MARK LILLA
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each created coherent worlds that can be assessed only for their own
"rightness" and either accepted or rejected, and if accepted they can
exist side by side. Goodman exhorts us to create new, true worlds,
rather than look for the single true one, because "truth, far from be–
ing a solemn and severe master, is a docile and obedient servant."
Goodman's theory of truth has been dubbed a not very novel
version of "holism" by some, and has been charged with the usual
deficiencies of holism: it recognizes no distinctions between the
possible and the absurd, allowing anyone to create his own world
and crawl into it; and in the name of value it bleeds the world of all
value by making everything relative. In short, holism is mysticism.
Goodman will admit that his is a "radical relativism under severe
constraints," but he spends more time discussing the nature of the
constraints than holism itself. Since "the world depends on rightness"
we must pursue what seems true in our world; inevitably we will run
into anomalies within our world, or our world will collide with
another, and, "put crassly, what is called for in such cases is less like
arguing than selling." Goodman's attitude toward philosophy is what
Robert Nozick has called a "non-coercive" one. He wants
philosophers to open up and critically explore as many versions of
the world as they can; and the adverb "critically" is important here
because "a willingness to welcome all worlds builds none." "Never
mind mind, essence is not essential, and matter doesn't matter," he
tells fellow philosophers - we have worlds to build.
However, the most important constraint in worldmaking is not
on us - that it is up to
us
to be creative - but on the world itself.
Though worlds are made, they are never made from scratch:
"Worldmaking as we know it always starts from worlds we have on
hand; the making is a remaking." As it turns out, much of the world
we experience, and of the worlds we create, is not a logical
tabula rasa
but is historically given - not in the sense of "fixed," but in the sense
of "prior." There is no worldmaking, or philosophy,
de novo:
We start, on any occasion, with some old version of the world we
have on hand and that we are stuck with until we have the deter–
mination and skill to remake it into a new one .. . Worldmaking
begins with one version and ends with another.
Having first criticized positivists for believing that it is possible to
describe the one true version of the world, Goodman now deflates
