274 ideas
7396 | Hobbes created English-language philosophy [Hobbes, by Tuck] |
Full Idea: Hobbes created English-language philosophy. | |
From: report of Thomas Hobbes (The Elements of Law [1640]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Pref | |
A reaction: Tuck mentions Hooker as a predecessor in jurisprudence. Otherwise, an impressive label. |
12644 | Who cares what 'philosophy' is? Most pre-1950 thought doesn't now count as philosophy [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Who cares what gets called 'philosophy'? It's my impression that most of what happened in philosophy before 1950 wouldn't qualify according to the present usage. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.5) | |
A reaction: A rather breath-taking remark. Fodor is, of course, a devotee of David Hume, and of Descartes, but he never seems to refer to Greeks at all. Personally I presume that if you aren't doing what Plato and Aristotle were interested in, it ain't philosophy. |
17240 | Definitions are the first step in philosophy [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: In beginning philosophy, the first beginning is from definitions. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 1.6.15) | |
A reaction: Note that he doesn't say that definitions are the aim of philosophy, as some analysts might think. |
6211 | Laughter is a sudden glory in realising the infirmity of others, or our own formerly [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: The passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Human Nature [1640], Ch.IX.13) | |
A reaction: Laughter tends to involve something unusual. We don't just burst out with a glory of vanity whenever we meet some inferiority in another person. |
8014 | Resolve a complex into simple elements, then reconstruct the complex by using them [Hobbes, by MacIntyre] |
Full Idea: Hobbes took his method from Galileo, of resolving any complex situation into its logically primitive, simple elements and then using the simple elements to show how the complex situation could be reconstructed. | |
From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
A reaction: Reverse engineering of reality. This idea, wherever it comes from, strikes me as the key to the advance of human understanding. No one has yet improved on it as a method, in science or philosophy. Reconstruction needs the mechanism. |
12633 | Definitions often give necessary but not sufficient conditions for an extension [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Attempts to define a term frequently elicit necessary but not sufficient conditions for membership of its extension. This is called the 'X problem', as in 'kill' means 'cause to die' plus X. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.2.1 n3) | |
A reaction: Fodor is one of the great sceptics about definition. I just don't see why we have to have totally successful definitions before we can accept the process as a worthwhile endeavour. |
2474 | It seems likely that analysis of concepts is impossible, but justification can survive without it [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Lots of philosophers fear that if concepts don't have analyses, justification breaks down. My own guess is that concepts don't have analyses and that justification will survive all the same. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 3 n2) |
2481 | Despite all the efforts of philosophers, nothing can ever be reduced to anything [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The general truth is that nothing ever reduces to anything, however hard philosophers may try. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 6) |
2505 | Turing invented the idea of mechanical rationality (just based on syntax) [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The most important thing that has happened in cognitive science was Turing's invention of the notion of mechanical rationality (because some inferences are rational in virtue of the syntax of their sentences). | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch.17) |
2463 | A standard naturalist view is realist, externalist, and computationalist, and believes in rationality [Fodor] |
Full Idea: There seems to be an emerging naturalist consensus that is Realist in ontology and epistemology, externalist in semantics, and computationalist in cognitive psychology, which nicely allows us to retain our understanding of ourselves as rational creatures. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
17237 | Definitions of things that are caused must express their manner of generation [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Definitions of things which may be understood to have some cause, must consist of such names as express the cause or manner of their generation, as when we define a circle to be a figure made by the circumduction of a straight line in a plane etc. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 1.6.13) | |
A reaction: His account of the circle is based on its mode of construction, which is the preferred account of Euclid, rather than a statement of its pure nature. |
17239 | Definition is resolution of names into successive genera, and finally the difference [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: The definition is nothing but a resolution of the name into its most universal parts; ...definitions of this kind always consist of genus and difference; the former names being all, till the last, general; and the last of all, difference. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 1.6.14) | |
A reaction: This is basically the scholastic Aristotelian view of definition. Note that Hobbes explicitly denies that the last step of the definition is general in character. |
17241 | A defined name should not appear in the definition [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: A defined name ought not to be repeated in the definition. ...No total can be part of itself. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 1.6.15) |
12619 | We have no successful definitions, because they all use indefinable words [Fodor] |
Full Idea: There are practically no defensible examples of definitions; for all the examples we've got, practically all the words (/concepts) are undefinable. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Concepts:where cogn.science went wrong [1998], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: I don't think a definition has to be defined all the way down. Aristotle is perfectly happy if you can get a concept you don't understand down to concepts you do. Understanding is the test, not further definitions. |
2470 | Transcendental arguments move from knowing Q to knowing P because it depends on Q [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Transcendental arguments ran: "If it weren't that P, we couldn't know (now 'say' or 'think' or 'judge') that Q; and we do know (now…) that Q; therefore P". Old and new arguments tend to be equally unconvincing, because of their empiricist preconceptions. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 3) |
17242 | 'Petitio principii' is reusing the idea to be defined, in disguised words [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: 'Petitio principii' is when the conclusion to be proved is disguised in other words, and put for the definition or principle from whence it is to be demonstrated. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 1.6.18) |
2435 | Psychology has to include the idea that mental processes are typically truth-preserving [Fodor] |
Full Idea: A psychology that can't make sense of such facts as that mental processes are typically truth-preserving is ipso facto dead in the water. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.3) |
17245 | A part of a part is a part of a whole [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: A part of a part is a part of a whole. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.07.09) |
2442 | Inferences are surely part of the causal structure of the world [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Inferences are surely part of the causal structure of the world. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §3) |
12664 | A truth-table, not inferential role, defines 'and' [Fodor] |
Full Idea: I'm inclined to think that 'and' is defined by its truth-table (and not, for example, by its 'inferential-role'). | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.7) | |
A reaction: Sounds right, on my general principle that something can only have a function if it has an intrinsic nature. The truth-table just formalises normal understanding of 'and', according to what it makes true. |
17744 | De Morgan started the study of relations and their properties [De Morgan, by Walicki] |
Full Idea: De Morgan started the sustained interest in the study of relations and their properties. | |
From: report of Augustus De Morgan (On the Syllogism IV [1859]) by Michal Walicki - Introduction to Mathematical Logic History D.1.1 |
13501 | De Morgan found inferences involving relations, which eluded Aristotle's syllogistic [De Morgan, by Hart,WD] |
Full Idea: There was a prejudice against relations (in favour of properties) but De Morgan and others that impeccable inferences turn on relations and elude Aristotle's syllogistic. Thus: All horses are animals. Hence, all heads of horses are heads of animals. | |
From: report of Augustus De Morgan (On the Syllogism IV [1859]) by William D. Hart - The Evolution of Logic 4 | |
A reaction: This is actually an early example of modern analytic philosophy in action. You start with the inferences, and then work back to the ontology and the definition of concepts. But in pinning down such concepts, do we miss their full meaning? |
3005 | 'Jocasta' needs to be distinguished from 'Oedipus's mother' because they are connected by different properties [Fodor] |
Full Idea: If the concept 'Jocasta' needs to be distinguished from the concept 'Oedipus's mother', that's all right because the two concepts are connected with different properties. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p. 84) |
12648 | Names in thought afford a primitive way to bring John before the mind [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Names in thought (in contrast to, say, descriptions in thought) afford a primitive way of bringing John before the mind. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3 App) | |
A reaction: I think the 'file' account of concepts which Fodor has now latched onto gives a wonderful account of names. They are simple if you haven't opened the file yet (like 'Louis', in Evans's example). |
12650 | 'Paderewski' has two names in mentalese, for his pianist file and his politician file [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Paderewski (as pianist and as politician) has two names in Mentalese. If you think there are two Paderewskis, it's important that what you get when you retrieve the pianist file differs from the politician file. You can then merge the two files. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3 App) | |
A reaction: The same will apply to 'Hespherus' and 'Phosphorus'. We can re-separate the 'morning star' and 'evening star' files if we wish to discuss ancient Egyptian attitudes to such things. I love this idea of Fodor's. Explanations flow from it. |
17743 | De Morgan introduced a 'universe of discourse', to replace Boole's universe of 'all things' [De Morgan, by Walicki] |
Full Idea: In 1846 De Morgan introduced the enormously influential notion of a possibly arbitrary and stipulated 'universe of discourse'. It replaced Boole's original - and metaphysically a bit suspect - universe of 'all things'. | |
From: report of Augustus De Morgan (works [1846]) by Michal Walicki - Introduction to Mathematical Logic History D.1.1 | |
A reaction: This not only brings formal logic under control, but also reflects normal talk, because there is always an explicit or implicit domain of discourse when we talk. Of virtually any conversation, you can say what it is 'about'. |
12656 | P-and-Q gets its truth from the truth of P and truth of Q, but consistency isn't like that [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The truth of P-and-Q is (roughly) a function of the truth of P and the truth of Q; but the consistency of P&Q isn't a function of the consistency of P and the consistency of Q. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.4.5 n33) | |
A reaction: This is a nice deep issue. Fodor is interested in artificial intelligence at this point, but I am interested in the notion of coherence, as found in good justifications. Even consistency isn't elementary logic, never mind coherence. |
17258 | If we just say one, one, one, one, we don't know where we have got to [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: By saying one, one, one, one, and so forward, we know not what number we are at beyond two or three. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.12.05) | |
A reaction: This makes ordinals sound like meta-numbers. |
12620 | If 'exist' is ambiguous in 'chairs and numbers exist', that mirrors the difference between chairs and numbers [Fodor] |
Full Idea: People say 'exist' is ambiguous, because of the difference between 'chairs exist' and 'numbers exist'. A reply goes: the difference between the existence of chairs and the existence of numbers is strikingly like the difference between chairs and numbers. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Concepts:where cogn.science went wrong [1998], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: To say 'numbers are objects which exist' is, to me, either a funny use of 'exist' or a funny use of 'object'. I think I will now vote for the latter. Just as 'real number' was a funny use of 'number', but we seem to have got used to it. |
16789 | Only supernatural means could annihilate anything once it had being [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: A being cannot naturally go out of existence. For even if a ship or a plank ceases to be a ship or a plank, it never naturally ceases to be a being. For a being, unless it is annihilated, does not cease to be a being. To annihilate is a supernatural task. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Mundo (On the World) [1642], 12.5) | |
A reaction: This idea was becoming an orthodoxy in Hobbes's time, and leads to the various conservation laws in physics. |
17253 | Change is nothing but movement [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: All mutation consists in motion only | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.09.06) | |
A reaction: Another little gem of simplicity from Hobbes, and one with which I am inclined to agree. The value of a variable can 'change', but that may be metaphorical. |
7559 | Every part of the universe is body, and non-body is not part of it [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: The world is corporeal, that is to say, body...and every part of the universe is body, and that which is not body is no part of the universe. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], IV.46) | |
A reaction: [Hobbes concedes existence to visible spirits, but not invisible ones]. This is the kind of remark which got Hobbes hated. It is also the sort of thing that makes him the best candidate for the 'first modern man'. |
2469 | The world is full of messy small things producing stable large-scale properties (e.g. mountains) [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Damn near everything we know about the world (e.g. a mountain) suggests that unimaginably complicated to-ings and fro-ings of bits and pieces at the extreme microlevel manage somehow to converge on stable macrolevel properties. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 2) | |
A reaction: This is clearly true, and is a vital part of the physicalist picture of the mind. Personally I prefer the word 'processes' to 'properties', since no one seems to really know what a property is. A process is an abstraction from events. |
16670 | Accidents are just modes of thinking about bodies [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: An accident is a mode of conceiving a body. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.08.02) | |
A reaction: In contrast to the other thinkers who followed Suárez on modes in the early 17th century, Hobbes thinks they are just ways of 'conceiving' bodies, rather than actual features of them. |
7014 | A particle and a coin heads-or-tails pick out to perfectly well-defined predicates and properties [Fodor] |
Full Idea: 'Is a particle and my coin is heads' and 'is a particle and my coin is tails' are perfectly well defined predicates and they pick out perfectly well defined (relational) properties of physical particles. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: (Somewhat paraphrased). This is a very nice offering for the case that all predicates are properties, and hence that 'properties' is an entirely conventional category. It strikes me as self-evident that Fodor is not picking out 'natural' properties. |
16621 | Accidents are not parts of bodies (like blood in a cloth); they have accidents as things have a size [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: An accident's being in a body is not to be taken as something contained in that body - as if redness were in blood like blood in a bloody cloth, as part of the whole, for then accident would be a body. It is like body having size or rest or movement. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.08.03) | |
A reaction: [compressed] Hobbes is fishing for something like the Quinean view of properties, but no one seems to be able to articulate this sceptical view very well. Pasnau says he means to talk of 'the mode of conceiving a body' (De C 8.2). |
16734 | The complete power of an event is just the aggregate of the qualities that produced it [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: The power of agent and patient taken together, which may be called the complete power, is the same as the complete cause, for each consists in the aggregation together of all the accidents that are required to produce an effect in both agent and patient. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.10.01) | |
A reaction: They treat powers as macro phenomena, and don't seem to have a sense of the basic powers that build up the big picture. |
12613 | Empiricists use dispositions reductively, as 'possibility of sensation' or 'possibility of experimental result' [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Using dispositional analyses in aid of ontological reductions is what empiricism taught us. If you are down on cats, reduce them to permanent possibilities of sensation; if you are down on electrons, reduce them to possibilities of experimental outcome. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Concepts:where cogn.science went wrong [1998], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: The cats line is phenomenalism; the electrons line is instrumentalism. I like this as a serious warning about dispositions, even where they seem most plausible, as in the disposition of glass to break when struck. Why is it thus disposed? |
2475 | Don't define something by a good instance of it; a good example is a special case of the ordinary example [Fodor] |
Full Idea: It's a mistake to try to construe the notion of an instance in terms of the notion of a good instance (e.g. Platonic Forms); the latter is patently a special case of the former, so the right order of exposition is the other way round. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 4) |
17247 | The only generalities or universals are names or signs [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Nothing is general or universal besides names or signs. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.08.05) | |
A reaction: This is the perfect motto for nominalists, among which I am inclined to include myself. Hobbes had a fabulous gift for economy of phrasing. This website is dedicated to that ideal. Reality does not contain generalities (obviously!!). |
14960 | Bodies are independent of thought, and coincide with part of space [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: A body is that, which having no dependence on our thought, is coincident or coextended with some part of space. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.08.01) | |
A reaction: This rather Cartesian view doesn't seem to offer any distinction between empty space and space containing an 'object'. Presumably it is the ancestor of the Quinean account just in terms of space-time points. Don't like it. |
17250 | If you separate the two places of one thing, you will also separate the thing [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: One body cannot be in two places at the same time, ...for the place that a body fills being divided into two, the placed body will also be divided into two; the place and the body that fills that place are divided both together. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.08.08) | |
A reaction: If every time you manipulated one body it affected both of them, you might say that one body was in two places, rather like a mirror image. |
17249 | If you separated two things in the same place, you would also separate the places [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Two bodies cannot be together in the same place, ..because when a body that fills its whole place is divided into two, the place itself is divided into two also, so that there will be two places. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.08.08) | |
A reaction: The wonderful things about philosophy is that you are faced with obvious truths of the world, and cannot begin to think why they are true - and then up steps a philosopher and offers you a reason. |
17248 | If a whole body is moved, its parts must move with it [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: How can any whole body be moved, unless all its parts be moved together with it? | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.08.05) | |
A reaction: This might be a distinguishing mark for a whole physical body. I think it is probably the main mark for ordinary folk. I've never found this idea in Aristotle. |
16620 | A chair is wood, and its shape is the form; it isn't 'compounded' of the matter and form [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Nothing can be compounded of matter and form. The matter of a chair is wood; the form is the figure it has, apt for the intended use. Does his Lordship think the chair compounded of the wood and the figure? | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Letter to Bramhall [1650], 4:302), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 07.1 | |
A reaction: Aristotle does use the word 'shape' [morphe] when he is discussing hylomorphism, and the statue example seems to support it, but elsewhere the form is a much deeper principle of individuation. |
16790 | A body is always the same, whether the parts are together or dispersed [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: A body is always the same, whether the parts of it be put together or dispersed; or whether it be congealed or dissolved. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.11.07) | |
A reaction: This appears to be a commitment by Hobbes to what we now call 'classical' mereology - that any bunch of things can count as a whole, whether they are together or dispersed. He seems to mean more than a watch surviving dismantling. |
17244 | To make a whole, parts needn't be put together, but can be united in the mind [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: In composition, it is to be understood that for the making up of a whole there is no need of putting the parts together, so as to make them touch one another, but only of collecting them into one sum in the mind. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.07.08) | |
A reaction: This seems to the 'unrestricted composition' of classical mereology, since it appears that Hobbes offers no restriction on which parts can be united by a mind, no matter how bizarre. |
17233 | Particulars contain universal things [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Universal things are contained in the nature of singular things. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 1.6.04) | |
A reaction: That is the neatest and most accurate summary of the situation I have ever read. Particulars come first, but they are all riddled with generalities (but that is not as well said as Hobbes's remark). |
17246 | Some accidental features are permanent, unless the object perishes [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: There are certain accidents which can never perish except the body perish also. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.08.03) | |
A reaction: He is just making an observation, and not proposing a theory about essence. |
17251 | The feature which picks out or names a thing is usually called its 'essence' [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: That accident for which we give a certain name to any body, or the accident which denominates its subject, is commonly called the essence thereof. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.08.23) | |
A reaction: This is clearly a prelude to Locke's more carefully formulated 'nominal essence'. Fairly obvious, for nominalist empiricists. A bit surprising to say this was 'common'. |
16622 | Essence is just an artificial word from logic, giving a way of thinking about substances [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Essence and all other abstract names are words artificial belonging to the art of logic, and signify only the manner how we consider the substance itself. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Letter to Bramhall [1650], 4:308), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 | |
A reaction: I sympathise quite a lot with this view, but not with its dismissive tone. The key question I take to be: if you reject essences entirely (having read too much physics), how are we going to think about entities in the world in future? |
17257 | It is the same river if it has the same source, no matter what flows in it [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: That will be the same river which flows from one and the same fountain, whether the same water, or other water, or something other than water, flow thence. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.11.07) | |
A reaction: This makes the source the one necessity for a river. I think the end matters too. If the Thames reversed direction, and flowed into Wales, it would not be the Thames any more. |
12853 | Some individuate the ship by unity of matter, and others by unity of form [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: In the Ship of Theseus, some place individuity in the unity of matter; others, in the unity of form. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.11.07) | |
A reaction: Simons raises this comment into a dogma, that there are at least two objects present in the ship. If I offered you a sum for the contents of your house, they would have a unity of monetary value. |
17256 | If a new ship were made of the discarded planks, would two ships be numerically the same? [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: If some man kept the old planks as they were taken out, and by putting them afterwards together again in the same order, had again made a ship of them, ...there would have been two ships numerically the same, which is absurd. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.11.07) | |
A reaction: This is the origin of the famous modern problematical example of the Ship of Theseus. The ancient example is just the case of whether you step into the same river, but using an artefact with parts, to make it clearer. |
16794 | As an infant, Socrates was not the same body, but he was the same human being [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: It makes a great difference to ask concerning Socrates whether he is the same human being or whether he is the same body. For his body, when he is old, cannot be the same it was when he was an infant. …He can, however, be the same human being. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.11.07) | |
A reaction: This is not commitment to full (Geachian) relative identity, but it notes the problem. |
17255 | Two bodies differ when (at some time) you can say something of one you can't say of the other [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Two bodies are said to differ from one another, when something may be said of one of them, which cannot be said of the other at the same time. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.11.02) | |
A reaction: Note the astute addition of 'at the same time'. Note also that it is couched in terms of what is true, rather than in terms of 'properties' or 'accidents'. |
12653 | There's statistical, logical, nomological, conceptual and metaphysical possibility [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Statistically, logically, nomologically, conceptually, and metaphysically possible. That's all the kinds of possibility there are this week, but feel free to add others. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.4.3) | |
A reaction: There's also epistemic possibility (possibility 'for all I know'), but I suppose that isn't the real thing. How about 'imaginative possibility' (possibility 'as far as I can imagine')? |
6215 | 'Contingent' means that the cause is unperceived, not that there is no cause [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: For contingent, men do not mean that which hath no cause, but that which hath not for cause any thing that we perceive, as when a traveller meets a shower, they both had sufficient causes, but they didn't cause one another, so we say it was contingent. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Of Liberty and Necessity [1654], §95) | |
A reaction: Contingent nowadays means 'might not have happened', or 'does not happen in all possible worlds'. Personally I share Hobbes' doubts about the concept of contingency, and this is quite a good account of the misunderstanding. |
16582 | We can imagine a point swelling and contracting - but not how this could be done [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Even if we can feign in our mind that a point swells to a huge bulk and then contracts to a point - imagining something's made from nothing (ex nihilo), and nothing's made from something - still we cannot comprehend how this could be done in nature. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.08.20) | |
A reaction: [compressed] Pasnau notes that this offers two sorts of conceivability, of something happening, and of a reason for it happening. A really nice idea, significant (I think) for scientific essentialists, who say possibilities are fewer than you think. |
12651 | Some beliefs are only inferred when needed, like 'Shakespeare had not telephone' [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Maybe some of your beliefs are inferred 'online' from what you have in your files, along with your inferential rules. 'Shakespeare didn't have a telephone' is a classic example, which we infer if the occasion arises. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3 App) | |
A reaction: A highly persuasive example. There seem to be a huge swathe of blatantly obvious beliefs (especially negative ones) which may never cross our minds during an entire lifetime, but to which we certainly subscribe. |
2502 | How do you count beliefs? [Fodor] |
Full Idea: There is no agreed way of counting beliefs. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch.16) |
12628 | Knowing that must come before knowing how [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Thought about the world is prior to thought about how to change the world. Accordingly, knowing that is prior to knowing how. Descartes was right, and Ryle was wrong. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: The classical example is knowing how to ride a bicycle, when few people can explain what is involved. Clearly you need quite a bit of propositional knowledge before you step on a bike. How does Fodor's claim work for animals? |
2501 | Berkeley seems to have mistakenly thought that chairs are the same as after-images [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Berkeley seems to have believed that tables and chairs are logically homogeneous with afterimages. I assume that he was wrong to believe this. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch.16) |
3008 | Evolution suggests that innate knowledge of human psychology would be beneficial [Fodor] |
Full Idea: If I had to design homo sapiens, I would have made commonsense knowledge of homo sapiens psychology innate; that way nobody would have to spend time learning it. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p.132) |
3009 | Sticklebacks have an innate idea that red things are rivals [Fodor] |
Full Idea: God gave the male stickleback the idea that whatever is red is a rival. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p.133) |
2990 | Contrary to commonsense, most of what is in the mind seems to be unlearned [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Contrary to commonsense, it looks as though much of what is in the mind is unlearned. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p. 15) |
16638 | The qualities of the world are mere appearances; reality is the motions which cause them [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Whatsoever accidents or qualities our senses make us think there be in the world, they are not there, but are seemings and apparitions only. The things that really are in the world without us are those motions by which these seemings are caused. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (The Elements of Law [1640], I.2.10), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 10.2 | |
A reaction: This seems to count as a sense-datum theory, rather than a representative theory of perception, since it makes no commitment to the qualities containing any accurate information at all. We just start from the qualities and try to work it out. |
2356 | Appearance and reality can be separated by mirrors and echoes [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: If colours or sounds were in the bodies or objects that cause them, they could not be severed from them, as by glasses, and in echoes by reflection, we see they are; where we know the thing we see is in one place, the appearance in another. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.01) |
2465 | Maybe explaining the mechanics of perception will explain the concepts involved [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Why mightn't fleshing out the standard psychological account of perception itself count as learning what perceptual justification amounts to? | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 1) |
2504 | Rationalism can be based on an evolved computational brain with innate structure [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Pinker's rationalism involves four main ideas: mind is a computational system, which is massively modular with a lot of innate structure resulting from evolution. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch.17) |
16688 | Evidence is conception, which is imagination, which proceeds from the senses [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: All evidence is conception, as it is said, and all conception is imagination and proceeds from sense. And spirits we suppose to be those substances which work not upon the sense, and therefore not conceptible. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (The Elements of Law [1640], I.11.5), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 16.2 | |
A reaction: This is exactly the same as Hume's claim that all ideas are the result of impressions, and is the very essence of empiricism. We see here that such an epistemology can have huge consequences. |
7405 | Experience can't prove universal truths [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Experience concludeth nothing universally. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (The Elements of Law [1640], I.4.10), quoted by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.2 | |
A reaction: Empiricists seem proud to claim this limitation on human understanding, where rationalists like Leibniz use it as an argument against empiricism. Kripke says (e.g. Idea 4966) they are both wrong! I sympathise with Kripke. |
3978 | Associations are held to connect Ideas together in the way the world is connected together [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The laws of associations were held to explicate the semantic coherence of intentional processes, which adjust the causal relations among Ideas to reflect corresponding relations among the things that they're ideas of. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Jerry A. Fodor on himself [1994], p.296) | |
A reaction: With the support of evolution, and the backing of a correspondence theory of truth, plus more sophistication in the associations, this might work. |
12617 | Associationism can't explain how truth is preserved [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The essential problem is to explain how thinking manages reliably to preserve truth; and Associationism, as Kant rightly pointed out to Hume, hasn't the resources to do so. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Concepts:where cogn.science went wrong [1998], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: One might be able to give an associationist account of truth-preservation if one became a bit more externalist about it, so that the normal association patterns track their connections with the external world. |
2493 | According to empiricists abstraction is the fundamental mental process [Fodor] |
Full Idea: According to empiricists, the fundamental mental process is not theory construction but abstraction. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch.12) |
12625 | Pragmatism is the worst idea ever [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Pragmatism is perhaps the worst idea that philosophy ever had. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: Not an argument, but an interesting sign of the times. Most major modern American philosophers, such as Quine, seem to fit some loose label of 'pragmatist'. I always smell a feeble relativism, and a refusal to face the interesting questions. |
2494 | Rationalists say there is more to a concept than the experience that prompts it [Fodor] |
Full Idea: That there is more in the content of a concept than there is in the experiences that prompt us to form it is the burden of the traditional rationalist critique of empiricism (as worked out by Leibniz and Kant). | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch.12) |
2462 | Control of belief is possible if you know truth conditions and what causes beliefs [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Premeditated cognitive management is possible if knowing the contents of one's thoughts would tell you what would make them true and what would cause you to have them. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: I love the idea of 'cognitive management'. Since belief is fairly involuntary, I subject myself to the newspapers, books, TV and conversation which will create the style of beliefs to which I aspire. Why? |
2357 | Dreams must be false because they seem absurd, but dreams don't see waking as absurd [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Because waking I often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdity of my waking thoughts, I am well satisfied that, being awake, I know I dream not, though when I dream I think myself awake. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.02) |
2454 | We can deliberately cause ourselves to have true thoughts - hence the value of experiments [Fodor] |
Full Idea: A creature that knows what makes its thoughts true and what would cause it to have them, could therefore cause itself to have true thoughts. …This would explain why experimentation is so close to the heart of our cognitive style. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
2455 | Interrogation and experiment submit us to having beliefs caused [Fodor] |
Full Idea: You can put yourself into a situation where you may be caused to believe that P. Putting a question to someone who is in the know is one species of this behaviour, and putting a question to Nature (an experiment) is another. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
2460 | Participation in an experiment requires agreement about what the outcome will mean [Fodor] |
Full Idea: To be in the audience for an experiment you have to believe what the experimenter believes about what the outcome would mean, but not necessarily what the outcome will be. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
2461 | An experiment is a deliberate version of what informal thinking does all the time [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Experimentation is an occasional and more or less self-conscious exercise in what informal thinking does all the time without thinking about it. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
2458 | Theories are links in the causal chain between the environment and our beliefs [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Theories function as links in the causal chains that run from environmental outcomes to the beliefs that they cause the inquirer to have. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
17238 | Science aims to show causes and generation of things [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: The end of science is the demonstration of the causes and generation of things. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 1.6.13) |
2508 | The function of a mind is obvious [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Like hands, you don't have to know how the mind evolved to make a pretty shrewd guess at what it's for; for example, that it's to think with. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch.17) | |
A reaction: I like this. This is one of the basic facts of philosophy of mind, and it frequently gets lost in the fog. It is obvious that the components of the mind (say, experience and intentionality) will be better understood if their function is remembered. |
2503 | Empirical approaches see mind connections as mirrors/maps of reality [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Empirical approaches to cognition say the human mind is a blank slate at birth; experiences write on the slate, and association extracts and extrapolates trends from the record of experience. The mind is an image of statistical regularities of the world. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch.17) | |
A reaction: The 'blank slate' is an exaggeration. The mind at least has the tools to make associations. He tries to make it sound implausible, but the word 'extrapolates' contains a wealth of possibilities that could build into a plausible theory. |
12636 | Mental states have causal powers [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Mental states have causal powers. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.2.3) | |
A reaction: I quote this because it gives you the link between a general account of causal powers as basic to reality, and an active account of what the mind is. It has to be a key link in a decent modern unified account of the world. See Idea 12638. |
2994 | In CRTT thought may be represented, content must be [Fodor] |
Full Idea: In the Representation Theory of Mind, programs (the 'laws of thought') may be explicitly represented, but data structures (the 'contents of thought') have to be. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p. 25) | |
A reaction: Presumably this is because content is where mental events actually meet up with the reality being considered. It may be an abstract procedure, but if it doesn't plug into reality then it isn't thought, but merely activity, like that of the liver. |
2443 | I say psychology is intentional, semantics is informational, and thinking is computation [Fodor] |
Full Idea: I hold that psychological laws are intentional, that semantics is purely informational, and that thinking is computation (and that it is possible to hold all of these assumptions at once). | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: When he puts it baldly like that, it doesn't sound terribly persuasive. Thinking is 'computation'? Raw experience is irrelevant? What is it 'like' to spot an interesting connection between two propositions or concepts? It's not like adding 7 and 5. |
2453 | We are probably the only creatures that can think about our own thoughts [Fodor] |
Full Idea: I think it is likely that we are the only creatures that can think about the contents of our thoughts. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: I think this is a major idea. If you ask me the traditional question - what is the essential difference between us and other animals? - this is my answer (not language, or reason). We are the metathinkers. |
15473 | How does anything get outside itself? [Fodor, by Martin,CB] |
Full Idea: Fodor asks the stirring and basic question 'How does anything get outside itself?' | |
From: report of Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by C.B. Martin - The Mind in Nature 03.6 | |
A reaction: Is this one of those misconceived questions, like major issues concerning 'what's it like to be?' In what sense am I outside myself? Is a mind any more mysterious than a shadow? |
2485 | Do intentional states explain our behaviour? [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Intentional Realism is the idea that our intentional mental states causally explain our behaviour; so holistic semantics (which says no two people have the same intentional states, or share generalisations) is irrealistic about intentional mental states. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 6) | |
A reaction: ...presumably because two people CAN have the same behaviour. The key question would be whether the intentional states have to be conscious. |
2981 | Is intentionality outwardly folk psychology, inwardly mentalese? [Lyons on Fodor] |
Full Idea: For Fodor the intentionality of the propositional-attitude vocabulary of our folk psychology is the outward expression of the inward intentionality of the language of the brain. | |
From: comment on Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by William Lyons - Approaches to Intentionality p.39 | |
A reaction: I would be very cautious about this. Folk psychology works, so it must have a genuine basis in how brains work, but it breaks down in unusual situations, and might even be a total (successful) fiction. |
7326 | Intentionality doesn't go deep enough to appear on the physicists' ultimate list of things [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Sooner or later the physicists will complete the catalogue of ultimate and irreducible things, with the likes of spin, charm and charge. But aboutness won't be on the list; intentionality simply doesn't go that deep. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], 4 Intro) | |
A reaction: I totally agree with this, which I take to be a warning to John Searle against including something called 'intrinsic intentionality' into his ontology. Intentionality 'emerges' out of certain complex brain activity. |
15494 | We can't use propositions to explain intentional attitudes, because they would need explaining [Fodor] |
Full Idea: It's not clear what the point would be of an explanation of the intentionality of attitudes which presupposes objects that are intentional intrinsically. Why not just say that the attitudes are? | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], Ch.3) |
3976 | Intentional science needs objects with semantic and causal properties, and which obey laws [Fodor] |
Full Idea: If there is to be an intentional science, there must be semantically evaluable things which have causal powers, and there must be laws relating beliefs and desires to one another, and to actions. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Jerry A. Fodor on himself [1994], p.293) | |
A reaction: The semantics and causation sound fair enough, but the prospect of finding laws looks bleak (though, contrary to Davidson, I don't see why they can't exist). |
3980 | Intentional states and processes may be causal relations among mental symbols [Fodor] |
Full Idea: It may be that intentional states are relations to mental symbols, and mental processes are implemented by causal relations among these symbols. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Jerry A. Fodor on himself [1994], p.296) | |
A reaction: It is hard to see how something could have causal powers just by being a symbol. The theory needs something else to drive the causation. |
17260 | Imagination is just weakened sensation [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Imagination is nothing else but sense decaying or weakened by the absence of the object. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 4.25.07) | |
A reaction: This sounds more like memory than imagination. He needs to say something about unusual combinations of memories, I would have thought. |
12661 | The different types of resemblance don't resemble one another [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The ways in which different kinds of thing are similar to one another aren't, in general, similar to one another. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.5.4) | |
A reaction: Nice, but I think one would say that they lack similarity at the level of primary thought, but have obvious similarity (as concept-connectors) at the level of meta-thought. |
19373 | A 'conatus' is an initial motion, experienced by us as desire or aversion [Hobbes, by Arthur,R] |
Full Idea: Hobbes' notion of 'conatus' is a 'beginning of motion' - a motion through a point of space in an instant of time. In a human subject this is experience as desire or aversion. It thus forms a bridge between physics and psychology. | |
From: report of Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], p.178) by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz 3 'Worlds' | |
A reaction: This sounds rather like the primitive concept of a power which I like, but the term seems to be used very vaguely, and never discussed carefully. The idea provoked Leibniz to connect physical force with mental life. |
2506 | If I have a set of mental modules, someone had better be in charge of them! [Fodor] |
Full Idea: If there is a community of computers living in my head, there had also better be somebody who is in charge; and, by God, it had better be me. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch.17) | |
A reaction: Dennett quotes this as a quaintly old-fashioned view. I agree quite strongly with Fodor, for reasons that Dennett should like - evolutionary ones. A mind is a useless tool without central co-ordination. What makes my long-term plans? It isn't anarchy! |
2358 | Freedom is absence of opposition to action; the idea of 'free will' is absurd [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: If a man should talk to me of a 'free-will', or any 'free' but free from being hindered by opposition, I should not say that he were in an error, but that his words were without a meaning, that is to say, absurd. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.05) |
6213 | A man cannot will to will, or will to will to will, so the idea of a voluntary will is absurd [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: The will is not voluntary: for a man can no more say he will will, than he will will will, and so make an infinite repetition of the word 'will', which is absurd and insignificant. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Human Nature [1640], Ch.XII.5) | |
A reaction: A nice simple point, allied to Nietzsche's notion that thoughts are uncontrollable (Idea 2291). Even Aquinas, who is quite a fan of free will, spotted the problem (Idea 1854). Personally I agree with Hobbes. Free will is a shibboleth. |
2385 | If a man suddenly develops an intention of doing something, the cause is out of his control, not in his will [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: When first a man hath an appetite or will to something, to which immediately before he had no appetite or will, the cause of his will is not the will itself, but something else not in his own disposing. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Letters to the Lord Marquis of Newcastle [1652]) |
2384 | Those actions that follow immediately the last appetite are voluntary [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Those actions that follow immediately the last appetite are voluntary. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Letters to the Lord Marquis of Newcastle [1652]) |
6214 | Liberty and necessity are consistent, as when water freely flows, by necessity [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Liberty and necessity are consistent: as in the water, that hath not only liberty, but a necessity of descending by the channel. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], II.Ch.XI) | |
A reaction: Hume asserts something similar (Idea 2223), but they both miss the point, which is that libertarians about water would have to believe it didn't need to follow gravity, but could refuse to flow. Freedom of will and freedom of action are quite different. |
2445 | Semantics v syntax is the interaction problem all over again [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The question how mental representations could be both semantic, like propositions, and causal, like rocks, trees, and neural firings, is arguably just the interaction problem all over again. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: Interesting way of presenting the problem. If you seem to be confronting the interaction problem, you have probably drifted into a bogus dualist way of thinking. Retreat, and reformulate you questions and conceptual apparatus, till the question vanishes. |
2446 | Cartesians consider interaction to be a miracle [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The Cartesian view is that the interaction problem does arise, but is unsolvable because interaction is miraculous. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: A rather unsympathetic statement of the position. Cartesians might think that God could explain to us how interaction works. Cartesians are not mysterians, I think, but they see no sign of any theory of interaction. |
2599 | Either intentionality causes things, or epiphenomenalism is true [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The avoidance of epiphenomenalism requires making it plausible that intentional properties can meet sufficient conditions for causal responsibility. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Making Mind Matter More [1989], p.154) | |
A reaction: A wordy way of saying we either have epiphenomenalism, or the mind had better do something - and a good theory will show how. The biggest problem of the mind may not be Chalmer's Hard Question (qualia), but how thought-contents cause things. |
3001 | Behaviourism has no theory of mental causation [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Behaviourists had trouble providing a robust construal of mental causation (and hence had no logical space for a psychology of mental processes). | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p. 67) | |
A reaction: If they could reduce all mental events to stimulus-response, that seems to fall within the normal procedures of physical causation. There is no problem of mental causation if your ontology is entirely physical. |
2467 | Functionalists see pains as properties involving relations and causation [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Functionalists claim that pains and the like are higher-order, relational properties that things have in virtue of the pattern of causal interactions that they (can or do) enter into. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 2) | |
A reaction: The whole idea of a property being purely 'relational' strikes me as dubious (or even nonsense). "Is north of" is a relation, but it is totally derived from more basical physical geographical properties. |
2993 | Any piece of software can always be hard-wired [Fodor] |
Full Idea: For any machine that computes a function by executing an explicit algorithm, there exists a hard-wired machine that computes the same function by not executing an explicit algorithm. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p. 23) | |
A reaction: It is certainly vital for functionalists to understand that software can be hardwired. Presumably we should understand a hardwired alogirthm as 'implicit'? |
12632 | In the Representational view, concepts play the key linking role [Fodor] |
Full Idea: If the Representational Theory of Mind is true, then concepts are constituents of beliefs, the units of semantic evaluation, a locus of causal interactions among mental representations, and formulas in Mentalese. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.2.1) | |
A reaction: I like this aspect of the theory, but then I can't really think of a theory about how the mind works that doesn't make concepts central to it. |
3011 | Causal powers must be a crucial feature of mental states [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Everybody is a functionalist, in that we all hold that mental states are individuated, at least in part, by reference to their causal powers. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p.138) | |
A reaction: I might individuate the Prime Minister by the carnation in his buttonhole. However, even a dualist must concede that we individuate mental faculties by their role within the mind. |
5498 | Mind is a set of hierarchical 'homunculi', which are made up in turn from subcomponents [Fodor, by Lycan] |
Full Idea: Fodor sees behaviour as manifestations of psychological capacities, which result from the subject being a set of interconnected 'homunculi', which in turn have subcomponents, all of it arranged in a hierarchy. | |
From: report of Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987]) by William Lycan - Introduction - Ontology p.9 | |
A reaction: This may well miss out the most interesting parts of a mind (such as awareness, and personal identity), but it sounds basically right, especially when an evolutionary history is added to the system. Parts of my mind intrude into my trains of thought. |
2597 | Contrary to the 'anomalous monist' view, there may well be intentional causal laws [Fodor] |
Full Idea: I argue that (contrary to the doctrine called "anomalous monism") there is no good reason to doubt that there are intentional causal laws. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Making Mind Matter More [1989], p.151) | |
A reaction: I certainly can't see a good argument, in Davidson or anywhere else, to demonstrate their impossibility. Give the complexity of the brain, they would be like the 'laws' for weather or geology. |
2985 | Are beliefs brains states, but picked out at a "higher level"? [Lyons on Fodor] |
Full Idea: Fodor holds that beliefs are brain states or processes, but picked out at a 'higher' or 'special science' level. | |
From: comment on Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by William Lyons - Approaches to Intentionality p.82 | |
A reaction: I don't think you can argue with this. Levels of physical description exist (e.g. pure physics tells you nothing about the weather), and I think 'process' is the best word for the mind (Idea 4931). |
2489 | Why bother with neurons? You don't explain bird flight by examining feathers [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Compare Churchland's strategy rooted in neurological modelling with "if it's flight you want to understand, what you need to look at is feathers". | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 8) | |
A reaction: Sounds good, but may be a false analogy. You learn a lot about snake movement if you examine their scales. |
2995 | Supervenience gives good support for mental causation [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Mind/brain supervenience is the best idea anyone has had so far about how mental causation is possible. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p. 30) | |
A reaction: I would have thought that mind brain identity was a much better idea (see Idea 3440). Supervenience seems to prove that 'mental causation' occurs, but doesn't explain it. |
6208 | Conceptions and apparitions are just motion in some internal substance of the head [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Conceptions and apparitions are nothing really, but motion in some internal substance of the head. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Human Nature [1640], Ch.VII.1) | |
A reaction: Note that he carefully covers both thought in concepts and thought in images, and also that he is not saying that thought is the substance, but that it is a 'motion'. This strikes me as an excellent word, and I think Hobbes is right. |
2948 | Sensation is merely internal motion of the sentient being [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Sense in the sentient, can be nothing else but motion in some of the internal parts of the sentient; and the parts so moved are parts of the organs of sense. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 3.15.02) | |
A reaction: Amazingly bold for the time, and presumably influenced by Lucretius. I am sympathetic, but to suggest that sensation is nothing more sounds a bit like a category mistake. Has he grasped that the brain is involved? |
2464 | Type physicalism equates mental kinds with physical kinds [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Type physicalism is, roughly, the doctrine that psychological kinds are identical to neurological kinds. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], App A n.1) | |
A reaction: This gets my general support, leaving open the nature of 'kinds'. Presumably the identity is strict, as in 'Hesperus is identical to Phosphorus'. It seems unlikely that if you and I think the 'same' thought, that we have strictly identical brain states. |
2468 | Type physicalism is a stronger claim than token physicalism [Fodor] |
Full Idea: "Type" physicalism is supposed, by general consensus, to be stronger than "token" physicalism; stronger, that is, than the mere claim that all mental states are necessarily physically instantiated. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 2) | |
A reaction: Such philosopher's terminology always seems cut-and-dried, until you ask exactly what is identical to what. The word 'type' is a very broad concept. Are trees the same type of thing as roses? A thought always requires the same 'type' of brain event? |
2447 | Hume has no theory of the co-ordination of the mind [Fodor] |
Full Idea: What Hume didn't see was that the causal and representational properties of mental symbols have somehow to be coordinated if the coherence of mental life is to be accounted for. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: Certainly the idea that it all somehow becomes magic at the point where the brain represents the world is incoherent - but it is a bit magical. How can the whole of my garden be in my brain? Weird. |
2490 | Modern connectionism is just Hume's theory of the 'association' of 'ideas' [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Churchland is pushing a version of connectionism ….in which if you think of the elements as "ideas" and call the connections between them "associations", you've got a psychology that is no great advance on David Hume. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 8) | |
A reaction: See Fodor's book 'Humean Variations' on how Hume should be improved. This idea strikes me as important for understanding Hume, who is very reticent about what his real views are on the mind. |
12624 | Only the labels of nodes have semantic content in connectionism, and they play no role [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Connectionism has no truck with mental representations; on the one hand, only the node labels in 'neural networks' have semantic content, and, on the other, the node labels play no role in mental processes, in standard formulations. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: Connectionism must have some truth in it, yet mere connections can't do the full job. The difficulty is that nothing else seems to do the 'full job' either. Fodor cites productivity, systematicity, compositionality, logical form as the problems. |
2991 | Hume's associationism offers no explanation at all of rational thought [Fodor] |
Full Idea: With Associationism there proved to be no way to get a rational mental life to emerge from the sorts of causal relations among thoughts that the 'laws of association' recognised. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p. 18) | |
A reaction: This might not be true if you add the concept of evolution, which has refined the associations to generate truth (which is vital for survival). |
3002 | If mind is just physical, how can it follow the rules required for intelligent thought? [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Central state identity theorists had trouble providing for the nomological possibility of rational machines (and hence no space for a non-biological, e.g. computational, theory of intelligence). | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p. 67) | |
A reaction: I surmise that a more externalist account of the physical mind might do the trick, by explaining intelligence in terms of an evolved relationship between brain and environment. |
2598 | Lots of physical properties are multiply realisable, so why shouldn't beliefs be? [Fodor] |
Full Idea: If one of your reasons for doubting that believing-that-P is a physical property is that believing is multiply realizable, then you have the same reason for doubting that being an airfoil (or a mountain) counts as a physical property. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Making Mind Matter More [1989], p.153) | |
A reaction: This merely points out that functionalism is not incompatible with physicalism, which must be right. |
3981 | Most psychological properties seem to be multiply realisable [Fodor] |
Full Idea: These days most philosophers of mind suppose that most psychological properties are multiply realisable. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Jerry A. Fodor on himself [1994], p.298) | |
A reaction: This is just speculation. The physical part may seem very different, but turn out to be identical in the ways that matter (like a knife made of two different metals). |
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. |
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? |
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? |
23987 | The 'simple passions' are appetite, desire, love, aversion, hate, joy, and grief [Hobbes, by Goldie] |
Full Idea: For Hobbes the 'simple passions' were appetite, desire, love, aversion, hate, joy, and grief. | |
From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], I.6) by Peter Goldie - The Emotions 4 'Evidence' | |
A reaction: This is the standard approach to emotions of Hobbes's time. Modern thinkers probably reject the idea that passions can be simple or basic. Rightly, I think. |
17261 | Apart from pleasure and pain, the only emotions are appetite and aversion [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: All the passions, called passions of the mind, consist of appetite and aversion, except pure pleasure and pain. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 4.25.13) | |
A reaction: He now faces the challenge of explaining all the many other emotions in terms of these two. Good luck with that, Thomas. |
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 |
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..." |
2499 | Modules analyse stimuli, they don't tell you what to do [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The thinking involved in "figuring out" what to do is a quite different kind of mental process than the stimulus analysis that modules perform. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch.13) | |
A reaction: My PA theory fits this perfectly. My inner assistant keeps providing information about needs, duties etc., but takes no part in my decisions. Psychology must include the Will. |
2509 | Modules have in-built specialist information [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Modules contain lots of specialized information about the problem domains that they compute in. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch.17) | |
A reaction: At this point we must be cautious about modularity. I doubt whether 'information' is the right word. I think 'specialized procedures' might make more sense. |
22186 | Mental modules are specialised, automatic, and isolated [Fodor, by Okasha] |
Full Idea: Fodor argues that mental modules have three important featuresL 1) they are domain-specific, 2) their operation is mandatory, 3) they are informationally encapsulated. | |
From: report of Jerry A. Fodor (The Modularity of Mind [1983]) by Samir Okasha - Philosophy of Science: Very Short Intro (2nd ed) 6 | |
A reaction: Mandatory is interesting. When I hear an English sentence I can't decide not to process it. Modules cannot be too isolated or they couldn't participate in the team. Each one needs a comms manager. |
2491 | Modules have encapsulation, inaccessibility, private concepts, innateness [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The four essential properties of modules are: encapsulation (information doesn't flow, as in the persistence of illusions); inaccessibility (unreportable); domain specificity (they have private concepts); innateness (genetically preprogrammed). | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch.11) | |
A reaction: If they have no information flow, and are unreportable and private, this makes empirical testing of Fodor's hypothesis a little tricky. He must be on to something, though. |
2497 | Something must take an overview of the modules [Fodor] |
Full Idea: It is not plausible that the mind could be made only of modules; one does sometimes manage to balance one's checkbook, and there can't be an innate, specialized intelligence for doing that. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch.13) | |
A reaction: I agree strongly with this. My own mind strikes me as being highly modular, but as long as I am aware of the output of the modules, I can pass judgement. The judger is more than a 'module'. |
2495 | Obvious modules are language and commonsense explanation [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The best candidates for the status of mental modules are language (the first one, put there by Chomsky), commonsense biology, commonsense physics, commonsense psychology, and aspects of visual form perception. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch.13) | |
A reaction: My favourite higher level module is my Personal Assistant, who keeps nagging me to do sundry things, only some of which I agree to. It is an innate superego, but still a servant of the Self. |
2496 | Blindness doesn't destroy spatial concepts [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Blind children are not, in general, linguistically impaired; not even in their talk about space. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch.13) | |
A reaction: This is offered to demonstrate that spatial concepts are innate, even in the blind. But then we would expect anyone who has to move in space to develop spatial concepts from experience. |
2507 | Rationality rises above modules [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Probably, modular computation doesn't explain how minds are rational; it's just a sort of precursor. You work through it to get a view of how horribly hard our rationality is to understand. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch.17) | |
A reaction: The choice is between a Self which weighs and judges the inputs, or merely decisions that automatically result from the balance of inputs. The latter seems unlikely. Vetoes are essential. |
2500 | Babies talk in consistent patterns [Fodor] |
Full Idea: "Who Mummy love?" is recognizably baby talk; but "love Mummy who?" is not. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch.14) | |
A reaction: Not convincing. If she is embracing Daddy, and asking baby, she might get the answer "Daddy", after a bit of coaxing. Who knows what babies up the Amazon respond to? |
2498 | Modules make the world manageable [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Modules function to present the world to thought under descriptions that are germane to the success of behaviour. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch.13) | |
A reaction: "Descriptions" might be a bold word to use about something so obscure, but this pinpoints the evolutionary nature of modularity theory, to which I subscribe. |
2487 | Mentalese may also incorporate some natural language [Fodor] |
Full Idea: I don't think it is true that all thought is in Mentalese. It is quite likely (e.g. in arithmetic algorithms) that Mentalese co-opts bits of natural language. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 6) | |
A reaction: Presumably language itself would have to be coded in mentalese. If there is some other way for thought to work, the whole mind could use it, and skip mentalese. |
2483 | Mentalese doesn't require a theory of meaning [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Mentalese doesn't need Grice's theory of natural-language meaning, or indeed any theory of natural-language meaning whatsoever. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 6) | |
A reaction: Presumably what is represented by mentalese is a quite separate question from whether there exists a mentalese that does some sort of representing. Sounds plausible. |
2480 | Language is ambiguous, but thought isn't [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Thinking can't just be in sequences of English words since, notoriously, thought needs to be ambiguity-free in ways that mere word sequences are not. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 6) | |
A reaction: I think this is a strong argument in favour of (at least) propositions. Thoughts are unambiguous, but their expression need not be. Sentences could be expanded to achieve clarity. |
12643 | Ambiguities in English are the classic reason for claiming that we don't think in English [Fodor] |
Full Idea: That there are ambiguities in English is the classic reason for claiming that we don't think in English. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.5) | |
A reaction: I have always been impressed by this simple observation, which is my main reason for believing in propositions (as brain events). 'Propositions' may just be useful chunks of mentalese. |
8090 | Since the language of thought is the same for all, it must be something like logical form [Fodor, by Devlin] |
Full Idea: Fodor and Jackendorff argue that since the internal language of thought, or conceptual structure, has to be more or less the same for all people, of whatever language, it will surely be something like logical form. | |
From: report of Jerry A. Fodor (The Language of Thought [1975]) by Keith Devlin - Goodbye Descartes Ch.8 | |
A reaction: The discovery (by, e.g., Frege and Russell) that there is something called 'logical form', which we can track down and represent in precise and fairly unambiguous symbolism, may be one of the greatest of all human discoveries. Perhaps. |
3010 | Belief and desire are structured states, which need mentalese [Fodor] |
Full Idea: A defence of the language of thought has to be an argument that believing and desiring are typically structured states. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p.136) | |
A reaction: A structure is one thing, and a language is another. Both believings and desirings can be extremely vague, to the point where the owner is unsure what is believed or desired. They can, of course, be extremely precise. |
2604 | We must have expressive power BEFORE we learn language [Fodor] |
Full Idea: I am denying that one can learn a language whose expressive power is greater than that of a language that one already knows. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (How there could be a private language [1975], p.389) | |
A reaction: I presume someone who had a native language of limited vocabulary could learn a new language with a vast vocabulary. I can increase my expressive power with a specialist vocabulary (e.g. legal). |
17236 | Words are not for communication, but as marks for remembering what we have learned [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: The use of words consists in this, that they may serve for marks by which whatsoever we have found out may be recalled to memory ...but not as signs by which we declare the same to others. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 1.6.11) | |
A reaction: This exactly fits the idea of mental files, of which I am a fan. That this is the actual purpose of language is an unusual but interesting view. |
12647 | Mental representations name things in the world, but also files in our memory [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Mental representations can serve both as names for things in the world and as names of files in the memory. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3 App) | |
A reaction: I am laughed at for liking this idea (given the present files of ideas before you), but I think this it is very powerful. Chicken before egg. I was drawn to databases precisely because they seemed to map how the mind worked. |
12649 | We think in file names [Fodor] |
Full Idea: We think in file names. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3 App) | |
A reaction: This is Fodor's new view. He cites Treisman and Schmidt (1982) for raising it, and Pylyshyn (2003) for discussing it. I love it. It exactly fits my introspective view of how I think, and I think it would fit animals. It might not fit some other people! |
3135 | Is thought a syntactic computation using representations? [Fodor, by Rey] |
Full Idea: The modest mentalism of the Computational/Representational Theory of Thought (CRTT), associated with Fodor, says mental processes are computational, defined over syntactically specified entities, and these entities represent the world (are also semantic). | |
From: report of Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind Int.3 | |
A reaction: This seems to imply that if you built a machine that did all these things, it would become conscious, which sounds unlikely. Do footprints 'represent' feet, or does representation need prior consciousness? |
12655 | Frame Problem: how to eliminate most beliefs as irrelevant, without searching them? [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The frame problem is, precisely: How does one know that none of one's beliefs about Jupiter are germane to the current question, without having to recall and search one's beliefs about Jupiter? | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.4.4) | |
A reaction: Presumably good chess-playing computers have made some progress with this problem. The only answer, as far as I can see, is that brains have a lot in common with relational databases. The mind is structured around a relevance-pattern. |
2983 | Maybe narrow content is physical, broad content less so [Lyons on Fodor] |
Full Idea: Fodor is concerned with producing a realist and physicalist account of 'narrow content' (i.e. wholly in-the-head content). | |
From: comment on Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by William Lyons - Approaches to Intentionality p.54 | |
A reaction: The emergence of 'wide' content has rather shaken Fodor's game plan. We can say "Oh dear, I thought I was referring to H2O", so there must be at least some narrow aspect to reference. |
12615 | Mental representations are the old 'Ideas', but without images [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The idea that there are mental representations is the idea that there are Ideas minus the idea that Ideas are images. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Concepts:where cogn.science went wrong [1998], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: Good for you, Fodor. I've always thought that the vociferous contempt with which modern philosphers refer to the old notion of 'Ideas' was grossly exaggerated. At last someone puts a clear finger on what seems to be the difficulty. |
2437 | XYZ (Twin Earth 'water') is an impossibility [Fodor] |
Full Idea: There isn't any XYZ, and there couldn't be any, and so we don't have to worry about it. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.I) | |
A reaction: Jadeite and Nephrite are real enough, which are virtually indistinguishable variants of jade. You just need Twin Jewellers instead of Twin Earths. We could build them, and employ twins to work there. |
12630 | If concept content is reference, then my Twin and I are referring to the same stuff [Fodor] |
Full Idea: If the content of a concept is its reference, we can stop worrying about Twin Earth. If there are no senses, there is no question of whether my twin and I have the same WATER concept. Our WATER concepts aren't even coextensive. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: This seems like a neat solution. So do 'tap water' and 'holy water' have the same content to a Christian and non-Christian, when they co-refer to the contents of the font? |
3982 | How could the extrinsic properties of thoughts supervene on their intrinsic properties? [Fodor] |
Full Idea: It is hard to see how the extrinsic properties of thoughts could supervene on their intrinsic properties. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Jerry A. Fodor on himself [1994], p.299) | |
A reaction: This doesn't seem a big problem. Sometimes represented experiences establish the match; sometimes the match is not very good, or even wrong. |
2441 | Truth conditions require a broad concept of content [Fodor] |
Full Idea: We need the idea of broad content to make sense of the fact that thoughts have the truth-conditions that they do. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.II) | |
A reaction: There seems to be (as Dummett points out) a potential circularity here, as you can hardly know the truth-conditions of something if you don't already know its content. |
2999 | Obsession with narrow content leads to various sorts of hopeless anti-realism [Fodor] |
Full Idea: People who ask what the narrow content of the thought that water is wet is (for example) get what they deserve: phenomenalism, verificationism, 'procedural' semantics, or scepticism, according to temperament. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p. 51) | |
A reaction: The question is whether content IS narrow. We could opt for broad content because then we wouldn't have to worry about scepticism, but I doubt whether we would then sleep well at night. |
3114 | Concepts aren't linked to stuff; they are what is caused by stuff [Fodor] |
Full Idea: If the words of 'Swamp Man' (spontaneously created, with concepts) are about XYZ on Twin Earth, it is not because he's causally connected to the stuff, but because XYZ would cause his 'water' tokens (in the absence of H2O). | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], App B) | |
A reaction: The sight of the Eiffel tower causes my 'France' tokens, so is my word "France" about the Eiffel Tower? What would cause my 'nothing' tokens? |
2486 | Content can't be causal role, because causal role is decided by content [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Functional role semantics wants to analyze the content of a belief in terms of its inferential (causal) relations; but that seems the wrong way round. The content of a belief determines its causal role. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 6) | |
A reaction: This is one of my favourite ideas, which keeps coming to mind when considering functional accounts of mental life. The buck of explanation must, however, stop somewhere. |
3012 | Do identical thoughts have identical causal roles? [Fodor] |
Full Idea: If thoughts have their causal roles in virtue of their contents, then two thoughts with identical contents ought to be identical in their causal roles. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p.140) | |
A reaction: A pencil would presumably have the same causal role if it wrote a love poem or hate mail. But a pencil is also good for scratching your back. 'Causal role' can be a rather vacuous idea. |
2452 | Knowing the cause of a thought is almost knowing its content [Fodor] |
Full Idea: If you know the content of a thought, you know quite a lot about what would cause you to have it. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure where this fits into the great jigsaw of the mind, but it strikes me as an acute and important observation. The truth of a thought is not essential to make you have it. Ask Othello. |
2432 | Is content basically information, fixed externally? [Fodor] |
Full Idea: I assume intentional content reduces (in some way) to information. …The content of a thought depends on its external relations; on the way that the thought is related to the world, not the way that it is related to other thoughts. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.2) | |
A reaction: Does this make Fodor a 'weak' functionalist? The 'strong' version would say a thought is merely a location in a flow diagram, but Fodor's 'mentalism' includes a further 'content' in each diagram box. |
12658 | Nobody knows how concepts are acquired [Fodor] |
Full Idea: I don't know how concepts are acquired. Nor do you. Nor does anybody else. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.5.4) | |
A reaction: This comes in the context of quietly modifying his earlier claim that concepts weren't acquired, because they were largely innate. Presumably we are allowed to have theories of concept acquisition? I quite like abstractionism. |
2492 | Experience can't explain itself; the concepts needed must originate outside experience [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Experience can't explain itself; eventually, some of the concepts that explaining experience requires have to come from outside it. Eventually, some of them have to be built in. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch.12) |
11143 | If concept-learning is hypothesis-testing, that needs innate concepts to get started [Fodor, by Margolis/Laurence] |
Full Idea: Fodor argues that virtually all lexical concepts are innate, because most models of learning treat concept-learning as hypothesis testing, but that invariably employs the very concept to be learned. | |
From: report of Jerry A. Fodor (The Language of Thought [1975]) by E Margolis/S Laurence - Concepts 3.3 | |
A reaction: The obvious response is to reject the theory which gave rise to this difficulty. I take concept formation to be a fairly mechanical and barely conscious response to environment, not a process of fully rational and conscious hypothesising. |
6650 | Fodor is now less keen on the innateness of concepts [Fodor, by Lowe] |
Full Idea: Fodor has recently changed his mind about the innateness of concepts, which he formerly championed. | |
From: report of Jerry A. Fodor (Concepts:where cogn.science went wrong [1998]) by E.J. Lowe - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind Ch.7 n25 | |
A reaction: There is some sensible middle road to be charted here. We presumably do not have an innate idea of a screwdriver, but there are plenty of basic concepts in logic and perception that are plausibly thought of as innate. |
12662 | We have an innate capacity to form a concept, once we have grasped the stereotype [Fodor] |
Full Idea: What's learned are stereotypes. What's innate is the disposition to grasp such and such a concept (to lock to such a property) in consequence of having learned such and such a stereotype. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.5.4) | |
A reaction: This is the late Fodor much ameliorated view, after a lot of scoffing about the idea of the tin-opener being innate in all of us. There may be a suspicion of circularity here, if we ask what mental abilities are needed to form a stereotype. |
12618 | It is essential to the concept CAT that it be satisfied by cats [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Nothing in any mental life could be the concept CAT unless it is satisfied by cats. If you haven't got a concept that applies to cats, that entails that you haven't got the CAT concept. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Concepts:where cogn.science went wrong [1998], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: Of course, having a concept that applies to cats doesn't entail that you have the CAT concept. Quine's 'gavagai', for example. I think Fodor is right in this idea. |
12635 | Having a concept isn't a pragmatic matter, but being able to think about the concept [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Pragmatism about concepts really is dead, and the only alternative about concept possession is Cartesianism. That is, it's the thesis that having concept C is being able to think about Cs (as such). | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.2.2) | |
A reaction: I like this. It is very hard to pick out from Fodor the bits where he is clearly right, but this seems to be one of them. I don't like the pragmatic or Wittgensteinian line that having concepts is all about abilities and uses (like sorting or inferring). |
12652 | Concepts have two sides; they are files that face thought, and also face subject-matter [Fodor] |
Full Idea: We think in file names, and file names are Janus-faced: one face turned towards thinking and the other face turned towards what is thought about. I do think that is rather satisfactory. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3 App) | |
A reaction: So do I. I do hope the philosophical community take up this idea (which they probably won't, simply because Fodor is in the late stages of his career!). |
2438 | In the information view, concepts are potentials for making distinctions [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Semantics, according to the informational view, is mostly about counterfactuals; what counts for the identity of my concepts is not what I do distinguish but what I could distinguish if I cared to (even using instruments and experts). | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.I) | |
A reaction: We all differ in our discriminations (and awareness of expertise), so our concepts would differ, which is bad news for communication (see Idea 223). The view has some plausibility, though. |
12614 | I prefer psychological atomism - that concepts are independent of epistemic capacities [Fodor] |
Full Idea: I argue for a very strong version of psychological atomism; one according to which what concepts you have is conceptually and metaphysically independent of what epistemic capacities you have. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Concepts:where cogn.science went wrong [1998], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: This is a frontal assault on the tradition of Frege, Dummett and Peacocke. I immediately find Fodor's approach more congenial, because he wants to say what a concept IS, rather than just place it within some larger scheme of things. |
2471 | Are concepts best seen as capacities? [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Virtually all modern theorists about philosophy, mind or language tend to agree that concepts are capacities, in particular concepts are epistemic capacities. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 3) | |
A reaction: This view seems to describe concepts in functional terms, which generates my perennial question: what is it about concepts that enables them to fulfil that particular role? |
2472 | For Pragmatists having a concept means being able to do something [Fodor] |
Full Idea: It's a paradigmatically Pragmatist idea that having a concept consists in being able to do something. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 3) | |
A reaction: If you defined a bicycle simply by what you could do with it, you wouldn't explain much. I wonder if pragmatism and functionalism come from the same intellectual stable? |
12626 | Cartesians put concept individuation before concept possession [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Cartesians think that concept individuation is prior, in order of analysis, to concept possession. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.12) | |
A reaction: Peacocke is someone who seems to put possession first, to the point where individuation is thereby achieved. The background influence there is Wittgenstein. I think I am more with Fodor, that concepts are entities, which need to be understood. |
12637 | Frege's puzzles suggest to many that concepts have sense as well as reference [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Philosophers in droves have held that Frege cases are convincing arguments that concepts have not just referents but also senses. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.2) | |
A reaction: [Frege cases are puzzles where simple reference seems to lead to confusion] I take the Fregean approach to concepts (of Dummett, Peacocke) to attempt to give an account of the sense, once the reference is decided. Idea 12629 gives Fodor's view. |
12638 | If concepts have sense, we can't see the connection to their causal powers [Fodor] |
Full Idea: How are we to understand the connection between the identity of a concept and its causal powers if concepts are (or have) senses? Answer: I haven't a clue. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.3) | |
A reaction: This seems to be the key to Fodor's attack on Peacocke and other Fregeans - that while they pay lip-service to the project of naturalising thought, they are actually committing us to some sort of neo-platonism, by losing the causal links. See Idea 12636. |
12639 | Belief in 'senses' may explain intentionality, but not mental processes [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Supposing the mind to be conversant with senses can, maybe, provide for a theory of the intentionality of mental states; but it seems to shed no light at all on the nature of mental processes (i.e. of mental state transitions). | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.3) | |
A reaction: I would track this back to Frege's hostility to 'psychologism'. That is, Fregeans don't care about Fodor's problem, because all their accounts (of mathematics, of logic, and of concepts) treat the subject-matter as self-contained sui generis. |
12654 | You can't think 'brown dog' without thinking 'brown' and 'dog' [Fodor] |
Full Idea: You can think 'brown dog' without thinking 'cat', but you can't think 'brown dog' without thinking 'brown' and 'dog'. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.4.3) | |
A reaction: Fodor is talking about concepts in thought, not about words. The claim is that such concepts have to be compositional, and it is hard to disagree. |
12621 | Definable concepts have constituents, which are necessary, individuate them, and demonstrate possession [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The definition theory says that concepts are complex structures which entail their constituents. By saying this, it guarantees both the connection between content and necessity, and the connection between concept individuation and concept possession. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Concepts:where cogn.science went wrong [1998], Ch.5) | |
A reaction: He cites Pinker as a spokesman for the definitional view. This is the view Fodor attacks, in favour of his atomistic account. He adds in a note that his view also offered to reduce conceptual truth to logical truth. |
12622 | Many concepts lack prototypes, and complex prototypes aren't built from simple ones [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Many concepts have no prototypes; and there are many complex concepts whose prototypes aren't related to the prototypes of their constituents in the way compositional explanation of productivity and systematicity requires. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Concepts:where cogn.science went wrong [1998], Ch.5) | |
A reaction: His favourite example of the latter is 'pet fish', where the prototype of 'pet' is hardly ever a fish, and the prototype of 'fish' is usually much bigger than goldfish. Fodor is arguing that concepts are atomic. |
12659 | Maybe stereotypes are a stage in concept acquisition (rather than a by-product) [Fodor] |
Full Idea: We needn't say that learning a stereotype is just a by-product of acquiring the concept; it could rather be a stage in concept acquisition. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.5.4) | |
A reaction: He rejects stereotypes because they don't give concepts the necessary compositionality in thought. But this idea would mean that children were incapable of compositionality until they had transcended the primitive stereotype stage. |
12660 | One stereotype might be a paradigm for two difference concepts [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The same stereotype can give difference concepts; chickens are paradigmatic instances both of FOOD and of BARNYARD FOWL. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.5.4) | |
A reaction: And I'm guessing that lots of concepts could have two equally plausible stereotypes, even within a single mind. Stereotypes are interesting, but they don't seem to be the key to our understanding of concepts. |
12623 | The theory theory can't actually tell us what concepts are [Fodor] |
Full Idea: If the theory theory has a distinctive and coherent answer to the 'What's a concept?' question on offer, it's a well-kept secret. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Concepts:where cogn.science went wrong [1998], Ch.5) | |
A reaction: Not an argument, but worth recording as an attitude. I certainly agree that accounts which offer some sort of answer to 'What is a concept?' have an immediate head's start on those which don't. |
12629 | For the referential view of thought, the content of a concept is just its reference [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Pure referentialism is the kind of semantics RTM requires (reference is the only primitive mind-world semantic property). ...So the content of a concept is its reference. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: This seems to say that the meaning of a concept is (typically) a physical object, which seems to be the 'Fido'-Fido view of meaning. It seems to me to be a category mistake to say that a meaning can be a cat. |
12631 | Compositionality requires that concepts be atomic [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Atomism must be right about the individuation of concepts because compositionality demands it. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch1) | |
A reaction: I suppose this seems right, though Fodor's own example of 'pet fish' is interesting. What is supposed to happen when you take a concept like 'pet' and put it with 'fish', given that both components shift their atomic (?) meaning in the process? |
12657 | Abstractionism claims that instances provide criteria for what is shared [Fodor] |
Full Idea: In the idea of learning concepts by 'abstraction', experiences of the instances provide evidence about which of the shared properties of things in a concept's extension are 'criterial' for being in the concept's extension. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.5.2 n6) | |
A reaction: Fodor is fairly sceptical of this approach, and his doubts are seen in the scare-quotes around 'criterial'. He is defending the idea that only a certain degree of innateness in the concepts can get such a procedure off the ground. |
2439 | Semantic externalism says the concept 'elm' needs no further beliefs or inferences [Fodor] |
Full Idea: It is the essence of semantic externalism that there is nothing that you have to believe, there are no inferences that you have to accept, to have the concept 'elm'. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.I) | |
A reaction: [REMINDER: broad content is filed in 18.C.7, under 'Thought' rather than under language. That is because I am a philospher of thought, rather than of language. |
2457 | If meaning is information, that establishes the causal link between the state of the world and our beliefs [Fodor] |
Full Idea: It is the causal connection between the state of the world and the contents of beliefs that the reduction of meaning to information is designed to insure. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: I'm not clear why characterising the contents of a belief in terms of its information has to amount to a 'reduction'. A cup of tea isn't reduced to tea. Connections imply duality. |
2998 | Grice thinks meaning is inherited from the propositional attitudes which sentences express [Fodor] |
Full Idea: According to Gricean theories of meaning, the meaning of a sentence is inherited from the propositional attitudes that the sentence is conventionally used to express. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p. 50) | |
A reaction: Since the propositional attitudes contain propositions, this seems like a very plausible idea. If an indexical like 'I' is involved, the meaning of the sentence is not the same as its 'conventional' use. |
2482 | It seems unlikely that meaning can be reduced to communicative intentions, or any mental states [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Nobody now thinks that the reduction of the meaning of English sentences to facts about the communicative intentions of English speakers - or to any facts about mental states - is likely to go through. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 6) | |
A reaction: Most attempts at 'reduction' of meaning seem to go rather badly. I assume it would be very difficult to characterise 'intentions' without implicit reference to meaning. |
3006 | Whatever in the mind delivers falsehood is parasitic on what delivers truth [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The mechanisms that deliver falsehoods are somehow parasitic on the ones that deliver truths. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p.107) | |
A reaction: In the case of a sentence and its negation it is not clear which one is 'parasitic', because that can usually be reversed by paraphrasing. Historically, I very much hope that truth-speaking came first. |
2451 | To know the content of a thought is to know what would make it true [Fodor] |
Full Idea: If you know the content of a thought, you thereby know what would make the thought true. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: The truthmaker might by physically impossible, and careful thought might show it to be contradictory - but that wouldn't destroy the meaning. |
3007 | Many different verification procedures can reach 'star', but it only has one semantic value [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Verification procedures connect terms with their denotations in too many ways. Different routes to 'star' do not determine different semantic values for 'star'. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p.125) | |
A reaction: This fairly conclusively shows that meaning is not 'the method of verification' - but that wasn't a difficult target to hit. |
3004 | The meaning of a sentence derives from its use in expressing an attitude [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The meaning of a sentence derives from its use in expressing an attitude. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p. 79) | |
A reaction: Among other things. It can also arrive from a desire to remember something. A sentence can also acquire meaning compositionally (by assembling) with no use or aim. |
2433 | For holists no two thoughts are ever quite the same, which destroys faith in meaning [Fodor] |
Full Idea: If what you are thinking depends on all of what you believe, then nobody ever thinks the same thing twice. …That is why so many semantic holists (Quine, Putnam, Rorty, Churchland, probably Wittgenstein) end up being semantic eliminativists. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.2b) | |
A reaction: If linguistic holism is nonsense, this is easily settled. What I say about breakfast is not changed by reading some Gibbon yesterday. |
2477 | If to understand "fish" you must know facts about them, where does that end? [Fodor] |
Full Idea: If learning that fish typically live in streams is part of learning "fish", typical utterances of "pet fish" (living in bowls) are counterexamples. This argument iterates (e.g "big pet fish"). So learning where they live can't be part of learning "fish". | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 5) | |
A reaction: Using 'typical' twice is rather misleading here. Town folk can learn 'fish' as typically living in bowls. There is no one way to learn a word meaning. |
3000 | Meaning holism is a crazy doctrine [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Meaning holism really is a crazy doctrine. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p. 60) | |
A reaction: Yes. What is not crazy is a contextualist account of utterances, and a recognition of the contextual and relational ingredient in the meanings of most of our sentences. |
3003 | Very different mental states can share their contents, so content doesn't seem to be constructed from functional role [Fodor] |
Full Idea: It's an embarrassment for attempts to construct content from functional role that quite different sorts of mental states can nevertheless share their contents. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p. 70) | |
A reaction: That is, presumably, one content having two different roles. Two contents with the same role is 'multiple realisability'. Pain can tell me I'm damaged, or reveal that my damaged nerves are healing. Problem? |
12634 | 'Inferential-role semantics' says meaning is determined by role in inference [Fodor] |
Full Idea: 'Inferential-role semantics' claims that the meaning of a word (/the content of a concept) is determined by its role in inference. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.2.1.2 n14) | |
A reaction: Fodor is deeply opposed to this view. At first blush it sounds wrong to me, since there seems to be plenty of thought that can go on before inference takes place. Daydreamy speculation, for example. |
2996 | Mental states may have the same content but different extensions [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The identity of the content of mental states does not ensure the identity of their extensions. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p. 45) | |
A reaction: Obviously if I am thinking each day about 'my sheep', that won't change if I am unaware that one of them died this morning. …Because I didn’t have the precise number of sheep in mind. |
12642 | Co-referring terms differ if they have different causal powers [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The representation of 'morning star' must be different from 'evening star' because their tokens differ in their causal powers. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.3) | |
A reaction: This is Fodor trying to avoid the standard Fregean move of proposing that there are 'senses' as well as references. See Idea 12629. If these two terms have the same extension, they are the same concept? They 'seem' to have two referents. |
12663 | We refer to individuals and to properties, and we use singular terms and predicates [Fodor] |
Full Idea: I assume that there are two kinds of reference: reference to individuals and to properties. This means, from the syntactic point of view, that the vehicles of reference are exhaustively singular terms and predicates. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.7) | |
A reaction: The immediate possibility that comes to mind is plural quantification. See George Boolos, who confidently says that he can refer to 'some Cheerios' in his breakfast bowl, and communicate very well. He then looks to formalise such talk. |
2436 | It is claimed that reference doesn't fix sense (Jocasta), and sense doesn't fix reference (Twin Earth) [Fodor] |
Full Idea: The standard view is that Frege cases [knowing Jocasta but not mother] show that reference doesn't determine sense, and Twin cases [knowing water but not H2O] show that sense doesn't determine reference. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.3) | |
A reaction: How about 'references don't contain much information', and 'descriptions may not fix what they are referring to'? Simple really. |
12616 | English has no semantic theory, just associations between sentences and thoughts [Fodor] |
Full Idea: English has no semantics. Learning English isn't learning a theory about what its sentences mean, it's learning how to associate its sentences with the corresponding thoughts. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Concepts:where cogn.science went wrong [1998], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: This sounds remarkably close to John Locke's account of language (which I always thought was seriously underrated). Presumably we can then say that the 'thought' (or Locke's 'idea') is the meaning, which is old-fashioned real meanings. |
12645 | Semantics (esp. referential semantics) allows inferences from utterances to the world [Fodor] |
Full Idea: All you need for inferring from John's utterance to the world is the sort of thing that a semantics (i.e. referential semantics) provides. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.5) | |
A reaction: Fodor is very good at saying nice simple things like that. But it is not enough to infer what objects are being discussed. All the hard cases must be covered (denials of existence, reference to non-existence, intentional contexts, modal claims). |
12646 | Semantics relates to the world, so it is never just psychological [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Semantics is about constitutive relations between representations and the world. There is, as a matter of principle, no such thing as a psychological theory of meaning. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.5) | |
A reaction: The second sentence is in capital letters, but I am still not convinced. The classic difficulty seems to be that you have to use language to pick out the things in the world that are being referred to. Of course, at some point you just see the objects. |
2434 | Broad semantics holds that the basic semantic properties are truth and denotation [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Broad semantic theories generally hold that the basic semantic properties of thoughts are truth and denotation. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.2b) | |
A reaction: I think truth and denotation are the basic semantic properties, but I am dubious about whole-hearted broad semantic theories, so I seem to have gone horribly wrong somewhere. |
2459 | Externalist semantics are necessary to connect the contents of beliefs with how the world is [Fodor] |
Full Idea: You need an externalist semantics to explain why the contents of beliefs should have anything to do with how the world is. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: Since externalist semantics only emerged in the 1970s, that implies that no previous theory had any notion that language had some connection to how the world is. Eh? |
2473 | Analysis is impossible without the analytic/synthetic distinction [Fodor] |
Full Idea: If there is no analytic/synthetic distinction then there are no analyses. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 3) | |
A reaction: There are no precise analyses. I see no reason why a holistic view of language prohibits the careful elucidation of key concepts in the system. It's just a bit fluid. |
2484 | The theory of the content of thought as 'Mentalese' explains why the Private Language Argument doesn't work [Fodor] |
Full Idea: If the Mentalese story about the content of thought is true, then there couldn't be a Private Language Argument. Good. That explains why there isn't one. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 6) | |
A reaction: Presumably Mentalese implies that all language is, in the first instance, intrinsically private. Dogs, for example, need Mentalese, since they self-evidently think. |
7408 | It is an error that reason should control the passions, which give right guidance on their own [Hobbes, by Tuck] |
Full Idea: Hobbes (and Descartes, and many contemporaries) argued that the traditional idea that reason should control the passions was an error, and that (properly understood) our emotions would guide us in the right direction. | |
From: report of Thomas Hobbes (The Elements of Law [1640]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.2 | |
A reaction: I'm an intellectualist on this one. It strikes me as rather naïve and romantic to think that unthinking emotion could ever consistently approach what is right. A recipe for disaster. |
2362 | The will is just the last appetite before action [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: In deliberation, the last appetite or aversion immediately adhering to the action, or to the omission thereof, is that we call the Will. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.06) | |
A reaction: I share his caution about 'the will', but his observation strikes me as inaccurate. When I drink, my 'will' is not my thirst. I take the will to be a feature of my reason. I gave my thirst permission to indulge itself. The will is practical reason? |
12627 | Before you can plan action, you must decide on the truth of your estimate of success [Fodor] |
Full Idea: You can't think a plan of action unless you can think how the world would be if the action were to succeed; and thinking the world will be such and such if all goes well is thinking the kind of thing that can be true or false. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: This is part of Fodor's attack on the pragmatic view of concepts (that they should be fully understood in terms of action, rather than of thought). I take Fodor to be blatantly correct. This is counterfactual thinking. |
2363 | Reason is usually general, but deliberation is of particulars [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Reasoning is in general words, but deliberation for the most part is of particulars. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.06) |
7407 | Good and evil are what please us; goodness and badness the powers causing them [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: We call good and evil the things that please and displease us; and so we call goodness and badness, the qualities of powers whereby they do it. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (The Elements of Law [1640], I.7.3), quoted by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.2 | |
A reaction: It is pointed out by Tuck that this is just like his treatment of colour terms (values as secondary qualities). I would have thought it was obvious that I could say 'x pleases me, although I disapprove of it' (e.g. black humour). |
2360 | 'Good' is just what we desire, and 'Evil' what we hate [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth 'Good'; and the object of his hate or aversion 'Evil'. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.06) | |
A reaction: This meets the Frege-Geach Problem - that we can have these feelings while reading ancient history, but we can't possibly 'desire' any of that. This is better on evil than on good. |
7410 | Self-preservation is basic, and people judge differently about that, implying ethical relativism [Hobbes, by Tuck] |
Full Idea: If men are their own judges of what conduces to their preservation, ..all men make different decisions about what counts as a danger, so (for Hobbes) the grimmest version of ethical relativism seems to be the only possible ethical vision. | |
From: report of Thomas Hobbes (The Elements of Law [1640]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.2 | |
A reaction: This might depend on self-preservation being the only fundamental value. But if self-preservation is not a pressing issue, presumably other values might come into play, some of them less concerned with the individual's own interests. |
2368 | Men's natural desires are no sin, and neither are their actions, until law makes it so [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: The desires and other passions of man are in themselves no sin. No more are the actions that proceed from those passions, till they know a law that forbids them. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.13) | |
A reaction: That is a pretty flat rejection of natural law, as you might expect from an empiricist. So prior to the first law-making, no one ever did anything wrong? Hm. |
6209 | There is no absolute good, for even the goodness of God is goodness to us [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: There is no such thing as absolute goodness, considered without relation: for even the goodness which we apprehend in God Almighty, is his goodness to us. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Human Nature [1640], Ch.VII.3) | |
A reaction: Plato's view of goodness is much more absolute than that of religion, as he proposes the Good as the eternal underpinning of nature. I agree with Hobbes that if God is the source of goodness, that will prevent goodness from being truly absolute. |
2359 | Desire and love are the same, but in the desire the object is absent, and in love it is present [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Desire and love are the same thing, save that by desire we always signify the absence of the object, by love most commonly the presence of the same. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.06) | |
A reaction: Implausible reductivism from Hobbes. Plenty of counterexamples to this. You work it out! |
2370 | All voluntary acts aim at some good for the doer [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Of the voluntary acts of every man, the object is some good to himself. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.14) | |
A reaction: Nonsense. You can only describe sacrificial acts for loved ones, such as children, in this way if this proposal is a tautology. Hobbes cannot know the truth of this claim. |
7409 | Hobbes shifted from talk of 'the good' to talk of 'rights' [Hobbes, by Tuck] |
Full Idea: Hobbes (like Grotius) shifted from talking about 'the good', which had been the traditional subject for both ancient and Renaissance moralists, to talking instead about 'rights'. | |
From: report of Thomas Hobbes (The Elements of Law [1640]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.2 | |
A reaction: This is part of the crucial shift away from the Greek interest in excellence of character, towards the Enlightenment legalistic interest in right actions, as well as social rights. Bad move, well analysed by MacIntyre. |
6210 | Life has no end (not even happiness), because we have desires, which presuppose a further end [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: For an utmost end, in which the ancient philosophers have placed felicity, there is no such thing in this world, nor way to it: for while we live, we have desires, and desire presupposeth a further end. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Human Nature [1640], Ch.VII.6) | |
A reaction: Kant's definition of happiness (Idea 1452) seems to be the underlying idea, and hence with the same implication (of impossibility). However, an alcoholic locked in a brewery would seem to have all that Hobbes requires for happiness. |
2371 | A contract is a mutual transfer of rights [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: The mutual transferring of right is that which men call 'contract'. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.14) |
2372 | The person who performs first in a contract is said to 'merit' the return, and is owed it [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: He that performeth first in the case of a contract, is said to 'merit' that which he is to receive by the performance of the other, and he hath it as due. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.14) |
8015 | Hobbes wants a contract to found morality, but shared values are needed to make a contract [MacIntyre on Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Hobbes makes two incompatible demands of the original contract: he wishes it to be the foundation of all shared and common standards and rules; but he also wishes it to be a contract, which needs prior shared and common standards. | |
From: comment on Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], Pt 1) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
A reaction: At the very least, the participants in a contract must be committed to keeping it even when it is not convenient. But a common purpose seems to be needed too, which makes the contract itself intrinsically valuable. Similar objections to Kant. |
5337 | For Hobbes the Golden Rule concerns not doing things, whereas Jesus encourages active love [Hobbes, by Flanagan] |
Full Idea: Hobbes put the Golden Rule as 'do NOT do to others what you would NOT want done to yourself'. Jesus's formulation encouraged active love. Most Westerners conceive their moral duty as not to do harm, rather than actively doing good. | |
From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Owen Flanagan - The Problem of the Soul p.20n | |
A reaction: This idea probably runs very deep into western culture, where most people feel that they are being very morally good when they are sitting at home and not actually annoying anyone. Utilitarianism also offers a challenge to such complacency. |
2374 | In the violent state of nature, the merest suspicion is enough to justify breaking a contract [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: If a covenant is made with neither party performing presently, but trust one another, in the condition of mere nature (which is war between men) upon reasonable suspicion, it is void. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.14) |
2375 | Suspicion will not destroy a contract, if there is a common power to enforce it [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: If there be a common power set over both parties in a contract, with right and force sufficient to compel performance, a contract does not become void as soon as the parties are suspicious. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.14) |
8016 | Fear of sanctions is the only motive for acceptance of authority that Hobbes can think of [MacIntyre on Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Hobbes has such a limited view of human motives that he cannot provide any other explanation for the acceptance of authority than the fear of sanctions.. | |
From: comment on Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], Pt 1) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
A reaction: There are two alternative views - the conservative view that people naturally welcome and even need authority, because they need to be led; or the Aristotelian view that people are naturally communal, and authority is part of community life. |
2377 | No one who admitted to not keeping contracts could ever be accepted as a citizen [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: He therefore that breaketh his covenant, and consequently declareth that he thinks he may with reason do so, cannot be received into any society. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.15) |
2379 | If there is a good reason for breaking a contract, the same reason should have stopped the making of it [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: If any fault of man be sufficient to discharge our covenant made, the same ought in reason to have been sufficient to have hindered the making of it. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.15) |
2373 | The first performer in a contract is handing himself over to an enemy [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: He which performeth first in a contract, does but betray himself to his enemy. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.14) |
2382 | Someone who keeps all his contracts when others are breaking them is making himself a prey to others [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: He that should be modest and tractable, and perform all the promises, in such time and place where no man else should do so, should but make himself a prey to others. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.15) |
2383 | Virtues are a means to peaceful, sociable and comfortable living [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: The writers of moral philosophy, though they acknowledge the same virtues and vices, yet not seeing wherein consisted their goodness, nor that they come to be praised as the means of peaceable, sociable and comfortable living. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.15) |
2376 | Injustice is the failure to keep a contract, and justice is the constant will to give what is owed [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: The definition of 'injustice' is no other than the not performance of covenant….. and 'justice' is the constant will of giving to every man his own. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.15) |
2367 | In time of war the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: In a time of war…. there is continual fear, and danger of violent death, and the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.13) |
19764 | Hobbes attributed to savages the passions which arise in a law-bound society [Hobbes, by Rousseau] |
Full Idea: Hobbes had wrongly injected into the savage man's concern for self-preservation the need to satisfy a multitude of passions which are the product of society and which have made laws necessary. | |
From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Part I | |
A reaction: Hobbes's famous remark concerns a state of war, which is quite a sophisticated state of conflict between well formed social groups. Rousseau's savage is fairly solitary, so won't be involved in war. |
20566 | Hobbes says the people voluntarily give up their sovereignty, in a contract with a ruler [Hobbes, by Oksala] |
Full Idea: While Hobbes had held that the people were the final source of political authority, he had argued that in entering the social contract they gave up their sovereignty by transferring all power to an absolute ruler. | |
From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Johanna Oksala - Political Philosophy: all that matters Ch.5 | |
A reaction: Later the idea of 'inalienable' rights crept in. If you volunteer for exploitation or slavery, that still doesn't justify them. Sadism is presumably not justified by masochism. |
2366 | There is not enough difference between people for one to claim more benefit than another [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: The difference between man and man is not so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.13) |
20485 | Hobbes says people are roughly equal; Locke says there is no right to impose inequality [Hobbes, by Wolff,J] |
Full Idea: Hobbes's principle of equality was a claim about the mental and physical capabilities of all people. For Locke it is a moral claim about rights: no person has a natural right to subordinate any other. | |
From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 1 'Locke' | |
A reaction: There are obvious questions to ask about the claim that people are naturally equal. For the second one, does the lion have a natural right to subordinate the gazelle? Who cares! I'm inclined to be consequentialist about equality. |
2369 | If we seek peace and defend ourselves, we must compromise on our rights [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: From the first law of nature (that we seek peace, but also defend ourselves) comes the second: that a man be willing to lay down his rights to all things, and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.14) |
20484 | We should obey the laws of nature, provided other people are also obeying them [Hobbes, by Wolff,J] |
Full Idea: Hobbes's position is that we have a duty to obey the Laws of Nature when others around us are known (or can reasonably be expected) to be obeying them too, and so our compliance will not be exploited. | |
From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 1 'Hobbes' | |
A reaction: In particular, we should keep contracts. Hobbes doesn't seem fully committed to keeping facts and values separate. |
7573 | The legal positivism of Hobbes said law is just formal or procedural [Hobbes, by Jolley] |
Full Idea: Hobbes was one of the first to propose the view known as 'legal positivism' - that the criterion for deciding whether a rule is a genuine law is entirely formal or procedural | |
From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.7 | |
A reaction: This was opposed to the tradition of natural law, deriving from Aquinas. It is part of a picture of values draining out of the world as science comes to dominate. The is/ought distinction is its culmination. Power replaces virtue, and Thrasymachus wins. |
2380 | Punishment should only be for reform or deterrence [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: We are forbidden to inflict punishment with any other design than for correction of the offender, or direction of others. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.15) |
23609 | I act justly if I follow my Prince in an apparently unjust war, and refusing to fight would be injustice [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: If I wage war at the commandment of my Prince, conceiving the war to be justly undertaken, I do not therefore do unjustly, but rather if I refuse to do it, arrogating to myself the knowledge of what is just and unjust, which pertains only to my Prince. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Cive [1642], 12.II), quoted by Jeff McMahan - Killing in War 2.6 | |
A reaction: Hobbes early says that Princes make things just by commanding them. This presumably assumes divine authority in the Prince. This is, of course, ancient pernicious nonsense. |
2361 | If fear of unknown powers is legal it is religion, if it is illegal it is superstition [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind or imagined from tales publicly allowed, is religion; not allowed, is superstition. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.06) |
6212 | Lust involves pleasure, and also the sense of power in pleasing others [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Lust consists of two appetites together, to please, and to be pleased, and the delight men take in delighting is not sensual, but a pleasure or joy of the mind consisting in the imagination of the power they have so much to please. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Human Nature [1640], Ch.IX) | |
A reaction: Hobbes would rather burst a blood-vessel than admit any altruism. If you take pleasure in pleasing someone else, why can't that simply be because of the other person's pleasure, with which we sympathise, rather than relishing our own 'power'? |
16600 | Prime matter is body considered with mere size and extension, and potential [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Prime matter signifies body considered without the consideration of any form or accident except only magnitude or extension, and aptness to receive form and accidents. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.08.24) | |
A reaction: I take 'considered without' to indicate that he thinks of it as a psychological abstraction, rather than some actual existing thing. |
17252 | Acting on a body is either creating or destroying a property in it [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: A body is said to work upon or act, that is to say, do something to another body, when it either generates or destroys some accident in it. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.09.01) |
17254 | An effect needs a sufficient and necessary cause [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: There can be no effect but from a sufficient and necessary cause. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.10.02) | |
A reaction: To be compared with Mackie's subtler modern account of this matter. If two different separate causes could lead to the same result, it is hard to see how the cause must be 'necessary' (unless you say they lead to different effects). |
2364 | Causation is only observation of similar events following each other, with nothing visible in between [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: In knowing the meaning of 'causing', men can only observe and remember what they have seen to precede the like effect at some other time, without seeing between the antecedent and subsequent event any dependence or connexion at all. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.12) |
17235 | A cause is the complete sum of the features which necessitate the effect [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: A cause it the sum or aggregate of all such accidents, both in the agents and in the patient, as concur to the producing of the effect propounded; all of which existing together, ti cannot be understood but that the effect existenth without them. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 1.6.10) | |
A reaction: For most causes we meet, this definition will include gravity and electro-magnetism, so it doesn't help in narrowing things down. Notice that he accepts the necessity, despite his committed empiricism. |
3977 | Laws are true generalisations which support counterfactuals and are confirmed by instances [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Laws are true generalisations that support counterfactuals and are confirmed by their instances. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Jerry A. Fodor on himself [1994], p.293) | |
A reaction: This seems correct, but it doesn't disentangle laws as mental states from laws as features of nature |
17234 | Motion is losing one place and acquiring another [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Motion is privation of one place, and the acquisition of another. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 1.6.06) | |
A reaction: This is basically the 'at-at' theory of motion which empiricists like, because it breaks motion down into atoms of experience. Hobbes needs an ontology which includes 'places'. |
17259 | 'Force' is the quantity of movement imposed on something [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: I define 'force' to be the impetus or quickness of motion multiplied either into itself, or into the magnitude of the movent, by means of which whereof the said movent works more or less upon the body that resists it. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 3.15.02) | |
A reaction: Not very helpful, perhaps, but it shows a view of force at quite an early date, well before Newton. |
17243 | Past times can't exist anywhere, apart from in our memories [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: When people speak of the times of their predecessors, they do not think after their predecessors are gone that their times can be any where else than in the memory of those that remember. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.07.03) |
7411 | The attributes of God just show our inability to conceive his nature [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: All the attributes of God signify our inability and defect of power to conceive any thing concerning his nature. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (The Elements of Law [1640], I.10.2), quoted by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.2 | |
A reaction: Presumably he means that 'omnipotence' should just be translated as 'mind-boggling power'. St Anselm's concept of God (Idea 1405) is helpful here, placing it at the upper limit of what can actually be conceived. |
2365 | Religion is built on ignorance and misinterpretation of what is unknown or frightening [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: In these four things - opinion of ghosts, ignorance of second causes, devotion towards what men fear, and taking of things casual for prognostics, consisteth the natural seed of religion. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.12) |
2378 | Belief in an afterlife is based on poorly founded gossip [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Knowledge of man's estate after death, and its rewards, is a belief grounded upon other men's sayings that they knew it supernaturally, or they knew those, that knew those, that knew others, that knew it supernaturally. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.15) |