Series:

Representation and Mind

3 total works

Cover of The Mind Doesn't Work That Way

In this engaging book, Jerry Fodor argues against the widely held view that mental processes are largely computations, that the architecture of cognition is massively modular, and that the explanation of our innate mental structure is basically Darwinian. Although Fodor has praised the computational theory of mind as the best theory of cognition that we have got, he considers it to be only a fragment of the truth. In fact, he claims, cognitive scientists do not really know much yet about how the mind works (the book's title refers to Steve Pinker's How the Mind Works).

Fodor's primary aim is to explore the relationship among computational and modular theories of mind, nativism, and evolutionary psychology. Along the way, he explains how Chomsky's version of nativism differs from that of the widely received New Synthesis approach. He concludes that although we have no grounds to suppose that most of the mind is modular, we have no idea how nonmodular cognition could work. Thus, according to Fodor, cognitive science has hardly gotten started.

Cover of A Theory of Content and Other Essays
This collection of new and previously published essays reflects the major research and thought of one of today's preeminent philosophers of mind. The first seven essays are philosophical pieces that focus on mental representation and the foundations of intentionality; these are followed by four psychological essays on cognitive architecture. In his eloquent introduction Fodor shows how the two areas are thematically united and epistemologically related, highlighting his concern in finding alternatives to holistic accounts of mental content. Fodor's philosophical essays develop an informational view of semantics that offers the possibility of atomism about meaning; his psychological essays present a modular view of cognitive architecture that offers the possibility of atomism about perception. These ideas, he points out, are joined in epistemology in way that the books last essay begins to explore. Taken together, the essays represent Fodor's lively attempt to knock the underpinnings from the currently popular relativism to show that the arguments for semantic and psychological holism are insubstantial and that important alternatives exist to be explored. Jerry A. Fodor is Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University and at the City University of New York Graduate Center. A Bradford Book

Cover of In Critical Condition

In Critical Condition

by Jerry A. Fodor

Published 29 October 1998
Doing philosophy, according to Jerry Fodor, is like piloting: The trick is to find an object of known position and locate yourself with respect to it. In this book, Fodor contrasts his views about the mind with those of a number of well-known philosophers and cognitive scientists, including John McDowell, Christopher Peacocke, Paul Churchland, Daniel Dennett, Paul Smolensky, and Richard Dawkins: Several of these essays are published here for the first time. The rest originated as book reviews in the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books, or in journals of philosophy or psychology. The topics examined include cognitive architecture, the nature of concepts, and the status of Darwinism in psychology. Fodor constructs a version of the Representational Theory of Mind that blends Intentional Realism, Computational Reductionism, Nativism, and Semantic Atomism.