Summary
Nelson Goodman: Ways of Creating the World
This book does not develop in a straight line from beginning to end. She hunts; and during the hunt he sometimes catches the same rabbit in different bushes, or different rabbits in the same bush, or even something that later turns out to be no rabbit in any bush. He stopped the same obstacle several times and then started on other paths. It often relies on the same sources and wanders into some impassable area, not taking into account the hunt, but what has been learned about the explored territory... It is rare that any philosophical label is suitable for a book that is at odds with both rationalism and empiricism, and with materialism, idealism and dualism, with essentialism and existentialism, with mechanism and vitalism, with mysticism and scientism, and with most other stubborn doctrines. What emerges here can perhaps be described as a strictly limited radical relativism, ending in something akin to irrealism. Nevertheless, I think this book belongs to that main stream of modern philosophy which began when Kant replaced the structure of the world with the structure of the mind, continued when KI Lewis replaced the structure of the mind with the structure of concepts, and now moves on to replace the structure of concepts with the structure of a multitude of symbolic systems of science, philosophy, art, perception, and everyday discourse. It is about the transition from a single truth and a fixed and found world to a variety of valid and even conflicting versions of emerging worlds.
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