Article:

»Possession plus reference«. Nelson Goodmans Begriff der Exemplifikation – angewandt auf eine Untersuchung von Beziehungen zwischen Kognition, Kreativität, Jugendkultur und Bildung

Goodman‘s creative symbol-constructional philosophy concerns fundamental aspects of human cognition and practice. It is argued that especially his deeply interrelated conceptions of exemplification, induction and worldmaking provide us a subtle understanding of the connections between cognition, creativity, youth-culture and education. I will try to show that youth-culture contains a fundamental potential for aesthetic and creative practice with an immense cognitive value that should be taken seriously by humanities. This potential should be encouraged from scratch within our educational system and needs to be protected comprehensively from depreciation through narrow-minded (education-) policy and exploitation through the entertainment industries.