 The most important claim of Hempel (1965a) is that confirmation cannot be adequately defined by linguistic means alone. Here he cites Goodman (1955) to demonstrate that some hypotheses of the form, “\((x)(Fx \supset Gx)\)”, are not confirmable even by instances of the kind “\(Fc\)” and “\(Gc\)”. If “\(Rx\)” stands for “\(x\) is a raven” and “\(Bx\)” for “\(x\) is blite” (where \(x\) is blite when it has been examined before time \(t\) and is black or has not been examined before \(t\) and is white), then any raven observed before \(t\) and found to be black confirms the hypothesis, “\((x)(Rx \supset Bx)\)”; yet this hypothesis implies that all ravens not examined before \(t\) are white, a consequence that, in Hempel’s language, “must surely count as disconfirmed rather than as confirmed”. And he endorses Goodman’s suggestion that whether a universal conditional is capable of being confirmed by its positive instances turns out to depend upon the character of its constituent predicates and their past use.