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Nelson Goodman's 'Theory of Symbols': an Exposition and Critique

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Nelson Goodman's 'Theory of Symbols': an Exposition and Critique Nelson Goodman's 'Theory of Symbols': an Exposition and Critique Evan Wm. Cameron Professor Emeritus Senior Scholar in Screenwriting Graduate Programmes, Film & Video and Philosophy York University [Presented on 13 February 1985 to the 'Media, Mind and Society' Seminar of David R. Olson, Co-Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario. (Original notes in outline form, amended only as needed to permit comprehension by readers.) Nelson Goodman's 'Theory of Symbols': an Exposition and Critique1 1. Opening remarks: 2. Novel status of Goodman among philosophical peers: A. Philosophers are specialists (philosophers of science, for example, or logicians, aestheticians, philosophers of language, philosophers of mathematics and so on); yet Goodman has published in journals ranging from the Journal of Symbolic Logic to the Journal of Aesthetics; has had reviews of his work in specialized journals of science, mathematics, art and critical studies; and has been invited to give the John Locke lectures at Oxford and the 1st Kant lectures at Stanford. B. Peers are specialists; proceed as if Goodman had not lived, thought or written; yet the best of them admit that their only genuine antagonist is Goodman. How so? During the early part of his career, Goodman managed to construct within many parts of philosophy contradictions and paradoxes that not only rendered all current work suspect but seemed to promise that all future work would be suspect as well. The only choice, in many of these fields, was to plow ahead as if he didn't exist, or to stop working! 3. Examples of prior (and devastating) critical work: A. Inductive Logic (and therewith all of confirmation and falsification theory and hence all of the philosophy of science): the 'grue' paradox; B. Philosophy of Language: 1. Absence of synonymy twixt any two terms ('On Likeness of Meaning'; 'On difference of Meaning'); hence neither analyticity nor necessity, and hence little chance for a philosophy of language; 1 "An Approach to a Theory of Symbols" is the subtitle of Nelson Goodman's Languages of Art (Indianapolis, Indiana: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1968). The book was based upon his John Locke lectures of 1960-61 at Oxford University. When citing passages below, I shall give page references to the second edition (Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, 1976). [referred to hereafter as LA.] Nelson Goodman's 'Theory of Symbols': an Exposition and Critique Page 2 of 26 (Synonymy: Two terms, A and B, are synonymous, Goodman believes, if and only if they are: (a) co extensive; and (b) no word compound exists whose A extension is different from its B extension but for which at least one C extension and D extension are different. But then no two words are synonymous, for adequately different word compounds may always be constructed.) 2. absence of the 'given'; hence no language independent criterion for truth possible; hence no useful criterion for truth possible either; 3. demolition of Chomsky's epistemological pretensions concerning innate grammatical structures (and therewith the epistemological import of 'transformational linguistics') (Chomsky holds that a second language need not be innately constrained (it need not, that is, be tied to 'deep' innate ideas). But a child, as Goodman pointed out, is already adept at deciphering and creating non spoken 'signals' by the time 'language', in Chomsky's perverted sense, commences: the child simply learns to generate spoken signals itself as a second language! C. Philosophy of Science: 1. no criterion of 'simplicity' for rival theories possible, for all extralogical postulates of every theory can be eliminated nontrivially. (Paper co-authored with Quine.) 2. paradoxes of contrafactual conditionals ('If Caesar were Napoleon, he would both wear a toga and not wear a toga': contradiction!) D. Philosophy of Mathematics: no paradox but the persistent claim that the word 'set' has neither extension nor meaning; that nominalism is the only proper technique; and hence that the axioms of set theory are ultimately ineffectual (and Cohen's proof seems right on target!) Nelson Goodman's 'Theory of Symbols': an Exposition and Critique Page 3 of 26 All of the above positions are essentially critical achievements advanced within the standard traditions and tools of philosophical inquiry. Goodman then began the constructive work that culminated in the "theory of Symbols" of Languages of Art – an endeavour that, in contradistinction to the above, has failed to receive either general approval or even admitted relevance. Why not? More of that anon. 4. Introduction to Goodman's overall philosophical position: there are many, incompatible, equally right (or true) world descriptions; hence we have no more reason to deny the existence of many worlds corresponding to them then we have to affirm the existence of any world at all. A. Contrast Goodman's position with single world proponents (materialists or idealists, for example, or even most possible world theorists). Why does Goodman believe they are incorrect? B: There are many equally consistent but incompatible world descriptions couched in incompatible languages: for example, physicalist; phenomenalist; mentalist; various artistic symbol systems. Were there only one world and were it knowable to be the only one, we should be able to determine which of the world descriptions as couched in its language is true. But one cannot define 'is true' within a language, for contradiction ensues, nor can one define 'is true' for a language within another language without either begging the question or regressing infinitely. Hence, the predicate 'is true' is useless for distinguishing between world descriptions. (As is the predicate 'is a world', for we cannot within a language predicate it of anything. But that renders the predicate useless within a world description. But then how could we ever know that a world existed, since we cannot say it?) C: Why, then, does Goodman persist in speaking of 'truth', if not useless, as being often only of secondary importance to 'rightness', 'fit', etc.? 1. Because although the predicate 'is true' may have little use, the two place predicate 'is truer than' is useful indeed! (Compare: to know that 'A is faster than B', I need not know what 'A is fast' or 'B is fast' might mean. Indeed, to say 'A is fast' would be to say that 'A is faster than most comparable things'. Similarly with 'A is greater than B' with the positive and negative integers. But 'is truer than' is, in Goodman's view, in an identical position. Nelson Goodman's 'Theory of Symbols': an Exposition and Critique Page 4 of 26 Goodman's goal, in a sense, is to construct world descriptions in which useless predicates like 'is true', 'is simple', 'is confirmed', 'represents', 'is aesthetically good', etc., are replaced with useful comparative two place predicates such as 'is truer than', 'is simpler than', 'is better confirmed than', 'better represents than', 'is aesthetically better than', etc. 2. A world, then, becomes a system for progressive testing of what is truer than what, what is righter than what or what fits better than what and hence for the remaking of that world itself. Goodman even speaks favorably of Peirce's dictum that 'rightness' (and hence truth) is 'ultimate acceptability', but we have no guarantee that anything satisfies the predicate. "The many stuffs ... that worlds are made of are made along with the worlds. But made from what? Not from nothing, but from other worlds. Worldmaking as we know it always starts from worlds already on hand; the making is a remaking."2 Hence, not only is truth relative to a world description but relative within it as well (WWM, page 123): truth is what our tests within a world relatively measure (WWM, page 122), an 'operational' account of truth. In general, all 'stable properties' such as 'is true', 'is aesthetic', 'is fast', 'is large' and so forth must be defined in terms of 'ephemeral function', not the reverse. (WWM, page 70) (We are never faced, for example, with a choice twixt using 'green' or 'grue'. Rather, we are habituated to using 'green' and should have to have a good reason within our world to switch to 'grue', but we shan't have one.) 3. "Knowing cannot be exclusively or even primarily a matter of determining what is true. Discovery often amounts, as when I place a piece in a jigsaw puzzle, not to arrival at a proposition for declaration or defense, but to finding a fit." (WWM, page 121) 2 Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, 1978), page 129. [Referred to hereafter as WWM] Nelson Goodman's 'Theory of Symbols': an Exposition and Critique Page 5 of 26 "The distinction between true and false falls far short of marking the general distinction twixt right and wrong versions." (WWM, page 109): compare with Heidegger.) "...truth cannot be the only consideration in choosing among statements or versions ... even where there is no conflict, truth is far from sufficient. Some truths are trivial, irrelevant, unintelligible, or redundant; to broad, too narrow, too boring, too bizarre, too complicated ..." (WWM, pages 120 and 121) 5. Introduction to Goodman's comparative position in history of philosophy since Kant: A. Kant: the important presuppositions of judging truly: (a) are themselves judgments; (b) are synthetic a priori; (c) are unchangeable; and (d) can be known by considering the constraints on how we may and may not judge; B. Heidegger: agrees with Kant that judging truly entails a prior presuppositions but insists that the constraints on judging truly are only one among the many constraints that constrain us, for we do many things other than judge (we build things, for example, use tools, engage in political activities and so forth). Hence, the presuppositions of human being (Dasein): Nelson Goodman's 'Theory of Symbols': an Exposition and Critique Page 6 of 26 (a) are broader than judgments (including all presuppositions of authentic being, whether judging, hammering, campaigning, etc.); (b) are thus called 'existentials'; (c) are knowable a priori; and (d) are unchangeable; C.
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