225 ideas
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. |
13734 | Modern Quinean metaphysics is about what exists, but Aristotelian metaphysics asks about grounding [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: On the now dominant Quinean view, metaphysics is about what there is (such as properties, meanings and numbers). I will argue for the revival of a more traditional Aristotelian view, on which metaphysics is about what grounds what. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], Intro) | |
A reaction: I find that an enormously helpful distinction, and support the Aristotelian view. Schaffer's general line is that what exists is fairly uncontroversial and dull, but the interesting truths about the world emerge when we grasp its structure. |
13751 | If you tore the metaphysics out of philosophy, the whole enterprise would collapse [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Traditional metaphysics is so tightly woven into the fabric of philosophy that it cannot be torn out without the whole tapestry unravelling. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.3) | |
A reaction: I often wonder why the opponents of metaphysics still continue to do philosophy. I don't see how you address questions of ethics, or philosophy of mathematics (etc) without coming up against highly general and abstract over-questions. |
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. |
14600 | Analysis aims at secure necessary and sufficient conditions [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: An analysis is an attempt at providing finite, non-circular, and intuitively adequate necessary and sufficient conditions. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (Causation and Laws of Nature [2008], 3) | |
A reaction: Specifying the 'conditions' for something doesn't seem to quite add up to telling you what the thing is. A trivial side-effect might qualify as a sufficient condition for something, if it always happens. |
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) |
13743 | We should not multiply basic entities, but we can have as many derivative entities as we like [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Occam's Razor should only be understood to concern substances: do not multiply basic entities without necessity. There is no problem with the multiplication of derivative entities - they are an 'ontological free lunch'. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1) | |
A reaction: The phrase 'ontological free lunch' comes from Armstrong. This is probably what Occam meant. A few extra specks of dust, or even a few more numbers (thank you, Cantor!) don't seem to challenge the principle. |
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) |
14603 | 'Reification' occurs if we mistake a concept for a thing [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: 'Reification' occurs when a mere concept is mistaken for a thing. We seem generally prone to this sort of error. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (Causation and Laws of Nature [2008], 3.1) | |
A reaction: Personally I think we should face up to the fact that this is the only way we can think about generalised or abstract entities, and stop thinking of it as an 'error'. We have evolved to think well about objects, so we translate everything that way. |
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) |
14607 | T adds □p→p for reflexivity, and is ideal for modeling lawhood [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: System T is a normal modal system augmented with the reflexivity-generating axiom □p→p, and is, I think, the best modal logic for modeling lawhood. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (Causation and Laws of Nature [2008], n46) | |
A reaction: Schaffer shows in the article why transitivity would not be appropriate for lawhood. |
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) |
10373 | Logical form can't dictate metaphysics, as it may propose an undesirable property [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Logical form should not have the last word in metaphysics, since it might predicate a property that we have theoretical reason to reject. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 1.3.1) | |
A reaction: These kind of warnings need to be sounded all the time, to prevent logicians and language experts from pitching their tents in the middle of metaphysics. They are welcome guests only, |
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. |
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. |
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. |
13741 | If 'there are red roses' implies 'there are roses', then 'there are prime numbers' implies 'there are numbers' [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: We can automatically infer 'there are roses' from 'there are red roses' (with no shift in the meaning of 'roses'). Likewise one can automatically infer 'there are numbers' from 'there are prime numbers'. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1) | |
A reaction: He similarly observes that the atheist's 'God is a fictional character' implies 'there are fictional characters'. Schaffer is not committing to a strong platonism with his claim - merely that the existence of numbers is hardly worth disputing. |
14604 | If a notion is ontologically basic, it should be needed in our best attempt at science [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Science represents our best systematic understanding of the world, and if a certain notion proves unneeded in our best attempt at that, this provides strong evidence that what this notion concerns is not ontologically basic. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (Causation and Laws of Nature [2008], 3.2) | |
A reaction: But is the objective of science to find out what is 'ontologically basic'? If scientists can't get a purchase on a question, they have no interest in it. What are electrons made of? |
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. |
13748 | Grounding is unanalysable and primitive, and is the basic structuring concept in metaphysics [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Grounding should be taken as primitive, as per the neo-Aristotelian approach. Grounding is an unanalyzable but needed notion - it is the primitive structuring conception of metaphysics. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.2) | |
A reaction: [he cites K.Fine 1991] I find that this simple claim clarifies the discussions of Kit Fine, where you are not always quite sure what the game is. I agree fully with it. It makes metaphysics interesting, where cataloguing entities is boring. |
17304 | As causation links across time, grounding links the world across levels [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Grounding is something like metaphysical causation. Just as causation links the world across time, grounding links the world across levels. Grounding connects the more fundamental to the less fundamental, and thereby backs a certain form of explanation. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], Intro) | |
A reaction: Obviously you need 'levels' for this, which we should take to be structural levels. |
17306 | If ground is transitive and irreflexive, it has a strict partial ordering, giving structure [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: By treating grounding as transitive (and irreflexive), one generates a strict partial ordering that induces metaphysical structure. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], Intro) | |
A reaction: Schaffer's paper goes on to attach the claim that grounding is transitive, but I didn't find his examples very convincing. |
14599 | Three types of reduction: Theoretical (of terms), Definitional (of concepts), Ontological (of reality) [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Theoretical reduction concerns terms found in a theory; Definitional reduction concerns concepts found in the mind; Ontological reduction is independent of how we conceptualize entities, or theorize about them, and is about reality. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (Causation and Laws of Nature [2008], 1) | |
A reaction: An Aristotelian definition refers to reality, rather than to our words or concepts. |
13747 | Supervenience is just modal correlation [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Supervenience is mere modal correlation. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.2) |
13744 | The cosmos is the only fundamental entity, from which all else exists by abstraction [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: My preferred view is that there is only one fundamental entity - the whole concrete cosmos - from which all else exists by abstraction. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1) | |
A reaction: This looks to me like weak anti-realism - that there are no natural 'joints' in nature - but I don't think Schaffer intends that. I take the joints to be fundamentals, which necessitates that the cosmos has parts. His 'abstraction' is clearly a process. |
10367 | There is only one fact - the True [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: It can be argued that if all facts are logically equivalent, then there is only one fact - the True. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 1.1) | |
A reaction: [he cites Davidson's 'Causal Relations', who cites Frege] This is the sort of bizarre stuff you end up with if you start from formal logic and work out to the world, instead of vice versa. |
13739 | Maybe categories are just the different ways that things depend on basic substances [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Maybe the categories are determined by the different grounding relations, ..so that categories just are the ways things depend on substances. ...Categories are places in the dependence ordering. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 1.3) |
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. |
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. |
14605 | Tropes are the same as events [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Tropes can be identified with events. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (Causation and Laws of Nature [2008], n17) | |
A reaction: This is presumably on the view of events, associated with Kim, as instantiations of properties. This idea is a new angle on tropes and events which had never occurred to me. |
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) |
14601 | Individuation aims to count entities, by saying when there is one [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Individuation principles are attempts to describe how to count entities in a given domain, by saying when there is one. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (Causation and Laws of Nature [2008], 3) | |
A reaction: At last, someone tells me what they mean by 'individuation'! So it is just saying what your units are prior to counting, followed (presumably) by successful counting. It seems to aim more at kinds than at particulars. |
14082 | No sortal could ever exactly pin down which set of particles count as this 'cup' [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Many decent candidates could the referent of this 'cup', differing over whether outlying particles are parts. No further sortal I could invoke will be selective enough to rule out all but one referent for it. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (Deflationary Metaontology of Thomasson [2009], 3.1 n8) | |
A reaction: I never had much faith in sortals for establishing individual identity, so this point comes as no surprise. The implication is strongly realist - that the cup has an identity which is permanently beyond our capacity to specify it. |
13742 | There exist heaps with no integral unity, so we should accept arbitrary composites in the same way [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: I am happy to accept universal composition, on the grounds that there are heaps, piles etc with no integral unity, and that arbitrary composites are no less unified than heaps. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1 n11) | |
A reaction: The metaphysical focus is then placed on what constitutes 'integral unity', which is precisely the question which most interested Aristotle. Clearly if there is nothing more to an entity than its components, scattering them isn't destruction. |
13752 | The notion of 'grounding' can explain integrated wholes in a way that mere aggregates can't [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: The notion of grounding my capture a crucial mereological distinction (missing from classical mereology) between an integrated whole with genuine unity, and a mere aggregate. x is an integrated whole if it grounds its proper parts. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 3.1) | |
A reaction: That gives a nice theoretical notion, but if you remove each of the proper parts, does x remain? Is it a bare particular? I take it that it will have to be an abstract principle, the one Aristotle was aiming at with his notion of 'form'. Schaffer agrees. |
14081 | Identities can be true despite indeterminate reference, if true under all interpretations [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: There can be determinately true identity claims despite indeterminate reference of the terms flanking the identity sign; these will be identity claims true under all admissible interpretations of the flanking terms. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (Deflationary Metaontology of Thomasson [2009], 3.1) | |
A reaction: In informal contexts there might be problems with the notion of what is 'admissible'. Is 'my least favourite physical object' admissible? |
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')? |
14606 | Only ideal conceivability could indicate what is possible [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: The only plausible link from conceivability to possibility is via ideal conceivability. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (Causation and Laws of Nature [2008], n22) | |
A reaction: [He cites Chalmers 2002] I'm not sure what 'via' could mean here. Since I don't know any other way than attempted conceivability for assessing a possibility, I am a bit baffled by this idea. |
13749 | Belief in impossible worlds may require dialetheism [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: One motivation for dialetheism is the view that there are impossible worlds. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.3) |
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? |
13740 | 'Moorean certainties' are more credible than any sceptical argument [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: A 'Moorean certainty' is when something is more credible than any philosopher's argument to the contrary. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1) | |
A reaction: The reference is to G.E. Moore's famous claim that the existence of his hand is more certain than standard sceptical arguments. It sounds empiricist, but they might be parallel rational truths, of basic logic or arithmetic. |
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) |
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) |
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) |
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) |
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) |
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. |
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? |
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) |
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) |
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) |
17308 | Explaining 'Adam ate the apple' depends on emphasis, and thus implies a contrast [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Explaining why ADAM ate the apple is a different matter from explaining why he ATE the apple, and from why he ate THE APPLE. ...In my view the best explanations incorporate ....contrastive information. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], 4.3.1) | |
A reaction: But why are the contrasts Eve, or throwing it, or a pear? It occurs to me that this is wrong! The contrast is with anything else which could have gone in subject, verb or object position. It is a matter of categories, not of contrasts. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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) |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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! |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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). |
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. |
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? |
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. |
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. |
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). |
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. |
2992 | We may be able to explain rationality mechanically [Fodor] |
Full Idea: We are on the verge of solving a great mystery about the mind: how is rationality mechanically possible? | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p. 20) | |
A reaction: Optimistic, given that AI has struggled to implement natural languages, mainly because common sense knowledge seems too complex to encode. Can a machine determine logical forms of sentences? |
12641 | Connectionism gives no account of how constituents make complex concepts [Fodor] |
Full Idea: Connectionist architectures provide no counterpart to the relation between a complex concept and its constituents. | |
From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.3 n29) | |
A reaction: This is the compositionality of thought, upon which Fodor is so insistent. Not that a theory of how the mind is built up from the body is quite likely to give you a theory about what thinking is. I try to keep them separate, which may be wrong. |
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? |
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. |
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. |
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'. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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? |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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). |
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? |
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. |
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. |
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? |
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. |
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!). |
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. |
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? |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
17305 | I take what is fundamental to be the whole spatiotemporal manifold and its fields [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: I myself would prefer to speak of what is fundamental in terms of the whole spatiotemporal manifold and the fields that permeate it, with parts counting as derivative of the whole. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], 4.1.1) | |
A reaction: Not quite the Parmenidean One, since it has parts, but a nice try at updating the great man. Note the reference to 'fields', suggesting that this view is grounded in the physics rather than metaphysics. How many fields has it got? |
10359 | In causation there are three problems of relata, and three metaphysical problems [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: The questions about causation concern their relata (in space-time, how fine-grained, how many?) and the metaphysics (distinguish causal sequences from others, the direction of causation, selecting causes among pre-conditions?). | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], Intro) | |
A reaction: A very nice map (which has got me thinking about restructuring this database). I can't think of a better way to do philosophy than this (let's hear it for analysis - but the greatest role models for the approach are Aristotle and Aquinas). |
10372 | Causation may not be transitive; the last event may follow from the first, but not be caused by it [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: It is not clear whether causation is transitive. For example, if a boulder roll's towards a hiker's head, causing the hiker to duck, which causes the hiker to survive, it does not seem that the rolling boulder causes the survival of the hiker. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 1.2) | |
A reaction: Maybe survival is not an event or an effect. How many times have I survived in my life? We could, though, say that the hiker strained a muscle as he or she ducked. But then it is unclear whether the boulder caused the muscle-strain. |
10374 | There are at least ten theories about causal connections [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Theories of causal connection are: nomological subsumption, statistical correlation, counterfactual dependence, agential manipulability, contiguous change, energy flow, physical processes, property transference, primitivism and eliminativism. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 1.3.1) | |
A reaction: Schaffer reduces these to probability and process. I prefer the latter. The first two are wrong, the third right but superficial, the fourth wrong, the fifth, sixth and seventh on the right lines, the eighth wrong, the ninth tempting, and the last wrong. |
17307 | Nowadays causation is usually understood in terms of equations and variable ranges [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: The leading treatments of causation work within 'structural equation models', with events represented via variables each of which is allotted a range of permitted values, which constitute a 'contrast space'. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], 4.3.1) | |
A reaction: Like Woodward's idea that causation is a graph, this seems to be a matter of plotting or formalising correlations between activities, which is a very Humean approach to causation. |
10366 | Causation transcends nature, because absences can cause things [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: The main argument for causation being transcendent (rather than being immanent in nature) is that absences can be involved in causal relations. Thus a rock-climber is caused to survive by not falling. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 1.1) | |
A reaction: I don't like that. The obvious strategy is to redescribe the events. Even being hit with a brick could be described as an 'absence of brick-prevention'. So not being hit by a brick can be described as 'presence of brick prevention'. |
10377 | Causation may not be a process, if a crucial part of the process is 'disconnected' [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: One problem case for the process view of causation is 'disconnection'. If a brick breaks a window by being fired from a catapult, a latch is released which was preventing the catapult from firing, so the 'process' is just internal to the catapult. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 2.1.1) | |
A reaction: Schaffer says the normal reply is to deny that the catch-releasing is genuinely causal. I would have thought we should go more fine-grained, and identify linked components of the causal process. |
10378 | A causal process needs to be connected to the effect in the right way [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: A problem case for the process view of causation is 'misconnection'. A process may be connected to an effect, without being causal, as when someone watches an act of vandalism in dismay. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 2.1.1) | |
A reaction: This is a better objection to the process view than Idea 10377. If I push a window with increasing force until it breaks, the process is continuous, but it suddenly becomes a cause. |
10382 | Causation can't be a process, because a process needs causation as a primitive [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: It might be that if causation is said to be a process, then a process is nothing more than a causal sequence, so that causation is primitive. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 2.1.2) | |
A reaction: This again is tempting (as well as the primitivist view of probabilistic causation). If one tries to define a process as mere chronology, then the causal and accidental are indistinguishable. I take the label 'primitive' to be just our failure. |
10375 | At least four rivals have challenged the view that causal direction is time direction [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: The traditional view that the direction of causation is the direction of time has been challenged, by the direction of forking, by overdetermination, by independence, and by manipulation, which all seem to be one-directional features. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 1.3.1) | |
A reaction: Personally I incline to the view that time is prior, and fixes the direction of causation. I'm not sure that 'backward causation' can be stated coherently, even if it is metaphysically or naturally possible. |
10389 | Causal order must be temporal, or else causes could be blocked, and time couldn't be explained [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Reasons for causal order being temporal order are that otherwise the effect might occur but the cause then get prevented, ..and that they must be the same, because the temporal order can only be analysed in terms of the causal order. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 2.2) | |
A reaction: If one took both time and causation as primitive, then the second argument would be void. The first argument, though, sounds pretty overwhelming to me. |
10390 | Causal order is not temporal, because of time travel, and simultanous, joint or backward causes [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Reasons for denying that causal order is temporal order are that time travel seems possible, that cause and effect can be simultaneous, because joint effects have temporal order without causal connection, and because backward causation may exist. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 2.2) | |
A reaction: The possibility of time travel and backward causation can clearly be doubted, and certainly can't be grounds for one's whole metaphysics. The other two need careful analysis, but I think they can be answered. Causation is temporal. |
10380 | Causation is primitive; it is too intractable and central to be reduced; all explanations require it [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Primitivism arises from our failure to reduce causation, but also from causation being too central to reduce. The probability and process accounts are said to be inevitably circular, as they cannot be understood without reference to causation. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 2.1.2) | |
A reaction: This is very tempting. The primitive view, though, must deal with the direction problem, which may suggest that time is even more primitive. Can we have a hierarchy of primitiveness? To be alive is to be causal. |
10385 | If causation is just observables, or part of common sense, or vacuous, it can't be primitive [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: The three main objections to causation being primitive are that causation can't be anything more than what we observe, or that such a primitive is too spooky to be acceptable, or that primitivism leads to elimination of causation. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 2.1.2) | |
A reaction: [summarised] I don't like the first (Humean) view. I suspect that anything which we finally decide has to be primitive (time, for example) is going to be left looking 'spooky', and I suspect that eliminativism is just Humeanism in disguise. |
10387 | The notion of causation allows understanding of science, without appearing in equations [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: The concepts of 'event', 'law', 'cause' and 'explanation' are nomic concepts which serve to allow a systematic understanding of science; they do not themselves appear in the equations. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 2.1.2) | |
A reaction: This is a criticism of Russell's attempt to eliminate causation from science. It shows that there has to be something we can call 'metascience', which is the province of philosophers, since scientists don't have much interest in it. |
10388 | Causation is utterly essential for numerous philosophical explanations [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Causation can't be eliminated if it is needed to explain persistence, explanation, disposition, perception, warrant, action, responsibility, mental functional role, conceptual content, and reference. It's elimination would be catastrophic. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 2.1.2) | |
A reaction: [compressed list] I think I am going to vote for the view that causation is one of the primitives in the metaphysics of nature, so I have to agree with this. Most of the listed items, though, are controversial, so eliminativists are not defeated. |
10384 | If two different causes are possible in one set of circumstances, causation is primitive [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Causation seems to be primitive if the same laws and patterns of events might embody three different possible causes, as when two magicians cast the same successful spell, each with a 50% chance of success, and who was successful is unclear. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 2.1.2) | |
A reaction: I'm cautious when the examples involve magic. It implies that the process that leads to the result will be impossible to observe, but if magic never really happens, then the patterns of events will always be different. |
10386 | If causation is primitive, it can be experienced in ourselves, or inferred as best explanation [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: The view that causation is primitive can be defended against Humean critics by saying that causation can be directly observed in the will or our bodies, or that it can be inferred as the best explanation. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 2.1.2) | |
A reaction: I like both views, and have just converted myself to the primitivist view of causation! I can't know the essence of a tree, because I am not a tree, but I can know the essence of causation. The Greek fascination with explaining movement is linked. |
10361 | Events are fairly course-grained (just saying 'hello'), unlike facts (like saying 'hello' loudly) [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Events are relatively coarse-grained, unlike facts; so the event of John's saying 'hello' seems to be the same event as John's saying 'hello' loudly, while they seem to be different facts. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 1) | |
A reaction: The example seems good support for facts, since saying 'hello' loudly could have quite different effects from just saying 'hello'. I also incline temperamentally towards a fine-grained account, because it is more reductivist. |
10360 | Causal relata are events - or facts, features, tropes, states, situations or aspects [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: The standard view make causal relata events (Davidson, Kim, Lewis), but there is considerable support for facts (Bennett, Mellor), and occasional support for features (Dretske), tropes (Campbell), states of affairs (Armstrong), and situations and aspects. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 1) | |
A reaction: An event is presumed to be concrete, while a fact is more abstract (a proposition, perhaps). I'm always drawn to 'processes' (because they are good for discussing the mind), so an event, as a sort of natural process, looks good. |
10362 | One may defend three or four causal relata, as in 'c causes e rather than e*' [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: The view that there are two causal relata is widely assumed but seldom defended. But the account based on 'effectual difference' says the form is 'c causes e rather than e*'. One might defend four relata, in 'c rather than c* causes e rather than e*'. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 1) | |
A reaction: [compressed] This doesn't sound very plausible to me. How do you decide which is e*? If I lob a brick into the crowd, it hits Jim rather than - who? |
10368 | If causal relata must be in nature and fine-grained, neither facts nor events will do [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Theorists who reject both events and facts as causal relata do so because the relata must be immanent in nature, and thus not facts, but also fine-grained and thus not events. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 1.2) | |
A reaction: Kim, however, offers a fine-grained account of events (as |
10383 | The relata of causation (such as events) need properties as explanation, which need causation! [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: The primitivist about causation might say that the notion of an event (or other relata) cannot be understood without reference to causation, because properties themselves are individuated by their causal role. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 2.1.2) | |
A reaction: Having enthusiastically embraced the causal view of properties (see Shoemaker and Ellis), I suddenly realise that I seem required to embrace primitivism about causation, which I hadn't anticipated! I've no immediate problem with that. |
10393 | Our selection of 'the' cause is very predictable, so must have a basis [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: The main argument against saying that there is no basis for selecting the one cause of an event is that our selections are too predictable to be without a basis. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 2.3) | |
A reaction: The problem is that we CAN, if we wish, whimsically pick out any pre-condition of an event for discussion (e.g. the railways before WW1). I would say that sensitivity to nature leads us to a moderately correct selection of 'the' cause. |
10394 | Selecting 'the' cause must have a basis; there is no causation without such a selection [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Another argument against the view that there is no basis for selecting 'the' cause is that we have no concept of causation without such a selection. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 2.3) | |
A reaction: Good. Otherwise we could only state the conditions preceding an event, and then every event that occurred at any given moment in a region would have the same cause. How can 'the' cause be necessary, and yet capricious? |
10376 | The actual cause may make an event less likely than a possible more effective cause [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: If Pam threw the brick that broke the window, then Bob (who refrained) might be a more reliable vandal, so that Pam's throw might have made the shattering less likely, so probability-raising is not necessary for causation. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 2.1) | |
A reaction: That objection looks pretty conclusive to me. I take the probabilistic view to be a non-starter. |
10381 | All four probability versions of causation may need causation to be primitive [Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: All four probability versions of causation may need causation to be primitive: nomological - to distinguish laws from generalizations; statistical - to decide background; counterfactual - decide background; agent intervention - to understand intervention. | |
From: Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 2.1.2) | |
A reaction: I don't need much convincing that the probabilistic view is wrong. To just accept causation as primitive seems an awful defeat for philosophy. We should be able to characterise it, even if we cannot know its essence. |
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 |
3029 | Stilpo said if Athena is a daughter of Zeus, then a statue is only the child of a sculptor, and so is not a god [Stilpo, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Stilpo asked a man whether Athena is the daughter of Zeus, and when he said yes, said,"But this statue of Athena by Phidias is the child of Phidias, so it is not a god." | |
From: report of Stilpo (fragments/reports [c.330 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.10.5 |