Thinker · TH-0243
Jerry Fodor
Jerry Fodor was an American philosopher and cognitive scientist who taught at MIT, Rutgers and the City University of New York. He argued that…
Also known as Jerry Alan Fodor
1935 – 2017 · New York; Cambridge, Massachusetts; New Brunswick, New Jersey
Traditions: Analytic
Jerry Fodor was an American philosopher and cognitive scientist who taught at MIT, Rutgers and the City University of New York. He argued that the special sciences, psychology included, are not reducible to physics, because their kinds can be realised in many physically different ways. He defended a language of thought and the modularity of input systems, and worked on how mental states come to be about things, proposing an asymmetric dependence theory of content.
Key ideas
- Special sciences have their own laws and kinds, which need not correspond to kinds in physics.
- Thinking is computation over mental representations in a language of thought.
- Perceptual and linguistic input systems are modules: fast, specialised and informationally encapsulated.
- A symbol means 'cow' because cow-caused tokenings are the ones on which all other causes of it asymmetrically depend.
Major works
- "Special Sciences" (1974, Synthese)
- The Language of Thought (1975)
- The Modularity of Mind (1983)
- A Theory of Content and Other Essays (1990)
In the conversation
- Question Eliminative materialism: how can anyone claim that beliefs don’t exist?
- Debate My clients can’t tell walnut from stained beech, but they still mean walnut
- Debate Teleosemantics is the best naturalistic theory of content we have
- Question What is apoha, and does defining by exclusion help with the frog-and-fly problem?
On the map
The questions in The Coordinates of Thought where Jerry Fodor takes a place.
- 1.3.3 Intentionality How can one thing be about another thing?
- 6.14 Philosophy of Psychology Can a science study something only one person can observe?