Minds Without Meanings: An Essay on the Content of Concepts

by Jerry A. Fodor, Zenon W Pylyshyn

Two prominent thinkers argue for the possibility of a theory of concepts that takes reference to be concepts' sole semantic property. In cognitive science, conceptual content is frequently understood as the "meaning" of a mental representation. This position raises largely empirical questions about what concepts are, what form they take in mental processes, and how they connect to the world they are about. In Minds without Meaning , Jerry Fodor and Zenon Pylyshyn review some of the proposals put forward to answer these questions and find that none of them is remotely defensible. Fodor and Pylyshyn determine that all of these proposals share a commitment to a two-factor theory of conceptual content, which holds that the content of a concept consists of its sense together with its reference. Fodor and Pylyshyn argue instead that there is no conclusive case against the possibility of a theory of concepts that takes reference as their sole semantic property. Such a theory, if correct, would provide for the naturalistic account of content that cognitive science lacks—and badly needs. Fodor and Pylyshyn offer a sketch of how this theory might be developed into an account of perceptual reference that is broadly compatible with empirical findings and with the view that the mental processes effecting perceptual reference are largely preconceptual, modular, and encapsulated.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychology, Nonfiction, Linguistics

193 pages, Hardcover

First published December 5, 2014

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Loki · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found it quite hard to get through this book, as I found a lot wrong with it. Many of the arguments are sketchy and don't consider possibilities that allow counter-arguments more validity. A lot of what they take to be "obvious" is not - not in the slightest, and they also manage to ignore seemingly obvious objections. On the plus side, it furthered my understanding of the topic, even if this was achieved by disagreeing with their line of argument.

[Yaojun Lu · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Fodor and his view, but this book is really terribly written. Many paragraphs are contextually confusing, some parts contradict with each other, and most arguments are too damn brief.
In this book, the authors argue that there is no semantic meaning: concepts certainly have content, but the content is nothing abstract such as intension or sense. Their view is referentialist: the content of concepts is the referent.
The main motivation for their view seems to be the ambition of naturalism. If mental states have concepts as their constituents and mental states causally interact with the world, then concepts and their content should be part of this causal world. Traditional views such as Fregean intensionalism starts off in a wrong track because intension is not naturalizable. Contemporary views such as inferential role semantics also fail because their project is circularly dependent on semantic notions.
Their positive account incorporates Kripkean causal theory of reference. Reference is the causal relation between the object-in-the-world and the token of mental representation. At some points the authors make two conflicting claims: content of concepts is extension, content of concepts is extension plus the representing vehicle.
The last two chapters try to offer evidence/mechanism of how our reference to things supervene on the causal relation between the object and our mental representation. Chapter 4 focuses on things in the "perceptual circle" or simply, things that are directly perceivable. Chapter 5 focuses on things outside the perceptual circle: abstract entities, distant objects, objects in the past, etc. Chapter 4 has many interesting experiments; it is basically a list of empirical evidence for Pylyshyn's FINST view. According to this view, the early visual system has a few hyperlink-like "object files" causally corresponding to the real objects. Chapter 5 has a Kripkean story to solve the problem with reference of antique things, but the focus of this chapter is on grounding reference to abstract entities by reference to things in the perceptual circle. The Kripkean story is too short; the part with abstract entities has a lot of metaphysics of property which this book never sets to care about.

[Ron]

Jerry was 80 and Zenon 78 when they were writing this book. Jerry died two years later.
I was attracted by Zenon's these that brain content is not per definition imagelike.

If you're intending to read this book conventionally, say from start to end: don't! Start with 4 Reference within the Perceptual Circle: Experimental Evidence for Mechanisms of Perceptual Reference.

you're welcome! :)