Starmaking

Starmaking brings together a cluster of work published over the
past 35 years by Nelson Goodman and two Harvard colleagues, Hilary Putnam and Israel Scheffler, on
the conceptual connections between monism and pluralism, absolutism and relativism, and idealism and
different notions of realism -- issues that are central to metaphysics and
epistemology.The title alludes to Goodman's famous defense of the claim that
because all true representations of stars and other objects are human creations, it follows that in
an important sense the stars themselves are made by us. More generally, the argument moves from the
fact that our right representations are constructed by us to the claim that the world itself is
similarly constructed. Starmaking addresses the question of
whether this seeming paradox can be turned into a serious philosophical view. Goodman and Putnam are
sympathetic; Scheffler is the critic.Although many others continue to write about
pluralism, relativism, and constructionalism, Starmaking brings together the
protagonists in the debate since its beginnings and follows closely its still developing form and
substance, focusing sharply on Goodman's claim that "we make versions, and right versions make
worlds."