trivial truth or outlandishly bizarre scenarios. The lack of detailed argument makes refutation difficult, but still it is a must read for those interested in what Anti-Realism is.

Rating:
Summary: Confusion
Review: Although Goodman is generally attributed as on of the leaders of the Anti-Realist position, Ways of Worldmaking does not provide a good argument for that position. Goodman's talk is highly open to interpretation, but most interpretations lead to trivial truth or outlandishly bizarre scenarios. The lack of detailed argument makes refutation difficult, but still it is a must read for those interested in what Anti-Realism is.

Rating:
Summary: Goodman and Anti-Realism
Review: Goodman is neither a realist nor an anti-realist. He argues neither for nor against the existence of a real world out beyond all our knowledge and our active efforts to cope with our experiences. He calls himself an "irrealist," or someone who couldn't care less whether or not such a real world exists.

Ways of Worldmaking contains one brilliant argument after another for the idea that no appeal to a real world beyond our "conceptual schemes" is necessary to understand, or to produce, science and scientific knowledge. What's more, Goodman also shows how art is just as necessary as science if we are to understand ourselves and the world. He explains that neither art nor science is a copy of the world: as the old joke has it, "one of the damn things is enough." Instead both art and science succeed when they provide us with symbols that re-categorize things and people in ways we find useful.

It is this usefulness, not a connection to a world beyond all categories, that we actually seek when we generate both theories and artworks. Notice that we do in fact stop our seeking when we achieve this kind of satisfaction. Goodman's neo-pragmatic explanation of how we should investigate the world pays close attention, and gives proper respect, to the ways in which we actually do investigate.

A wonderful book from an underappreciated thinker.

Rating:
Summary: American philosophy discovers dumpster diving
Review: Why do the rich hate the rich? ( Why did Marie Antoinette live in a grass hut?)

Why do intellectuals hate other intellectuals? ( For an example, choose any intellectual in relation to any other intellectual, at any time and at any place.)

Why are the ugliest arguments between those who basically agree on the important points?

Why would a person who had everything want to dissolve everything? Would that be for intellectual rigor ? Is dissolution intellectual rigor?

Why would a pig, rooting through the valuable, destroy all value?

Nelson Goodman is a pig, so ask him. Read the book, and find out why pigs do what they do.