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Jerry Fodor

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Philosophers

                               Western Philosophy
   20th-century philosophy
         Name:       Jerry Alan Fodor
        Birth:       1935 (United States)
   School/tradition: analytic philosophy, rationalism, cognitivism,
                     functionalism
    Main interests:  philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, cognitive
                     science
    Notable ideas:   modularity of mind, language of thought
      Influences:    Hilary Putnam, Jerome Bruner, Franz Joseph Gall, Noam
                     Chomsky
      Influenced:    Ernest Lepore, Zenon Pylyshyn, Georges Rey, Murat Aydede,
                     Steven Pinker

   Jerry Alan Fodor (born 1935) is an American philosopher and cognitive
   scientist currently teaching at the Rutgers University in New Jersey.
   He is the author of many works in the fields of philosophy of mind and
   cognitive science in which he laid the groundwork for the modularity of
   mind and the language of thought hypotheses, among other ideas.

   Fodor argues that mental states, such as beliefs and desires, are
   relations between individuals and mental representations. He maintains
   that these representations can only be correctly explained in terms of
   a language of thought in the mind. Further, this language of thought
   itself is an actually existing thing that is codified in the brain and
   not just a useful explanatory tool. Fodor adheres to a species of
   functionalism, maintaining that thinking and other mental processes
   consist primarily of computations operating on the syntax of the
   representations that make up the language of thought.

   For Fodor, significant parts of the mind, such as perceptual and
   linguistic processes, are structured in terms of modules, or "organs",
   which are defined by their causal and functional roles. These modules
   are relatively independent of each other and of the "central
   processing" part of the mind, which has a more global and less "domain
   specific" character. Fodor suggests that the character of these modules
   permits the possibility of causal relations with external objects.
   This, in turn, makes it possible for mental states to have contents
   that are about things in the world. The central processing part, on the
   other hand, takes care of the logical relations between the various
   contents and inputs and outputs.

   Although Fodor originally rejected the idea that mental states must
   have a causal, externally determined aspect, he has in recent years
   devoted much of his writing and study to the philosophy of language
   because of this problem of the meaning and reference of mental
   contents. His contributions in this area include the so-called
   asymmetric causal theory of reference and his many arguments against
   semantic holism. Fodor strongly opposes any attempt to reduce the realm
   of the mental to that of the physical. He argues that mental states are
   multiply realizable and that there is a hierarchy of explanatory levels
   in science such that the generalizations and laws of a higher-level
   theory of psychology or linguistics, for example, cannot be captured by
   the low-level explanations of the behaviour of neurons and synapses.

Biography

   Jerry Fodor was born in New York City in 1935, where he continues to
   reside with his wife and his beloved cats. He has two grown children.
   He received his A.B. degree (summa cum laude) from Columbia University
   in 1956 and a PhD in Philosophy from Princeton University in 1960 under
   the direction of Hilary Putnam. From 1959-86, Fodor was on the faculty
   of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge,
   Massachusetts. From 1986–88, he was a full professor at the City
   University of New York (CUNY). Since 1988 he has been State of New
   Jersey Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers
   University in New Jersey. Besides his interest in philosophy, Fodor is
   a passionate follower of opera and regularly writes popular columns for
   the London Review of Books on the subject.

   One of Fodor's most notable colleagues at Rutgers, the New Mysterian
   philosopher Colin McGinn has described Fodor in these words:

     "[Fodor] is a gentle man inside a burly body, and prone to an even
     burlier style of arguing. He is shy and voluble at the same time ...
     a formidable polemicist burdened with a sensitive soul....
     Disagreeing with Jerry on a philosophical issue, especially one dear
     to his heart can be a chastening experience.... His quickness of
     mind, inventiveness, and sharp wit are not to be tangled with before
     your first cup of coffee in the morning. Adding Jerry Fodor to the
     faculty at Rutgers [University] instantly put it on the map, Fodor
     being by common consent the leading philosopher of mind in the world
     today. I had met him in England in the seventies and ... found him
     to be the genuine article, intellectually speaking (though we do not
     always see eye to eye)."

   Fodor is a member of the honorary societies Phi Beta Kappa and the
   American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received numerous awards
   and honors: New York State Regent's Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Fellow
   (Princeton University), Chancellor Greene Fellow (Princeton
   University), Fullbright Fellow (Oxford University), Fellow at the
   Center for Advanced Study in The Behavioural Sciences, and Guggenheim
   Fellow.

Fodor and the nature of mental states

   In his book Propositional Attitudes (1978), Fodor introduced the key
   idea that mental states are relations between individuals and mental
   representations. Despite the changes in many of his positions over the
   years, the idea that intentional attitudes are relational has remained
   unchanged from its original formulation up to the present time.

   In that book, he attempted to show how mental representations,
   specifically sentences in the language of thought, are necessary to
   explain this relational nature of mental states. Fodor considers two
   alternative hypotheses. The first completely denies the relational
   character of mental states and the second considers mental states to be
   two-place relations. The latter position can be further subdivided into
   the Carnapian view that such relations are between individuals and
   sentences of natural languages and the Fregean view that they are
   between individuals and the propositions expressed by such sentences.
   Fodor's own position, instead, is that to properly account for the
   nature of intentional attitudes, it is necessary to employ a
   three-place relation between individuals, representations and
   propositional contents.

   Considering mental states to be three-place relations in this way,
   representative realism makes it possible to hold together all of the
   elements necessary to the solution of this problem. Further, mental
   representations are not only the objects of beliefs and desires, but
   are also the domain over which mental processes operate. They can be
   considered the ideal link between the syntactic notion of mental
   content and the computational notion of functional architecture. These
   notions are, according to Fodor, our best explanation of mental
   processes.

The functional architecture of the mind

   A typical phrenology chart that shows the modules as precise physical
   locations on the brain
   Enlarge
   A typical phrenology chart that shows the modules as precise physical
   locations on the brain

   Following in the path plowed by linguist Noam Chomsky, Fodor developed
   a strong commitment to the idea of psychological nativism. Nativism is
   the belief in the innateness of many cognitive functions and concepts.
   For Fodor, this position emerges naturally out of his criticism of
   behaviourism and associationism. These criticisms also led him to the
   formulation of his well-known hypothesis of the modularity of the mind.

   Historically, questions about mental architecture have been divided
   into two contrasting theories about the nature of the faculties. The
   first can be described as a "horizontal" view because it sees mental
   processes as interactions between faculties which are not domain
   specific. For example, a judgement remains a judgement whether it is
   judgement about a perceptual experience or a judgement about the
   understanding of language. The second can be described as a "vertical"
   view because it claims that our mental faculties are domain specific,
   genetically determined, associated with distinct neurological
   structures, and so on.

   The vertical vision can be traced back to the 19th century movement
   called phrenology and its founder Franz Joseph Gall. Gall claimed that
   mental faculties could be associated with specific physical areas of
   the brain. Hence, someone's level of intelligence, for example, could
   be literally "read off" from the size of a particular bump on his
   posterior parietal lobe. This simplistic view of modularity has been
   disproven over the course of the last century.

   Fodor revived the idea of modularity, without the notion of precise
   physical localizability, in the 1980s, and became one of the most
   articulate proponents for it with the 1983 publication of his monograph
   Modularity of Mind. Two properties of modularity in particular,
   informational encapsulation and domain specificity, make it possible to
   tie together questions of functional architecture with those of mental
   content. The ability to elaborate information independently from the
   background beliefs of individuals that these two properties allow
   permits Fodor to give an atomistic and causal account of the notion of
   mental content. The main idea, in other words, is that the properties
   of the contents of mental states can depend, rather than exclusively on
   the internal relations of the system of which they are a part, also on
   their causal relations with the external world.

   Fodor's notions of mental modularity, informational encapsulation and
   domain specifity have been taken up and expanded, much to his own
   chagrin, by cognitive scientists such as Zenon Pylyshyn and
   evolutionary psychologists such as Steven Pinker and Henry Plotkin,
   among many others. But Fodor complains that Pinker, Plotkin and other
   members of what he sarcastically calls "the New Synthesis" have taken
   modularity and similar ideas way too far. He insists that the mind is
   not "massively modular" and that, contrary to what these researchers
   would have us believe, the mind is still a very long way from having
   been explained by the computational, or any other, model.

Intentional realism

   In A Theory of Content and Other Essays (1990), Fodor takes up another
   of his central notions: the question of the reality of mental
   representations. Fodor needs to justify representational realism to
   justify the idea that the contents of mental states are expressed in
   symbolic structures such as those of the LOT.

Fodor's criticism of Dennett

   Fodor starts with some criticisms of so-called standard realism. This
   view is characterized, according to Fodor, by two distinct assertions.
   One of these regards the internal structure of mental states and
   asserts that such states are non-relational. The other concerns the
   semantic theory of mental content and asserts that there is an
   isomorphism between the causal roles of such contents and the
   inferential web of beliefs. Among modern philosophers of mind, the
   majority view seems to be that the first of these two assertions is
   false, but that the second is true. Fodor departs from this view in
   accepting the truth of the first thesis but rejecting strongly the
   truth of the second.

   In particular, Fodor criticizes the instrumentalism of Daniel Dennett.
   Dennett maintains that it is possible to be realist with regard to
   intentional states without having to commit oneself to the reality of
   mental representations. Now, according to Fodor, if one remains at this
   level of analysis, then there is no possibility of explaining why the
   intentional strategy works:

          "There is...a standard objection to instrumentalism...: it is
          difficult to explain why the psychology of beliefs/desires works
          so well, if the psychology of beliefs/desires is, in fact,
          false....As Putnam, Boyd and others have emphasized, from the
          predictive successes of a theory to the truth of that theory
          there is surely a presumed inference; and this is even more
          likely when... we are dealing with the only theory in play which
          is predictively crowned with success. It is not obvious...why
          such a presumption should not militate in favour of a realist
          conception...of the interpretations of beliefs/desires."

Productivity, compositionality and thought

   Fodor also has positive arguments in favour of the reality of mental
   representations in terms of the LOT. He maintains that if language is
   the expression of thoughts and language is systematic, then thoughts
   must also be systematic. Systematicity in natural languages tends to be
   explained in terms of two more basic concepts: productivity and
   compositionality. The fact that systematicity and productivity depend
   on the compositional structure of language means that language has a
   combinatorial semantics. If thought also has such a combinatorial
   semantics, then there must be a language of thought.

   The second argument that Fodor provides in favour of representational
   realism involves the processes of thought. This argument touches on the
   relation between the representational theory of mind and models of its
   architecture. If the sentences of Mentalese require unique processes of
   elaboration then they require a computational mechanism of a certain
   type. The syntactic notion of mental representations goes hand in hand
   with the idea that mental processes are calculations which act only on
   the form of the symbols which they elaborate. And this is the
   computational theory of the mind. Consequently, the defence of a model
   of architecture based on classic artificial intelligence passes
   inevitably through a defence of the reality of mental representations.

   For Fodor, this formal notion of thought processes also has the
   advantage of highlighting the parallels between the causal role of
   symbols and the contents which they express. In his view, syntax is
   what plays the role of mediation between the causal role of the symbols
   and their contents. The semantic relations between symbols can be
   "imitated" by their syntactic relations. The inferential relations
   which connect the contents of two symbols can be imitated by the formal
   syntax rules which regulate the derivation of one symbol from another.

The nature of content

   From the beginning of the 1980s, Fodor has adhered to a causal notion
   of mental content and of meaning. This idea of content contrasts
   sharply with the inferential role semantics to which Fodor subscribed
   earlier in his career. Fodor now criticizes inferential role semantics
   (IRS) because its commitment to an extreme form of holism excludes the
   possibility of a true naturalization of the mental. But naturalization
   must include an explanation of content in atomistic and causal terms.

Anti-holism

   Fodor’s criticisms of holism are many and various. He identifies the
   central problem with all the different notions of holism as the idea
   that the determining factor in semantic evaluation is the notion of an
   "epistemic bond". Briefly, P is an epistemic bond of Q if the meaning
   of P is considered by someone to be relevant for the determination of
   the meaning of Q. Meaning holism strongly depends on this notion. The
   identity of the content of a mental state, under holism, can only be
   determined by the totality of its epistemic bonds . And this makes the
   realism of mental states an impossibility:

          "If people differ in an absolutely general way in their
          estimations of epistemic relevance, and if we follow the holism
          of meaning and individuate intentional states by way of the
          totality of their epistemic bonds, the consequence will be that
          two people (or, for that matter, two temporal sections of the
          same person) will never be in the same intentional state.
          Therefore, two people can never be subsumed under the same
          intentional generalizations. And, therefore, intentional
          generalization can never be successful. And, therefore again,
          there is no hope for an intentional psychology."

The asymmetric causal theory

   Having criticized the idea that semantic evaluation concerns only the
   internal relations between the units of a symbolic system, the way is
   open for Fodor to adopt an externalist position with respect to mental
   content and meaning. For Fodor, in recent years, the problem of
   naturalization of the mental is tied to the possibility of giving "the
   sufficient conditions for which a piece of the world is relative to
   (expresses, represents, is true of) another piece" in non-intentional
   and non-semantic terms. If this goal is to be achieved within a
   representational theory of the mind, then the challenge is to devise a
   causal theory which can establish the interpretation of the primitive
   non-logical symbols of the LOT. Fodor’s initial proposal is that what
   determines that the symbol for “water” in Mentalese expresses the
   property H20 is that the occurrences of that symbol are in certain
   causal relations with water. The intuitive version of this causal
   theory is what Fodor calls the "Crude Causal Theory." According to this
   theory, the occurrences of symbols express the properties which are the
   causes of their occurrence. The term “horse”, for example, says of a
   horse that it is a horse. In order to do this, it is necessary and
   sufficient that certain properties of an occurrence of the symbol
   "horse" be in a law-like relation with certain properties which
   determine that something is an occurrence of horse.

   The main problem with this theory is that of erroneous representations.
   There are two unavoidable problems with the idea that "a symbol
   expresses a property if it is.. necessary that all and only the
   presences of such a property cause the occurrences." The first is that
   not all horses cause occurrences of horse. The second is that not only
   horses cause occurrences of horse. Sometimes the A(horses) are caused
   by A (horses), but at other times---when, for example, because of the
   distance or conditions of low visibility, one has confused a cow for a
   horse—the A (horses) are caused by B (cows). In this case the symbol A
   doesn’t express just the property A, but the disjunction of properties
   A or B. The crude causal theory is therefore incapable of
   distinguishing the case in which the content of a symbol is disjunctive
   from the case in which it isn’t. This gives rise to what Fodor calls
   the "problem of disjunction."

   Fodor responds to this problem with what he defines as a "a slightly
   less crude causal theory." According to this approach, it is necessary
   to break the symmetry at the base of the crude causal theory. Fodor
   must find some criterion for distinguishing the occurrences of A caused
   by As (true) from those caused by Bs (false). The point of departure,
   according to Fodor, is that while the false cases are ontologically
   dependent on the true cases, the reverse is not true. There is an
   asymmetry of dependence , in other words, between the true contents (A=
   A) and the false ones (A = A or B). The first can subsist independently
   of the second, but the second can occur only because of the existence
   of the first:

          From the point of view of semantics, errors must be accidents:
          if in the extension of "horse" there are no cows, then it cannot
          be required for the meaning of "horse" that cows be called
          horses. On the other hand, if "horse" did not mean that which it
          means, and if it were an error for horses, it would never be
          possible for a cow to be called "horse." Putting the two things
          together, it can be seen that the possibility of falsely saying
          "this is a horse" presupposes the existence of a semantic basis
          for saying it truly, but not vice versa. If we put this in terms
          of the crude causal theory, the fact that cows cause one to say
          "horse" depends on the fact that horses cause one to say
          "horse"; but the fact that horses cause one to say "horse" does
          not depend on the fact that cows cause one to say "horse"..."

Functionalism

   During the 1960's, various philosophers such as Donald Davidson, Hilary
   Putnam, and Fodor tried to resolve the puzzle of developing a way to
   preserve the explanatory efficacy of mental causation and so-called
   "folk psychology" while adhering to a materialist vision of the world
   which did not violate the "generality of physics." Their proposal was,
   first of all, to reject the then-dominant theories in philosophy of
   mind: behaviorism and the type identity theory. The problem with
   logical behaviorism was that it failed to account for causation between
   mental states and such causation seems to be essential to psychological
   explanation, especially if one considers that behaviour is not an
   effect of a single mental event/cause but is rather the effect of a
   chain of mental events/causes. The type-identity theory, on the other
   hand, failed to explain the fact that radically different physical
   systems can find themselves in the same identical mental state. Besides
   being deeply anthropocentric (why should humans be the only thinking
   organisms in the universe?), the type-type theory also failed to deal
   with accumulating evidence in the neurosciences that every single human
   brain is different from all the others. Hence, the impossibility of
   referring to common mental states in different physical systems
   manifests itself not only between different species but also between
   organisms of the same species.
   An illustration of multiple realizability. M stands for mental and P
   stand for physical. It can be seen that more than one P can instantiate
   one M but not vice versa. Causal relations between states are
   represented by the arrows (M1 goes to M2, etc.)
   Enlarge
   An illustration of multiple realizability. M stands for mental and P
   stand for physical. It can be seen that more than one P can instantiate
   one M but not vice versa. Causal relations between states are
   represented by the arrows (M1 goes to M2, etc.)

   The solution to these problems, according to Fodor, is to be found in
   functionalism, a hypothesis which was designed to overcome the failings
   of both dualism and reductionism. Without going into detail here, the
   idea is that what is important is the function of a mental state
   regardless of the physical substrate which implements it. The
   foundation for this view lies in the principle of the multiple
   realizability of the mental. Under this view, for example, I and a
   computer can both instantiate ("realize") the same functional state
   though we are made of completely different material stuff (see graphic
   at right). On this basis functionalism can be classifed as a form of
   token materialism.

Criticism

   Many of Fodor's ideas have been challenged by a wide variety of
   philosophers of diverse orientation. For example, the language of
   thought hypothesis has been accused of either falling prey to an
   infinite regress or of being superfluous. Specifically, Simon Blackburn
   suggested in an article in 1984 that since Fodor explains the learning
   of natural languages as a process of formation and confirmation of
   hypotheses in the LOT, this leaves him open to the question of why the
   LOT itself should not be considered as just such a language which
   requires yet another and more fundamental representational substrate in
   which to form and confirm hypotheses so that the LOT itself can be
   learned. If natural language learning requires some representational
   substrate (the LOT) in order for it to be learned, why shouldn't the
   same be said for the LOT itself and then for the representational
   substrate of this representational subtrate and so on, ad infinitum? On
   the other hand, if such a representational substrate is not required
   for the LOT, then why should it be required for the learning of natural
   languages? In this case, the LOT would be superfluous. Fodor, in
   response, argues that the LOT is unique in that it does not have to be
   learned via an antecedent language because it is innate.

   Yet another argument againt the LOT was formulated by Daniel Dennett in
   1981. The basic point of this argument is that it would seem, on the
   basis of the evidence of our behavior toward computers but also with
   regard to some of our own unconscious behavior, that explicit
   representation is not necessary for the explanation of propositional
   attitudes. During a game of chess with a computer program, we often
   attribute such attitudes to the computer, saying such things as "It
   thinks that the queen should be moved to the left". We attribute
   propositional attitudes to the computer and this helps us to explain
   and predict its behaviour in various contexts. Yet no one would suggest
   that the computer is actually thinking or believing somewhere inside
   its circuits the equivalent of the propositional attitude "I believe I
   can kick this guy's butt" in Mentalese. The same is obviously true,
   suggests Dennett, of many of our everyday automatic behaviors such as
   "desiring to breathe clear air" in a stuffy environment.

   Fodor's self-proclaimed "extreme" concept nativism has been criticized
   by some linguists and philosophers of language. Kent Bach, for example,
   takes Fodor to task for his criticisms of lexical semantics and
   polysemy. Fodor claims that there is no lexical structure to such verbs
   as "keep", "get", "make" and "put". He suggests that, alternatively,
   "keep" simply expresses the concept KEEP (Fodor capitalizes concepts to
   distinguish them from properties, names or other such entities). If
   there is a straightforward one-to-one mapping between individual words
   and concepts, "keep your clothes on", "keep your receipt" and "keep
   washing your hands" will all share the same concept of KEEP under
   Fodor's theory. This concept presumably locks on to the unique external
   property of keeping. But, if this it true, then RETAIN must pick out a
   different property in RETAIN YOUR RECEIPT, since one can't retain one's
   cloths or retain washing one's hands. Fodor's theory also has a problem
   explaining how the concept FAST contributes, differently, to the
   contents of FAST CAR, FAST DRIVER, FAST TRACK, and FAST TIME. Whether
   or not the differing interpretations of "fast" in these sentences are
   specified in the semantics of English, or are the result of pragmatic
   inference, is a matter of debate. Fodor's own response to this kind of
   criticism is expressed bluntly in Concepts: "People sometimes used to
   say that exist must be ambiguous because look at the difference between
   'chairs exist' and 'numbers exist'. A familiar reply goes: the
   difference between the existence of chairs and the existence of numbers
   seems, on reflection, strikingly like the difference between numbers
   and chairs. Since you have the latter to explain the former, you don't
   also need 'exist' to be polysemic."

   What makes Fodor's view of concepts difficult to accept for some
   critics is simply his insistence that such a large, perhaps
   implausible, number of them are primitive and undefinable. For example,
   Fodor considers such concepts as BACHELOR, EFFECT, ISLAND, TRAPEZOID,
   VIXEN, and WEEK to be all primitive, innate and unanalyzable because
   they all fall into the category of what he calls "lexical concepts"
   (those for which our language has a single word). Against this view,
   Bach argues that the concept VIXEN is almost certainly composed out of
   the concepts FEMALE and FOX, BACHELOR out of SINGLE and MALE, and so
   on.

Books

     * Hume Variations, Oxford University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-19-928733-3.
     * The Compositionality Papers , (with E. Lepore), Oxford University
       Press 2002, ISBN 0-19-925216-5.
     * The Mind Doesn't Work That Way: The Scope and Limits of
       Computational Psychology, MIT Press, 2000, ISBN 0-262-56146-8.
     * In Critical Condition, MIT Press, 1998, ISBN 0-262-56128-X.
     * Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong, (The 1996 John Locke
       Lectures), Oxford University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-19-823636-0. ((PDF
       book))
     * The Elm and the Expert, Mentalese and its Semantics, (The 1993 Jean
       Nicod Lectures), MIT Press, 1994, ISBN 0-262-56093-3.
     * Holism: A Consumer Update, (ed. with E. Lepore), Grazer
       Philosophische Studien, Vol 46. Rodopi, Amsterdam, 1993, ISBN
       90-5183-713-5.
     * A Theory of Content and Other Essays, MIT Press, 1990, ISBN
       0-262-56069-0.
     * Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind,
       MIT Press, 1987, ISBN 0-262-56052-6.
     * The Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology, MIT Press,
       1983, ISBN 0-262-56025-9.
     * Representations: Essays on the Foundations of Cognitive Science,
       Harvard Press (UK) and MIT Press (US), 1979, ISBN 0-262-56027-5.
     * The Language of Thought, Harvard University Press, 1975, ISBN
       0-674-51030-5.
     * The Psychology of Language, with T. Bever and M. Garrett, McGraw
       Hill, 1974, ISBN 0-394-30663-5.
     * Psychological Explanation, Random House, 1968, ISBN 0-07-021412-3.
     * The Structure of Language, with Jerrold Katz (eds.), Prentice Hall,
       1964, ISBN 0-13-854703-3.

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