Fodor E-Book

Mark J. Cain

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Key Contemporary Thinkers
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 492

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Jerry Fodor is one of the most important philosophers of mind in recent decades. He has done much to set the agenda in this field and has had a significant influence on the development of cognitive science. Fodor's project is that of constructing a physicalist vindication of folk psychology and so paving the way for the development of a scientifically respectable intentional psychology. The centrepiece of his engagement in this project is a theory of the cognitive mind, namely, the computational theory of mind, which postulates the existence of a language of thought. Fodor: Language, Mind and Philosophy is a comprehensive study of Fodor's writings. Individual chapters are devoted to each of the major issues raised by his work and contain extensive discussion of his relationships to key developments in cognitive science and to the views of such philosophical luminaries as Dennett, Davidson and Searle.

This accessible book will appeal to advanced level undergraduate students of philosophy and related disciplines. It will also be of great interest to professional philosophers and cognitive scientists.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright page

Key Contemporary Thinkers

Acknowledgements

1 The Fodorian Project

Introduction

Folk Psychology

Physicalism

Physicalism and the Mental

Conclusion

2 Philosophical and Scientific Background

Introduction

Psychology and Philosophy

Psychological Behaviourism and the Cognitive Revolution

Philosophical Behaviourism

The Type Identity Theory

Functionalism

Conclusion

3 The Computational Theory of Mind

Introduction

Intentional States

Intentional Processes

Fodor’s Arguments for CTM

Concept Nativism

Fodor’s Attempt to Retreat from Radical Concept Nativism

Conclusion

4 Challenges to the Computational Theory of Mind

Introduction

Davidson and Dennett

Searle

Connectionism

Conclusion

5 Explaining Mental Content

Introduction

Naturalistic Theories of Content

Fodor’s Theory of Content

Atomism and Conceptual Role Semantics

Some Potential Problems for Fodor’s Theory

Some More Telling Objections

Conclusion

6 Individualism and Narrow Content

Introduction

The Nature of the Issue

Individualism and Folk Psychology

Individualism and the Computational Theory of Mind

The Argument from Causal Powers

Narrow Content

Fodor’s Rejection of Narrow Content

Conclusion

7 The Modularity Thesis

Introduction

The Nature of Fodor’s Modularity Thesis

Are Input Systems Modules?

The Central System

Philosophical Implications of the Modularity Thesis

Conclusion

Afterword

References

Index

Copyright © M. J. Cain 2002

The right of M. J. Cain to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2002 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd

Editorial office:

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Marketing and production:

Blackwell Publishers Ltd

108 Cowley Road

Oxford OX4 1JF, UK

Published in the USA by

Blackwell Publishers Inc.

350 Main Street

Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 0-7456-2472-3

ISBN 0-7456-2473-1 (pbk)

ISBN 978-0-7456-6595-5 (epub)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and has been applied for from the Library of Congress.

Key Contemporary Thinkers

Published

Jeremy Ahearne, Michel de Certeau: Interpretation and its Other

Peter Burke, The French Historical Revolution: The Annales School 1929–1989

Michael Caesar, Umberto Eco: Philosophy, Semiotics and the Work of Fiction

M. J. Cain, Fodor: Language, Mind and Philosophy

Colin Davis, Levinas: An Introduction

Simon Evnine, Donald Davidson

Edward Fullbrook and Kate Fullbrook, Simone de Beauvoir: A Critical Introduction

Andrew Gamble, Hayek: The Iron Cage of Liberty

Graeme Gilloch, Walter Benjamin: Critical Constellations

Karen Green, Dummett: Philosophy of Language

Phillip Hansen, Hannah Arendt: Politics, History and Citizenship

Sean Homer, Fredric Jameson: Marxism, Hermeneutics, Postmodernism

Christopher Hookway, Quine: Language, Experience and Reality

Christina Howells, Derrida: Deconstruction from Phenomenology to Ethics

Fred Inglis, Clifford Geertz: Culture, Custom and Ethics

Simon Jarvis, Adorno: A Critical Introduction

Douglas Kellner, Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Post-Modernism and Beyond

Valerie Kennedy, Edward Said: A Critical Introduction

Chandran Kukathas and Philip Pettit, Rawls: A Theory of Justice and its Critics

James McGilvray, Chomsky: Language, Mind, and Politics

Lois McNay, Foucault: A Critical Introduction

Philip Manning, Erving Goffman and Modern Sociology

Michael Moriarty, Roland Barthes

Harold W. Noonan, Frege: A Critical Introduction

William Outhwaite, Habermas: A Critical Introduction

John Preston, Feyerabend: Philosophy, Science and Society

Susan Sellers, Hélène Cixous: Authorship, Autobiography and Love

David Silverman, Harvey Sacks: Social Science and Conversation Analysis

Dennis Smith, Zygmunt Bauman: Prophet of Postmodernity

Nicholas H. Smith, Charles Taylor: Meaning, Morals and Modernity

Geoffrey Stokes, Popper: Philosophy, Politics and Scientific Method

Georgia Warnke, Gadamer: Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason

James Williams, Lyotard: Towards a Postmodern Philosophy

Jonathan Wolff, Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State

Forthcoming

Maria Baghramian, Hilary Putnam

Sara Beardsworth, Kristeva

James Carey, Innis and McLuhan

Rosemary Cowan, Cornell West: The Politics of Redemption

George Crowder, Isaiah Berlin: Liberty, Pluralism and Liberalism

Thomas D’Andrea, Alasdair MacIntyre

Eric Dunning, Norbert Elias

Jocelyn Dunphy, Paul Ricœur

Matthew Elton, Daniel Dennett

Nigel Gibson, Frantz Fanon

Espen Hammer, Stanley Cavell

Keith Hart, C. L. R. James

Sarah Kay, Žižek: A Critical Introduction

Paul Kelly, Ronald Dworkin

Carl Levy, Antonio Gramsci

Moya Lloyd, Judith Butler

Dermot Moran, Edmund Husserl

Kari Palonen, Quentin Skinner

Steve Redhead, Paul Virilio: Theorist for an Accelerated Culture

Chris Rojek, Stuart Hall and Cultural Studies

Wes Sharrock and Rupert Read, Kuhn

Nicholas Walker, Heidegger

Acknowledgements

This work started life as a PhD thesis submitted to the University of St Andrews in 1997. I benefited from the supervision of Roger Squires and (whilst I was a visiting research student at Birkbeck College, London) that of Sarah Patterson and Barry Smith along with the comments of my examiners, Crispin Wright and Martin Davies. I have received valuable feedback on draft versions of the early chapters from Anna Hindley and members of classes that I taught at Birkbeck College and the University of Nottingham. The comments of two anonymous readers for Polity helped me to improve the clarity and organization of the text. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all of these people.

Julie Reid has been a constant source of affection, support and encouragement. Without her companionship, completing this pro-ject would have been a much more stressful experience than it turned out to be. My greatest debt is to my parents, Bernard and Christine Cain. Without their unceasing support, my philosophical career would have ground to a halt several years ago. This book is dedicated to them.

2

Philosophical and Scientific Background

Introduction

In chapter 1 I characterized Fodor’s central ambition as being that of vindicating folk psychology within a physicalist framework. The core of Fodor’s attempted vindication of folk psychology is a theory of intentional states and processes according to which intentional states are computational relations to sentences of a language of thought and intentional processes are computational processes involving the manipulation of such sentences. Call this theory the computational theory of mind (CTM for short). In order to gain a full understanding of CTM and Fodor’s motivations for holding it, it is important to be aware of a series of important developments that took place in scientific psychology and the philosophy of mind in the second half of the twentieth century. In this chapter I will give a detailed account of these historical developments and Fodor’s role in them.

Psychology and Philosophy