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Full Idea
If you know the content of a thought, you know quite a lot about what would cause you to have it.
Gist of Idea
Knowing the cause of a thought is almost knowing its content
Source
Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4)
Book Ref
Fodor,Jerry A.: 'The Elm and the Expert' [MIT 1995], p.92
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.
| 3629 | All ideas are adventitious, and come from the senses [Gassendi on Descartes] |
| 2452 | Knowing the cause of a thought is almost knowing its content [Fodor] |
| 3012 | Do identical thoughts have identical causal roles? [Fodor] |
| 2536 | Do facts cause thoughts, or embody them, or what? [Sturgeon] |
| 3119 | Even 'mass' cannot be defined in causal terms [Segal] |
| 3118 | If thoughts ARE causal, we can't explain how they cause things [Segal] |
| 23797 | Cause won't explain content, because one cause can produce several contents [Schulte] |