18 ideas
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. |
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. |
16641 | Whiteness does not exist, but by it something can exist-as-white [Aquinas] |
Full Idea: Whiteness is said to exist not because it subsists in itself, but because by it something has existence-as-white. | |
From: Thomas Aquinas (Quodlibeta [1267], IX.2.2), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 10.2 | |
A reaction: It seems unavoidable to refer to the whiteness as 'it'. It might be called the 'adverbial' theory of properties, as ways of doing something. |
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? |
22170 | Senses grasp external properties, but the understanding grasps the essential natures of things [Aquinas] |
Full Idea: Our imagination and senses grasp only the outer properties of things, not their natures. ...Understanding, however, grasps the very substance and nature of things, so that what is represented in understanding is a likeness of thing's very essence. | |
From: Thomas Aquinas (Quodlibeta [1267], 8.2.2) | |
A reaction: This is exactly the picture I endorse for modern science. Explanation is the path to understanding, and that must venture beyond immediate experience. |
22169 | Initial universal truths are present within us as potential, to be drawn out by reason [Aquinas] |
Full Idea: For present in us by nature are certain initial truths everyone knows, in which lie potentially known conclusions our reasons can draw out and make actually known. | |
From: Thomas Aquinas (Quodlibeta [1267], 8.2.2) | |
A reaction: Note that these are truths rather than concepts, but that they have to be 'drawn out' by reason. This is Descartes' view of the matter, where the 'natural light' of reason is needed to articulate what is innate, such as geometry. |
22168 | Minds take in a likeness of things, which activates an awaiting potential [Aquinas] |
Full Idea: What the mind takes in is not some material element of the agent, but a likeness of the agent actualising some potential the patient already has. This, for example, is the way our seeing takes in the colour of a coloured body. | |
From: Thomas Aquinas (Quodlibeta [1267], 8.2.1) | |
A reaction: This is exactly right. Descartes agreed. It works for colour, but not (obviously) for cheese graters. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |