Grue and Bleen Defined
Goodman defined grue relative to an arbitrary but fixed time t as follows: "The predicate grue ... applies to all things examined before t just in case they are green but to other things just in case they are blue." The word bleen has a complementary definition: An object is bleen if it is blue and examined before time t, or else green.
To understand the problem Goodman posed, it is helpful to imagine some particular future time t, say January 1, 2022.
Some popularizations of the concept have described it in a slightly different way: an object is grue if it is green when examined before time t and blue when examined afterwards (and likewise for bleen). That version is different because it envisions the same object as appearing green or blue at different times, while the original definition means that the object is always green or always blue, but which one depends on when the object was first observed.
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Famous quotes containing the word defined:
“Why is it so difficult to see the lesbian—even when she is there, quite plainly, in front of us? In part because she has been “ghosted”Mor made to seem invisible—by culture itself.... Once the lesbian has been defined as ghostly—the better to drain her of any sensual or moral authority—she can then be exorcised.”
—Terry Castle, U.S. lesbian author. The Apparitional Lesbian, ch. 1 (1993)