From Denomination to Relativism

In the history of philosophy, induction has had a significant role in the emergence of relativism. There are two different versions of this issue by Hume and Goodman, which have been separately discussed about. This paper would compare the principles and outcomes of these two versions. Hume has been concerned with mind and the rules governing it in the classic induction and regards the mental habit as the reason for trust in scientific laws. However, Goodman in his bringing up the new issue of induction is more concerned with language and its rules and mentions penetration in language as the reason for belief in general scientific rules. Nevertheless, denomination is the common ground for these two philosophers and the common outcome of these two viewpoints is a kind of extremist relativism, which extends over to the ontology area. This paper is a comparative study that examines the relation between denomination and relativism from a critical point of view.