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All the ideas for 'The Elm and the Expert', 'Some Remarks on Essentialism' and 'Essays on Active Powers 4: Liberty of Agents'

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40 ideas

2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 8. Naturalising Reason
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)
3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 5. Truth Bearers
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)
5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 4. Pure Logic
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)
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / a. Essence as necessary properties
Essentialism says some of a thing's properties are necessary, and could not be absent [Cartwright,R]
     Full Idea: Essentialism, as I shall understand it, is the doctrine that among the attributes of a thing some are essential, others merely accidental. Its essential attributes are those it has necessarily, those it could not have lacked.
     From: Richard Cartwright (Some Remarks on Essentialism [1968], p.149)
     A reaction: The problem with this, which Cartwright does not address, is that trivial and gerrymandered properties (such as having self-identity, or being 'such that 2+2=4') seem to be necessarily, but don't seem to constitute the essence of a thing.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 14. Knowledge of Essences
The difficulty in essentialism is deciding the grounds for rating an attribute as essential [Cartwright,R]
     Full Idea: I see no reason for thinking essentialism unintelligible, but a chief perplexity is the obscurity of the grounds on which ratings of attributes as essential or accidental are to be made.
     From: Richard Cartwright (Some Remarks on Essentialism [1968], p.158)
     A reaction: In that case some of us younger philosophers will have to roll up our sleeves and tease out the grounds for essentialism, starting with Aristotle and Leibniz, and ending with the successes of modern science.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism
Essentialism is said to be unintelligible, because relative, if necessary truths are all analytic [Cartwright,R]
     Full Idea: Apparently those who think essentialism unintelligible see support for their position in the doctrine that necessary truths are all analytic. Only relative to some mode of designation does it make sense to speak of an object as necessarily this or that.
     From: Richard Cartwright (Some Remarks on Essentialism [1968], p.158)
     A reaction: He has in mind Quine and his mathematician-cyclist (Idea 8482). Personally I have no problems with the example. No one is essentially a cyclist - that isn't what essence is. Two-legged people can be cyclists.
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 3. Relative Identity
An act of ostension doesn't seem to need a 'sort' of thing, even of a very broad kind [Cartwright,R]
     Full Idea: For an ostension to be successful it is surely not necessary that I gather what sort of object it is you have indicated, such as being a horse or a zebra. I may even gather which thing you have indicated without knowing that it is a mammal or even alive.
     From: Richard Cartwright (Some Remarks on Essentialism [1968], p.157)
     A reaction: This nicely articulates the objection I have always felt to Geach's relative identity. 'Oh my God, what the hell is THAT???' is probably going to be a successful act of verbal reference, even while explicitly denying all knowledge of sortals.
13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 5. Controlling Beliefs
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?
14. Science / A. Basis of Science / 3. Experiment
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)
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)
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)
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)
14. Science / B. Scientific Theories / 1. Scientific Theory
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)
15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 1. Mind / e. Questions about mind
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.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / f. Higher-order thought
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.
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 2. Sources of Free Will
The first motion or effect cannot be produced necessarily, so the First Cause must be a free agent [Reid]
     Full Idea: That the first motion, or the first effect, whatever it be, cannot be produced necessarily, and, consequently, that the First Cause must be a free agent, has been demonstrated clearly and unanswerably.
     From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Active Powers 4: Liberty of Agents [1788], 8)
     A reaction: He has said that the First Cause can only be conceived by us as an 'agent'. If there is an agential First Cause, then he must be right. It is this need for God to be free which makes scepticism about free will unacceptable to many.
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 3. Constraints on the will
A willed action needs reasonable understanding of what is to be done [Reid]
     Full Idea: There can be no will without such a degree of understanding, at least, as gives the conception of that which we will.
     From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Active Powers 4: Liberty of Agents [1788], 1)
     A reaction: Presumably this 'conception' includes an understanding of the probable consequences, but they are of infinite complexity. I see this as an objection to 'ultimate' free will and responsibility, because there are only ever degrees of understanding.
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 4. For Free Will
We are morally free, because we experience it, we are accountable, and we pursue projects [Reid]
     Full Idea: I believe in moral liberty first because we have a natural conviction of belief that in many cases we act freely, second because we are accountable, and third because we can prosecute an end by a long series of means adapted.
     From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Active Powers 4: Liberty of Agents [1788], 5)
     A reaction: This is his final summary of why he believes in free will. Why didn't Plato and Aristotle have this natural belief? He could only believe we are 'accountable' because he believes in free will. Ants and bees pursue lengthy projects. Hm.
17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 2. Interactionism
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.
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.
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 1. Physical Mind
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.
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 4. Connectionism
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.
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 2. Propositional Attitudes
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?
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 5. Rationality / a. Rationality
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..."
18. Thought / C. Content / 5. Twin Earth
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.
18. Thought / C. Content / 6. Broad Content
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.
18. Thought / C. Content / 7. Narrow Content
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?
18. Thought / C. Content / 10. Causal Semantics
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.
18. Thought / C. Content / 12. Informational Semantics
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.
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 3. Ontology of Concepts / b. Concepts as abilities
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.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 1. Meaning
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.
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.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 4. Meaning as Truth-Conditions
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.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 7. Meaning Holism / b. Language holism
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.
19. Language / B. Reference / 4. Descriptive Reference / a. Sense and reference
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.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 2. Semantics
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.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 6. Truth-Conditions Semantics
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?
20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 3. Acting on Reason / a. Practical reason
A motive is merely an idea, like advice, and not a force for action [Reid]
     Full Idea: A motive is equally incapable of action and of passion; because it is not a thing that exists, but a thing that is conceived. …Motives may be compared to advice or exhortation.
     From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Active Powers 4: Liberty of Agents [1788], 4)
     A reaction: We say people are motivated by greed or anger or love, which seems a bit stronger than mere advice.
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 9. General Causation / a. Constant conjunction
We all know that mere priority or constant conjunction do not have to imply causation [Reid]
     Full Idea: Every man who understands the language knows that neither priority, nor constant conjunction, nor both taken together, imply efficiency.
     From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Active Powers 4: Liberty of Agents [1788], 2)
     A reaction: This invites the question of how we do know causal events, if none of our experiences are enough to prove it. Reid says we have an innate knowledge that all events are caused, but that isn't much help. The presence of power?
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 1. Laws of Nature
The principle of the law of nature is that matter is passive, and is acted upon [Reid]
     Full Idea: The law of nature respecting matter is grounded upon this principle: That matter is an inert, inactive substance, which does not act, but is acted upon.
     From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Active Powers 4: Liberty of Agents [1788], 5)
     A reaction: A clear statement (alongside Euler's) of the 18th century view, still with us, but strikes me as entirely wrong. Their view needs the active power of God to drive the laws. Matter has intrinsic primitive powers, and laws describe patterns of behaviour.