The Grue Paradox

Rohit Kumar Jha

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Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur
ABSTRACT
There is a classical problem with Induction, as pointed out by Hume, that
we can provide no non-circular justication for inductive reasoning. Goodman
came up with a very dierent question, not concerning the justication of in-
duction, that asks what sort of inductive practices are legitimate.
Goodmans new riddle of induction shows that this is a false step: not all gen-
eralizations are conrmed by their instances. He shows this by inventing the
predicate grue. It is dened as follows:
An object is grue if and only if the object is either green, and has been observed
before now, or, blue, and has not been observed before now.
We can use this term in inductive arguments like this:
Emerald 1 is grue.
Emerald 2 is grue.
. . .
. . .
Emerald n is grue.
So, all emeralds are grue.
This argument seems, by the standard suggested above, to be a perfectly good
inductive argument. But it cannot be, since it does not give us good reason to
believe that all emeralds which have not been observed till now are blue.
In this paper, we plan to study, in depth, the problems caused by the use of
grue in inductive arguments and how we can x problems, in particular this
one, with induction.
References
[1] Speaks,J. The Problem of Grue, http://www3.nd.edu/

jspeaks/courses/
2007-8/20229/_HANDOUTS/grue.pdf.
[2] Folse,H., The Grue Paradox http://www.loyno.edu/

folse/grue.html.
[3] Pennoc,R.T., Evidential Relevance and the Grue Paradox https://www.msu.
edu/

pennock5/research/papers/Pennock_Grue.pdf.
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