Nelson Goodman: Ways of worldmaking
What are worlds?
According to
Goodman, we cannot catch the world as such and we don't
even know, if there exist any world, or several worlds. All we can
catch are the world versions - descriptions, views or ways how
the world is. World versions are symbolic systems, which can get
several forms - they can be described and expressed by words, music,
pictures, dancing - any kind of symbols. The scientific world
descriptions are usually literal/numeric, but in the arts the world
versions are very free-formed.
None of the worlds is more real than others, but we can always select
one world as our reference world, which we call actual. Of course the
actual world differs between disciplines, or even inside a discipline,
when we change our point of view.
How to create worlds?
The worlds or world versions are always human-made. They are made from
all kind of symbols, which origin to other worlds. In fact Goodman
lists a plenty of methods, how we can make new worlds from the existing ones:
- Composition and decomposition: integrating and dividing into
parts. This is a cycle: we divide existing worlds into subworlds,
analayze their features and make new connections, until we can combine
the parts again in a new way.
- Weighting: The difference between worlds can be in the
emphasis. Parts which are relevant in one world can be irrelevant in
the other and vice versa.
- Ordering: We have to order and group the objects, before we
can grasp them. These ways of ordering are built in the world and they
depend on the objects and context, we are considering.
- Deletion and supplemenation: Often in the worldmaking we
have to delete old material and add new material. We ignore what we
don't need and collect and supplement those fragments and hints which
we need.
- Reformations: Sometimes we reform the world or destroy its
original form - these reformations can be seen as corrections or
corruptions.
The worldmaking is closely conneted to knowing: knowing is
reconstructing (vs. constructivist view of learning!)
and all processes of constructing worlds lead to knowing.
How to evaluate worlds?
Truth is relative and sometimes irrelevant. So we need also other
criteria for "rightness" of the world. Sometimes the contingence of
the world, how compact, understandable or informative it is, or the
explanation power of the whole system are more important aspects.
Problems of truth:
- Truth concerns only verbal propositions
- There can be contradictory truths
- How to test truth? We cannot compare it to the world as it is!
(=correspondence theory) The truth depends always on concensus.
Other criteria:
- Usefulness: how useful the world is? (pragmatism: truth=usefulness)
- Plausibility: how plausible the world is?
- Coherence: doesn't contain any contradictions.
The ways of constructing the world also affect on its validity:
- Validity of deductive inference: a valid deduction produces true
theorems from true premisses.
- Validity of inductive inference: the induction doesn't have to
produce true conclusions, but probable or plausible conclusions. For
this the premisses have to be true, the induction process valid, and the
induction hypotheses has to be based on all available evidence.
- Categorization: often nothing to do with truth, but what is
stuitable in practice.
Note!
In Problem Solving we use quite similar methods in constructing new
solution from old ones! Check PS notes!
Literature