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Single Idea 12646

[filed under theme 19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 2. Semantics ]

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.

Gist of Idea

Semantics relates to the world, so it is never just psychological

Source

Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.5)

Book Ref

Fodor,Jerry A.: 'LOT 2: the Language of Thought Revisited' [OUP 2008], p.88

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.

The 170 ideas from Jerry A. Fodor

6650 Fodor is now less keen on the innateness of concepts [Fodor, by Lowe]
12614 I prefer psychological atomism - that concepts are independent of epistemic capacities [Fodor]
12615 Mental representations are the old 'Ideas', but without images [Fodor]
12613 Empiricists use dispositions reductively, as 'possibility of sensation' or 'possibility of experimental result' [Fodor]
12617 Associationism can't explain how truth is preserved [Fodor]
12616 English has no semantic theory, just associations between sentences and thoughts [Fodor]
12618 It is essential to the concept CAT that it be satisfied by cats [Fodor]
12619 We have no successful definitions, because they all use indefinable words [Fodor]
12620 If 'exist' is ambiguous in 'chairs and numbers exist', that mirrors the difference between chairs and numbers [Fodor]
12622 Many concepts lack prototypes, and complex prototypes aren't built from simple ones [Fodor]
12623 The theory theory can't actually tell us what concepts are [Fodor]
12621 Definable concepts have constituents, which are necessary, individuate them, and demonstrate possession [Fodor]
2465 Maybe explaining the mechanics of perception will explain the concepts involved [Fodor]
2469 The world is full of messy small things producing stable large-scale properties (e.g. mountains) [Fodor]
2467 Functionalists see pains as properties involving relations and causation [Fodor]
2468 Type physicalism is a stronger claim than token physicalism [Fodor]
2471 Are concepts best seen as capacities? [Fodor]
2472 For Pragmatists having a concept means being able to do something [Fodor]
2470 Transcendental arguments move from knowing Q to knowing P because it depends on Q [Fodor]
2473 Analysis is impossible without the analytic/synthetic distinction [Fodor]
2474 It seems likely that analysis of concepts is impossible, but justification can survive without it [Fodor]
2475 Don't define something by a good instance of it; a good example is a special case of the ordinary example [Fodor]
2476 The goal of thought is to understand the world, not instantly sort it into conceptual categories [Fodor]
2477 If to understand "fish" you must know facts about them, where does that end? [Fodor]
2484 The theory of the content of thought as 'Mentalese' explains why the Private Language Argument doesn't work [Fodor]
2487 Mentalese may also incorporate some natural language [Fodor]
2483 Mentalese doesn't require a theory of meaning [Fodor]
2482 It seems unlikely that meaning can be reduced to communicative intentions, or any mental states [Fodor]
2481 Despite all the efforts of philosophers, nothing can ever be reduced to anything [Fodor]
2486 Content can't be causal role, because causal role is decided by content [Fodor]
2480 Language is ambiguous, but thought isn't [Fodor]
2485 Do intentional states explain our behaviour? [Fodor]
2489 Why bother with neurons? You don't explain bird flight by examining feathers [Fodor]
2490 Modern connectionism is just Hume's theory of the 'association' of 'ideas' [Fodor]
2491 Modules have encapsulation, inaccessibility, private concepts, innateness [Fodor]
2492 Experience can't explain itself; the concepts needed must originate outside experience [Fodor]
2493 According to empiricists abstraction is the fundamental mental process [Fodor]
2494 Rationalists say there is more to a concept than the experience that prompts it [Fodor]
2499 Modules analyse stimuli, they don't tell you what to do [Fodor]
2496 Blindness doesn't destroy spatial concepts [Fodor]
2498 Modules make the world manageable [Fodor]
2497 Something must take an overview of the modules [Fodor]
2495 Obvious modules are language and commonsense explanation [Fodor]
2500 Babies talk in consistent patterns [Fodor]
2502 How do you count beliefs? [Fodor]
2501 Berkeley seems to have mistakenly thought that chairs are the same as after-images [Fodor]
2504 Rationalism can be based on an evolved computational brain with innate structure [Fodor]
2503 Empirical approaches see mind connections as mirrors/maps of reality [Fodor]
2506 If I have a set of mental modules, someone had better be in charge of them! [Fodor]
2508 The function of a mind is obvious [Fodor]
2505 Turing invented the idea of mechanical rationality (just based on syntax) [Fodor]
2509 Modules have in-built specialist information [Fodor]
2507 Rationality rises above modules [Fodor]
2432 Is content basically information, fixed externally? [Fodor]
2434 Broad semantics holds that the basic semantic properties are truth and denotation [Fodor]
2433 For holists no two thoughts are ever quite the same, which destroys faith in meaning [Fodor]
2436 It is claimed that reference doesn't fix sense (Jocasta), and sense doesn't fix reference (Twin Earth) [Fodor]
2435 Psychology has to include the idea that mental processes are typically truth-preserving [Fodor]
2437 XYZ (Twin Earth 'water') is an impossibility [Fodor]
2439 Semantic externalism says the concept 'elm' needs no further beliefs or inferences [Fodor]
2438 In the information view, concepts are potentials for making distinctions [Fodor]
2441 Truth conditions require a broad concept of content [Fodor]
2440 Propositional attitudes are propositions presented in a certain way [Fodor]
2442 Inferences are surely part of the causal structure of the world [Fodor]
2463 A standard naturalist view is realist, externalist, and computationalist, and believes in rationality [Fodor]
2461 An experiment is a deliberate version of what informal thinking does all the time [Fodor]
2459 Externalist semantics are necessary to connect the contents of beliefs with how the world is [Fodor]
2446 Cartesians consider interaction to be a miracle [Fodor]
2445 Semantics v syntax is the interaction problem all over again [Fodor]
2443 I say psychology is intentional, semantics is informational, and thinking is computation [Fodor]
2453 We are probably the only creatures that can think about our own thoughts [Fodor]
2462 Control of belief is possible if you know truth conditions and what causes beliefs [Fodor]
2458 Theories are links in the causal chain between the environment and our beliefs [Fodor]
2460 Participation in an experiment requires agreement about what the outcome will mean [Fodor]
2454 We can deliberately cause ourselves to have true thoughts - hence the value of experiments [Fodor]
2455 Interrogation and experiment submit us to having beliefs caused [Fodor]
2447 Hume has no theory of the co-ordination of the mind [Fodor]
2450 Rationality has mental properties - autonomy, productivity, experiment [Fodor]
2452 Knowing the cause of a thought is almost knowing its content [Fodor]
2457 If meaning is information, that establishes the causal link between the state of the world and our beliefs [Fodor]
2451 To know the content of a thought is to know what would make it true [Fodor]
2464 Type physicalism equates mental kinds with physical kinds [Fodor]
3114 Concepts aren't linked to stuff; they are what is caused by stuff [Fodor]
11143 If concept-learning is hypothesis-testing, that needs innate concepts to get started [Fodor, by Margolis/Laurence]
8090 Since the language of thought is the same for all, it must be something like logical form [Fodor, by Devlin]
12624 Only the labels of nodes have semantic content in connectionism, and they play no role [Fodor]
12630 If concept content is reference, then my Twin and I are referring to the same stuff [Fodor]
12629 For the referential view of thought, the content of a concept is just its reference [Fodor]
12625 Pragmatism is the worst idea ever [Fodor]
12628 Knowing that must come before knowing how [Fodor]
12627 Before you can plan action, you must decide on the truth of your estimate of success [Fodor]
12626 Cartesians put concept individuation before concept possession [Fodor]
12632 In the Representational view, concepts play the key linking role [Fodor]
12633 Definitions often give necessary but not sufficient conditions for an extension [Fodor]
12634 'Inferential-role semantics' says meaning is determined by role in inference [Fodor]
12635 Having a concept isn't a pragmatic matter, but being able to think about the concept [Fodor]
12636 Mental states have causal powers [Fodor]
12649 We think in file names [Fodor]
12648 Names in thought afford a primitive way to bring John before the mind [Fodor]
12650 'Paderewski' has two names in mentalese, for his pianist file and his politician file [Fodor]
12651 Some beliefs are only inferred when needed, like 'Shakespeare had not telephone' [Fodor]
12652 Concepts have two sides; they are files that face thought, and also face subject-matter [Fodor]
12647 Mental representations name things in the world, but also files in our memory [Fodor]
12637 Frege's puzzles suggest to many that concepts have sense as well as reference [Fodor]
12638 If concepts have sense, we can't see the connection to their causal powers [Fodor]
12639 Belief in 'senses' may explain intentionality, but not mental processes [Fodor]
12642 Co-referring terms differ if they have different causal powers [Fodor]
12640 Associative thinking avoids syntax, but can't preserve sense, reference or truth [Fodor]
12641 Connectionism gives no account of how constituents make complex concepts [Fodor]
12644 Who cares what 'philosophy' is? Most pre-1950 thought doesn't now count as philosophy [Fodor]
12643 Ambiguities in English are the classic reason for claiming that we don't think in English [Fodor]
12645 Semantics (esp. referential semantics) allows inferences from utterances to the world [Fodor]
12646 Semantics relates to the world, so it is never just psychological [Fodor]
12653 There's statistical, logical, nomological, conceptual and metaphysical possibility [Fodor]
12654 You can't think 'brown dog' without thinking 'brown' and 'dog' [Fodor]
12655 Frame Problem: how to eliminate most beliefs as irrelevant, without searching them? [Fodor]
12656 P-and-Q gets its truth from the truth of P and truth of Q, but consistency isn't like that [Fodor]
12657 Abstractionism claims that instances provide criteria for what is shared [Fodor]
12659 Maybe stereotypes are a stage in concept acquisition (rather than a by-product) [Fodor]
12660 One stereotype might be a paradigm for two difference concepts [Fodor]
12662 We have an innate capacity to form a concept, once we have grasped the stereotype [Fodor]
12658 Nobody knows how concepts are acquired [Fodor]
12661 The different types of resemblance don't resemble one another [Fodor]
12664 A truth-table, not inferential role, defines 'and' [Fodor]
12663 We refer to individuals and to properties, and we use singular terms and predicates [Fodor]
12631 Compositionality requires that concepts be atomic [Fodor]
2597 Contrary to the 'anomalous monist' view, there may well be intentional causal laws [Fodor]
2598 Lots of physical properties are multiply realisable, so why shouldn't beliefs be? [Fodor]
2599 Either intentionality causes things, or epiphenomenalism is true [Fodor]
22186 Mental modules are specialised, automatic, and isolated [Fodor, by Okasha]
3975 Folk psychology explains behaviour by reference to intentional states like belief and desire [Fodor]
3976 Intentional science needs objects with semantic and causal properties, and which obey laws [Fodor]
3977 Laws are true generalisations which support counterfactuals and are confirmed by instances [Fodor]
3980 Intentional states and processes may be causal relations among mental symbols [Fodor]
3978 Associations are held to connect Ideas together in the way the world is connected together [Fodor]
3981 Most psychological properties seem to be multiply realisable [Fodor]
3982 How could the extrinsic properties of thoughts supervene on their intrinsic properties? [Fodor]
2604 We must have expressive power BEFORE we learn language [Fodor]
5498 Mind is a set of hierarchical 'homunculi', which are made up in turn from subcomponents [Fodor, by Lycan]
7326 Intentionality doesn't go deep enough to appear on the physicists' ultimate list of things [Fodor]
7014 A particle and a coin heads-or-tails pick out to perfectly well-defined predicates and properties [Fodor]
15494 We can't use propositions to explain intentional attitudes, because they would need explaining [Fodor]
2990 Contrary to commonsense, most of what is in the mind seems to be unlearned [Fodor]
2991 Hume's associationism offers no explanation at all of rational thought [Fodor]
2992 We may be able to explain rationality mechanically [Fodor]
2993 Any piece of software can always be hard-wired [Fodor]
2994 In CRTT thought may be represented, content must be [Fodor]
2995 Supervenience gives good support for mental causation [Fodor]
2996 Mental states may have the same content but different extensions [Fodor]
2998 Grice thinks meaning is inherited from the propositional attitudes which sentences express [Fodor]
2999 Obsession with narrow content leads to various sorts of hopeless anti-realism [Fodor]
3000 Meaning holism is a crazy doctrine [Fodor]
3002 If mind is just physical, how can it follow the rules required for intelligent thought? [Fodor]
3001 Behaviourism has no theory of mental causation [Fodor]
3003 Very different mental states can share their contents, so content doesn't seem to be constructed from functional role [Fodor]
3004 The meaning of a sentence derives from its use in expressing an attitude [Fodor]
3005 'Jocasta' needs to be distinguished from 'Oedipus's mother' because they are connected by different properties [Fodor]
3006 Whatever in the mind delivers falsehood is parasitic on what delivers truth [Fodor]
3007 Many different verification procedures can reach 'star', but it only has one semantic value [Fodor]
3008 Evolution suggests that innate knowledge of human psychology would be beneficial [Fodor]
3009 Sticklebacks have an innate idea that red things are rivals [Fodor]
3010 Belief and desire are structured states, which need mentalese [Fodor]
3011 Causal powers must be a crucial feature of mental states [Fodor]
3012 Do identical thoughts have identical causal roles? [Fodor]
2988 Folk psychology is the only explanation of behaviour we have [Fodor]
3135 Is thought a syntactic computation using representations? [Fodor, by Rey]
2985 Are beliefs brains states, but picked out at a "higher level"? [Lyons on Fodor]
2983 Maybe narrow content is physical, broad content less so [Lyons on Fodor]
15473 How does anything get outside itself? [Fodor, by Martin,CB]
2981 Is intentionality outwardly folk psychology, inwardly mentalese? [Lyons on Fodor]