Goodman's Ways of Worldmaking initiated a new chapter in the consideration of relations between the world and its representations, or – as he prefers to call them – versions. In his book he defends the view that there actually are many worlds if any, and that we make these worlds by making versions, using previous versions as our resources. In what follows, I offer an account of Goodman's treatment and criticize his view of worldmaking in its objectual interpretation.

THE WONDERFUL WORLDS OF GOODMAN

“Worldmaking,” Goodman tells us, “begins with one version and ends with another.” Is worldmaking, then, simply the making of versions – that is, descriptions, depictions, or other representations – and are worlds to be construed just as versions? The answer does not lie on the surface. The term “world” is nowhere defined in the book and an examination of the passages in which the term appears yields two conflicting interpretations: On the first, or versional, interpretation, a world is a true (or right) world-version, and the pluralism defended simply reflects, and extends to versions generally, the Structure of Appearance doctrine that conflicting systematizations can be found for any prephilosophical subject matter.