Jerry's Fans (3)

Jerry A. Fodor

Author profile

born

New York City, New York, The United States

gender

male

website

http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/faculty/Fodor/cv.html

genre

Philosophy, Nonfiction, Science

influences

Hilary Putnam, Sydney Morgenbesser, Jerome Bruner, Franz Joseph Gall,...more

About this author

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Jerry Alan Fodor is an American philosopher and cognitive scientist. He is the State of New Jersey Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University and is also the author of many works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science, in which he has laid the groundwork for the modularity of mind and the language of thought hypotheses, among other ideas. Fodor is of Jewish descent.

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 (LOT) in the mind. Further, this language of thought itself is an actually existing thing that is codified in the brain and not ju...more Jerry Alan Fodor is an American philosopher and cognitive scientist. He is the State of New Jersey Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University and is also the author of many works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science, in which he has laid the groundwork for the modularity of mind and the language of thought hypotheses, among other ideas. Fodor is of Jewish descent.

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 (LOT) 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 reductive accounts of the mind. 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 behavior of neurons and synapses.(less)

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Books by Jerry A. Fodor

Average rating: 3.61 · 164 ratings · 21 reviews · 22 distinct works

	The Modularity of Mind 3.69 avg rating — 39 ratings — published 1982 — 4 editions	My rating:
	The Mind Doesn't Work That Way: The Scope and Limits of Computational Psychology 3.86 avg rating — 21 ratings — published 2000 — 2 editions	My rating:
	What Darwin Got Wrong by Jerry A. Fodor, Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini 3.04 avg rating — 25 ratings — published 2010 — 5 editions	My rating:
	The Language of Thought 3.53 avg rating — 15 ratings — published 1975 — 4 editions	My rating:
	Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind 3.67 avg rating — 12 ratings — published 1987 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong (Oxford Cognitive Science Series) 3.42 avg rating — 12 ratings — published 1998 — 5 editions	My rating:
	Lot 2: The Language of Thought Revisited 3.90 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 2008 — 5 editions	My rating:
	Representations: Philosophical Essays on the Foundations of Cognitive Science 3.83 avg rating — 6 ratings — 3 editions	My rating:
	Holism by Jerry A. Fodor, Ernest Lepore 4.20 avg rating — 5 ratings — 2 editions	My rating:
	The ELM and the Expert: Mentalese and Its Semantics 4.00 avg rating — 5 ratings — 2 editions	My rating: