Ideas from 'Psychosemantics' by Jerry A. Fodor [1987], by Theme Structure

[found in 'Psychosemantics' by Fodor,Jerry A. [MIT 1993,0-262-56052-6]].

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5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / a. Names
'Jocasta' needs to be distinguished from 'Oedipus's mother' because they are connected by different properties
                        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)
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 10. Properties as Predicates
A particle and a coin heads-or-tails pick out to perfectly well-defined predicates and properties
                        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.
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 3. Innate Knowledge / a. Innate knowledge
Contrary to commonsense, most of what is in the mind seems to be unlearned
                        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)
Evolution suggests that innate knowledge of human psychology would be beneficial
                        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)
Sticklebacks have an innate idea that red things are rivals
                        Full Idea: God gave the male stickleback the idea that whatever is red is a rival.
                        From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p.133)
15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 1. Mind / e. Questions about mind
In CRTT thought may be represented, content must be
                        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.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 4. Intentionality / b. Intentionality theories
We can't use propositions to explain intentional attitudes, because they would need explaining
                        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)
Intentionality doesn't go deep enough to appear on the physicists' ultimate list of things
                        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.
17. Mind and Body / B. Behaviourism / 4. Behaviourism Critique
Behaviourism has no theory of mental causation
                        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.
17. Mind and Body / C. Functionalism / 2. Machine Functionalism
Any piece of software can always be hard-wired
                        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'?
17. Mind and Body / C. Functionalism / 4. Causal Functionalism
Causal powers must be a crucial feature of mental states
                        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.
17. Mind and Body / C. Functionalism / 6. Homuncular Functionalism
Mind is a set of hierarchical 'homunculi', which are made up in turn from subcomponents
                        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.
17. Mind and Body / D. Property Dualism / 5. Supervenience of mind
Supervenience gives good support for mental causation
                        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.
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 4. Connectionism
Hume's associationism offers no explanation at all of rational thought
                        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).
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 7. Anti-Physicalism / a. Physicalism critique
If mind is just physical, how can it follow the rules required for intelligent thought?
                        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.
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 1. Thought
We may be able to explain rationality mechanically
                        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?
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 4. Folk Psychology
Folk psychology is the only explanation of behaviour we have
                        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'.
18. Thought / B. Mechanics of Thought / 4. Language of Thought
Belief and desire are structured states, which need mentalese
                        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.
18. Thought / C. Content / 7. Narrow Content
Obsession with narrow content leads to various sorts of hopeless anti-realism
                        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.
18. Thought / C. Content / 10. Causal Semantics
Do identical thoughts have identical causal roles?
                        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.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 3. Meaning as Speaker's Intention
Grice thinks meaning is inherited from the propositional attitudes which sentences express
                        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.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 4. Meaning as Truth-Conditions
Whatever in the mind delivers falsehood is parasitic on what delivers truth
                        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.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 5. Meaning as Verification
Many different verification procedures can reach 'star', but it only has one semantic value
                        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.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 6. Meaning as Use
The meaning of a sentence derives from its use in expressing an attitude
                        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.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 7. Meaning Holism / b. Language holism
Meaning holism is a crazy doctrine
                        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.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 7. Meaning Holism / c. Meaning by Role
Very different mental states can share their contents, so content doesn't seem to be constructed from functional role
                        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?
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 8. Synonymy
Mental states may have the same content but different extensions
                        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.