Abstract
According to Goodman1, one important advantage of his Structure of Appearance over Carnap's Aufbau is that his is a nominalist, whereas Car nap's is a platonist, construction. Superficially, it is clear enough why Good man should say this: Carnap employs set-theory, whereas Goodman allows himself only mereology. One object of this paper is to show that this super ficial impression is rather misleading?that closer comparison of the two books reveals that each has a claim to be regarded as the more nominalist. Another aim is to show that Goodman takes his book to be quintessentially nominalist partly because his conception of nominalism is somewhat eccen tric. And a third aim is to show that when nominalism is understood in Good man's fashion it is difficult to see what the motivation for it is; more specifically, that Goodman's arguments for his version of nominalism are not compelling. I shall begin with a brief exposition of each book, and then proceed to some comparative remarks, as a preliminary to arguing in detail for the three theses stated above.
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