Comparing Bernard Williams 'And Goodman's Induction'

In Bernard Williams’s article “Induction”, he introduced several versions of the induction problem, including Hume’s original statement of the problem and Goodman’s “new riddle” of induction. In this essay, I will explore the differences and similarities between these two versions of the problem of induction. 

Both Hume and Goodman seek to address the uncertainty human face while trying to predict the future or making a generalization statement, given our limited knowledge. Hume approached via the inductive argument, whereas Goodman’s “new riddle” of induction used the deductive argument. 

Hume, first, claimed that our general assumption about the world might be false as our understanding about the world is never demonstrative. In other words,
our “common sense” are only based on familiarity, rather than rationality. Thus, there should not be any rational warrant when projecting our past regularities into future. Next, Hume address the problem arises when we try to justify our inductive conclusions based on the Uniformity Principle, which is just a mere assumption. Hume arrived at the conclusion that inductive inference based on the Uniformity Principle is just rationally indispensable and completely beyond the scope of argumentative justification as inductive inference is a matter of habit, not a matter of “reasoning”. 

For inductive argument, if the premises are true, the possibility that the conclusion is false still do exist. An implication of the argument would be as follows: 
(P1) The volcano never erupt. 
(P2) Nature operates uniformly. 
 (C) The volcano will never erupt.

Hume suggested that law that really have operated until now might fail to operate in the future.
Thus, the conclusion might be invalid. The only possible solution for Hume’s inductive argument is to turn (P2), the Uniformity Principle, into a priori, which is impossible. 

On the contrary, Goodman “new riddle” of induction approached the question of induction via deductive argument. For deductive argument, there is impossible for the premise to be true and the conclusion to be false; the premises and the conclusion have to be consistent. Nelson Goodman introduced his “new riddle” along with the concept of “grue” and “bleen”. With such complicated definition of “grue”, Goodman proves that he has taken the occurrence of a periodic flipping into consideration. The implication of such argument would be Peter Heath’s example of two small insects that walk up a green-blue candy-striped maypole. And, the discovery left the insect which chose to defend the “common-sense” position of green in shock. While, the other insect who believes that the maypole is “grue” has no problem discovering the truth. 

Apart from that, here are some of the minor differences between Hume and Goodman. Hume approaches the problem of induction from a temporal perspective, while Goodman is more focus on trying to derive an unrestricted general conclusion based on a finite body of
observational evidence. In addition, Hume is more concern about the course of nature might change, whereas Goodman explores the problem of misleading arguments.

In conclusion, both Hume and Goodman believe that we identify laws based on our habits.