display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
11 ideas
| 5556 | A pure concept of the understanding can never become an image [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The schema of a pure concept of the understanding is something that can never be brought to an image at all. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B181/A142) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. He is thinking of triangles, for example. The emphasis is on 'pure', and this is a nice defence of the notion of 'pure reason'. Obviously you wouldn't understand a triangle if you were incapable of imagining one. |
| 2992 | We may be able to explain rationality mechanically [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: We are on the verge of solving a great mystery about the mind: how is rationality mechanically possible? | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p. 20) | |
| A reaction: Optimistic, given that AI has struggled to implement natural languages, mainly because common sense knowledge seems too complex to encode. Can a machine determine logical forms of sentences? |
| 12641 | Connectionism gives no account of how constituents make complex concepts [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Connectionist architectures provide no counterpart to the relation between a complex concept and its constituents. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.3 n29) | |
| A reaction: This is the compositionality of thought, upon which Fodor is so insistent. Not that a theory of how the mind is built up from the body is quite likely to give you a theory about what thinking is. I try to keep them separate, which may be wrong. |
| 2476 | The goal of thought is to understand the world, not instantly sort it into conceptual categories [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: The question whether there are recognitional concepts is really the question what thought is for - for directing action, or for discerning truth. And Descartes was right on this: the goal of thought is to understand the world, not to sort it. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 4) |
| 12640 | Associative thinking avoids syntax, but can't preserve sense, reference or truth [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: The virtue of associative theories of thinking is that they don't require thoughts to have syntactic structure. But they can't be right, since association doesn't preserve either sense or reference (to say nothing of truth). | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.3 n28) | |
| A reaction: This is using the empiricist idea that knowledge is built from mechanical associations to give a complete account of what thinking is. Fodor resolutely opposes it. |
| 2440 | Propositional attitudes are propositions presented in a certain way [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Propositional attitudes are really three-place relations, between a creature, a proposition, and a mode of presentation (which are sentences of Mentalese). | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.II) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure about 'really'! Why do we need a creature? Isn't 'hoping it will rain' a propositional attitude which some creature may or may not have? Fodor wants it to be physical, but it's abstract? |
| 24011 | Kant thought emotions are too random and passive to be part of morality [Kant, by Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: Kant thinks emotions can't contribute to moral worth because emotions are too capricious, they are too passive, and they are fortuitously distributed by nature. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals [1785]) by Bernard Williams - Morality and the emotions p.226 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] If, like Kant, you want morality to be concerned with rational principles, then you will want morality to be clear, stable and consistent - which emotions are not. I'm with Williams on this one. |
| 2988 | Folk psychology is the only explanation of behaviour we have [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Commonsense belief/desire psychology explains vastly more of the facts about behaviour than any of the alternative theories available. It could hardly fail to; there are no alternative theories available. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p.x) | |
| A reaction: The alternative view wouldn't expect a clear-cut theory, because it deals with the endless complexity of brain events. The charge is that Fodor and co oversimplify their account, in their desperation for a 'theory'. |
| 3975 | Folk psychology explains behaviour by reference to intentional states like belief and desire [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Folk psychology is primarily intentional explanation; it's the idea that people's behaviour can be explained by reference to the contents of their beliefs and desires. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (Jerry A. Fodor on himself [1994], p.292) | |
| A reaction: Sounds good. To reject folk psychology (as reductivists tend to) is to reject the existence of significant intentional states which have causal properties |
| 8687 | Kantian 'intuition' is the bridge between pure reason and its application to sense experiences [Kant, by Friend] |
| Full Idea: In Kant's technical sense, 'intuition' is the bridge between sense experience and pure reasoning, making it possible for us to apply our reasoning to the physical world around us. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Michèle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 3.3 | |
| A reaction: Although this concept invites Ockham's Razor, I like it, since it focuses on the mystery of how reasoning can have application. It is the bridge between the analytic and the synthetic, between the a priori and the empirical. It unites thought. |
| 2450 | Rationality has mental properties - autonomy, productivity, experiment [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Mentalism isn't gratuitous; you need it to explain rationality. Mental causation buys you behaviours that are unlike reflexes in at least three ways: they're autonomous, they're productive, and they're experimental. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: He makes his three ways sound all-or-nothing, which is (I believe) the single biggest danger when thinking about the mind. "Either you are conscious, or you are not..." |