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Hume Variations
Hume? Yes, David Hume, that's who Jerry Fodor looks to for help in advancing our understanding of the mind. Fodor claims his Treatise of Human Nature as the foundational document of cognitive it launched the project of constructing an empirical psychology on the basis of a representational theory of mind. Going back to this work after more than 250 years we find that Hume is remarkably perceptive about the components and structure that a theory of mind requires. Careful study of the Treatise helps us to see what is amiss with much twentieth-century philosophy of mind, and to get on the right track.
- GenresPhilosophy
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
47 people want to read
About the author
Jerry A. Fodor
28 books88 followersJerry Alan Fodor is an American philosopher and cognitive scientist. He is the State of New Jersey Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University and is also the author of many works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science, in which he has laid the groundwork for the modularity of mind and the language of thought hypotheses, among other ideas. Fodor is of Jewish descent.
Fodor argues that mental states, such as beliefs and desires, are relations between individuals and mental representations. He maintains that these representations can only be correctly explained in terms of a language of thought (LOT) in the mind. Further, this language of thought itself is an actually existing thing that is codified in the brain and not just a useful explanatory tool. Fodor adheres to a species of functionalism, maintaining that thinking and other mental processes consist primarily of computations operating on the syntax of the representations that make up the language of thought.
For Fodor, significant parts of the mind, such as perceptual and linguistic processes, are structured in terms of modules, or "organs", which are defined by their causal and functional roles. These modules are relatively independent of each other and of the "central processing" part of the mind, which has a more global and less "domain specific" character. Fodor suggests that the character of these modules permits the possibility of causal relations with external objects. This, in turn, makes it possible for mental states to have contents that are about things in the world. The central processing part, on the other hand, takes care of the logical relations between the various contents and inputs and outputs.
Although Fodor originally rejected the idea that mental states must have a causal, externally determined aspect, he has in recent years devoted much of his writing and study to the philosophy of language because of this problem of the meaning and reference of mental contents. His contributions in this area include the so-called asymmetric causal theory of reference and his many arguments against semantic holism. Fodor strongly opposes reductive accounts of the mind. He argues that mental states are multiply realizable and that there is a hierarchy of explanatory levels in science such that the generalizations and laws of a higher-level theory of psychology or linguistics, for example, cannot be captured by the low-level explanations of the behavior of neurons and synapses.
Fodor argues that mental states, such as beliefs and desires, are relations between individuals and mental representations. He maintains that these representations can only be correctly explained in terms of a language of thought (LOT) in the mind. Further, this language of thought itself is an actually existing thing that is codified in the brain and not just a useful explanatory tool. Fodor adheres to a species of functionalism, maintaining that thinking and other mental processes consist primarily of computations operating on the syntax of the representations that make up the language of thought.
For Fodor, significant parts of the mind, such as perceptual and linguistic processes, are structured in terms of modules, or "organs", which are defined by their causal and functional roles. These modules are relatively independent of each other and of the "central processing" part of the mind, which has a more global and less "domain specific" character. Fodor suggests that the character of these modules permits the possibility of causal relations with external objects. This, in turn, makes it possible for mental states to have contents that are about things in the world. The central processing part, on the other hand, takes care of the logical relations between the various contents and inputs and outputs.
Although Fodor originally rejected the idea that mental states must have a causal, externally determined aspect, he has in recent years devoted much of his writing and study to the philosophy of language because of this problem of the meaning and reference of mental contents. His contributions in this area include the so-called asymmetric causal theory of reference and his many arguments against semantic holism. Fodor strongly opposes reductive accounts of the mind. He argues that mental states are multiply realizable and that there is a hierarchy of explanatory levels in science such that the generalizations and laws of a higher-level theory of psychology or linguistics, for example, cannot be captured by the low-level explanations of the behavior of neurons and synapses.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 31, 2023
Not a fan of Fodor after this, to be honest. He’s quite bad at interpreting Hume, and he makes some basic mistakes that really effect his arguments: for one, in the first half of the book he conflates Hume’s impression/idea distinction with sensations and concepts, respectively. But impressions are supposed to be nothing other than vivid and forceful ideas. Fodor does not take sensations to be vivid and forceful concepts. So there is an obvious problem.
He also completely misunderstood what simple ideas are for Hume - basic sensory qualities that can be composed into complex representations. Instead, Fodor opts to define simple concepts (and thus simple ideas) as concepts whose constituents are not semantically evaluable, meaning cats and even relations like moving. More on relations next. But this creates problems for his discussion of compositionality and atomism.
One of the really interesting parts to this book was that it hinted at a debate between connectionism and classical cognitive psychology. So I looked into that a bit and found out that Fodor & Pyshylyn’s 1988 paper on the topic seeded a 3,000-citation long paper trail documenting a debate that has never had its positions thoroughly worked out or its evidentiary standards agreed upon. What happened? My tentative diagnosis is that Fodor is in quite a rush to take up party lines where they don’t even always exist, and defend them with engaging polemics but without much care for clarity.
Despite his a priori arguments to the contrary, it seems that connectionist models have been implemented in classical machines (neural networks run on computers), classical models have been implemented in connectionist machines (on his view, humans using brains, which are literal neural networks; less controversially, those same artificial neural networks can be trained to run classical systems, though maybe not perfectly). But this isn’t what the book is about at all.
He also completely misunderstood what simple ideas are for Hume - basic sensory qualities that can be composed into complex representations. Instead, Fodor opts to define simple concepts (and thus simple ideas) as concepts whose constituents are not semantically evaluable, meaning cats and even relations like moving. More on relations next. But this creates problems for his discussion of compositionality and atomism.
One of the really interesting parts to this book was that it hinted at a debate between connectionism and classical cognitive psychology. So I looked into that a bit and found out that Fodor & Pyshylyn’s 1988 paper on the topic seeded a 3,000-citation long paper trail documenting a debate that has never had its positions thoroughly worked out or its evidentiary standards agreed upon. What happened? My tentative diagnosis is that Fodor is in quite a rush to take up party lines where they don’t even always exist, and defend them with engaging polemics but without much care for clarity.
Despite his a priori arguments to the contrary, it seems that connectionist models have been implemented in classical machines (neural networks run on computers), classical models have been implemented in connectionist machines (on his view, humans using brains, which are literal neural networks; less controversially, those same artificial neural networks can be trained to run classical systems, though maybe not perfectly). But this isn’t what the book is about at all.
January 22, 2016
Some questions for Fodorians:
What is a "discursive conceptual structure"? Fodor says that "sensory representation" isn't one. (p.38 "Impressions")
What is a "discursive conceptual structure"? Fodor says that "sensory representation" isn't one. (p.38 "Impressions")
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews