A Phenomenological Approach to the Bayesian Grue Problem

Abstract

It is a common intuition in scientific practice that positive instances confirm. This confirmation, at least purely based on syntactic considerations, is what Nelson Goodman’s ‘Grue Problem’, and more generally the ‘New Riddle’ of Induction, attempt to defeat. One treatment of the Grue Problem has been made along Bayesian lines, wherein the riddle reduces to a question of probability assignments. In this paper, I consider this so-called Bayesian Grue Problem and evaluate how one might proffer a solution to this problem utilizing what I call a phenomenological approach. I argue that this approach to the problem can be successful on the Bayesian framework.