20 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. |
| 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? |
| 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. |
| 5662 | Maybe induction could never prove the existence of something unobservable [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: Some people hold that no inductive argument can give us any reason to believe in the existence of something which could not even in principle be observed. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (The Concept of a Person [1963], §I) | |
| A reaction: I see nothing illogical in inferring the existence of a poltergeist from the recurrent flight of objects around my lounge. Only an excessive empiricism (which used to afflict Ayer) could lead to this claim. |
| 5664 | Consciousness must involve a subject, and only bodies identify subjects [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: It may not make sense to talk of states of consciousness except as the experiences of some conscious subject; and it may well be that this conscious subject can not be identified except by reference to his body. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (The Concept of a Person [1963], §IV) | |
| A reaction: It strikes me that Ayer deserves more credit as a pioneer of this view. It tracks back to what may turn out to be the key difficulty for Descartes - how do you individuate a mental substance? I may identify me, but how do I identify you? |
| 5668 | People own conscious states because they are causally related to the identifying body [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: I think personal identity depends on the identity of the body, and that a person's ownership of states of consciousness consists in their standing in a special causal relation to the body by which he is identified. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (The Concept of a Person [1963], §IV) | |
| A reaction: I think with this is right, with the slight reservation that Ayer talks as if there were two things which have a causal relationship, implying that the link is contingent. Better to think of the whole thing as a single causal network. |
| 5661 | We identify experiences by their owners, so we can't define owners by their experiences [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: Normally we identify experiences in terms of the persons whose experiences they are; but this will lead to a vicious circle if persons themselves are to be analysed in terms of their experiences. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (The Concept of a Person [1963], §I) | |
| A reaction: This (from a leading empiricist) is a nice basic challenge to all empiricist accounts of personal identity. One might respond my saying that the circle is not vicious. There are two interlinked concepts (experience and persons), like day and night. |
| 5665 | Memory is the best proposal as what unites bundles of experiences [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: The most promising suggestion is that the bundles are tied together by means of memory. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (The Concept of a Person [1963], §IV) | |
| A reaction: This is interesting for showing how Locke was essentially trying to meet (in advance) Hume's 'bundle' scepticism. Hume proposed associations as the unifying factor, instead of memories. Ayer proposes concepts as a candidate. |
| 5666 | Not all exerience can be remembered, as this would produce an infinite regress [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: Not every experience can be remembered; otherwise each piece of remembering, which is itself an experience, would have to be remembered, and each remembering of a remembering and so ad infinitum. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (The Concept of a Person [1963], §IV) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 5667. Ayer takes for granted two sorts of consciousness - current awareness, and memory. Ayer brings out a nice difficulty for Locke's proposal, but also draws attention to what may be a very basic misunderstanding about the mind. |
| 5669 | Personal identity can't just be relations of experiences, because the body is needed to identify them [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: A Humean theory, in which a person's identity is made to depend upon relations between experiences ..is not tenable unless the experiences themselves can be identified, and that is only possible through their association with the body. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (The Concept of a Person [1963], §IV) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me a very fruitful response to difficulties with the 'bundle' view of a person - a better response than the a priori claims of Butler and Reid, or the transcendental argument of Kant. Only a philosopher could ignore the body. |
| 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. |
| 6017 | Nomos is king [Pindar] |
| Full Idea: Nomos is king. | |
| From: Pindar (poems [c.478 BCE], S 169), quoted by Thomas Nagel - The Philosophical Culture | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the earliest recorded shot in the nomos-physis wars (the debate among sophists about moral relativism). It sounds as if it carries the full relativist burden - that all that matters is what has been locally decreed. |