Fodor's nativism

Conclusion The upshot of all this is that very many lexical concepts arenot triggered. Not is triggering is a brute-causal, non cognitive process. Concepts, by and large, are not acquired through the inductive confirmation of definitions. I think Fodor is right about that. But the experience that leads to their acquisition is not arbitrary, and is cognitively processed. It's not just switching on a little cognitive machine already there, or kick-starting an endogenously controlled process.     

Proxytypes and Linguistic Nativism

Prinz (Perceptual the Mind: Concepts and Their Perceptual Basis, MIT Press, 2002) presents a new species of concept empiricism, under which concepts are off-line long-term memory networks of representations that are ‘copies’ of perceptual representations – proxytypes. An apparent obstacle to any such empiricism is the prevailing nativism of generative linguistics. The paper critically assesses Prinz’s attempt to overcome this obstacle. The paper argues that, prima facie, proxytypes are as incapable of accounting for the structure of the linguistic mind as are the more traditional species of empiricism. This position is then confirmed by looking in detail at two suggestions (one derived from recent connectionist research) from Prinz of how certain aspects of syntactic structure might be accommodated by the proxytype theory. It is shown that the suggestions fail to come to terms with both the data and theory of contemporary linguistics.     

Fodor's Attempt To Naturalize Mental Content

My purpose is to evaluate the naturalistic theory of content proposed by Jerry Fodor. This is an informational theory which attempts to solve the disjunction problem that notoriously plagues such theories by appealing to the relationship of asymmetric dependence. I argue that this theory fails to apply to two important categories of mental state. On the one hand, it fails to apply to such personal-level states as beliefs, since the required laws do not hold. This is because of the cognitive penetrability of such processes as object recognition. On the other hand, it fails to apply to subpersonal representational states of the kind that figure in cognitive psychological explanations of our cognitive and perceptual capacities. Here the required laws hold but there is no relationship of asymmetric dependency between the various laws that govern the tokening of any particular type of sub-personal state.     

Mencius's Vertical Faculties and Moral Nativism

This paper compares and contrasts Mencius's moral philosophy with recent development in cognitive science regarding mental capacity to understand moral rules and principles. Several cognitive scientists argue that the human mind has innate cognitive and emotive foundations of morality. In this paper, Mencius's moral theory is interpreted from the perspective of faculty psychology and cognitive modularity, a theoretical hypothesis in cognitive science in which the mind is understood as a system of specialized mental components. Specifically, Mencius's Four Beginnings (the basic human emotions that serve as the foundations of morality) are interpreted as vertical faculties, comparable to Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid's moral faculties.     

Dispositions Indisposed: Semantic Atomism and Fodor's Theory of Content

According to Jerry Fodor's atomistic theory of content, subjects' dispositions to token mentalese terms in counterfactual circumstances fix the contents of those terms. I argue that the pattern of counterfactual tokenings alone does not satisfactorily fix content; if Fodor's appeal to patterns of counterfactual tokenings has any chance of assigning correct extensions, Fodor must take into account the contents of subjects' various mental states at the times of those tokenings. However, to do so, Fodor must abandon his semantic atomism. And while Fodor has recently qualified his atomism, the cognitively holistic nature of dispositions continues to undermine his view.     

The Non-Reductionist's Troubles with Supervenience

Philosophical Studies -     

On Fodor's First Law of the Nonexistence of Cognitive Science

In his enormously influential The Modularity of Mind, Jerry Fodor (1983) proposed that the mind was divided into input modules and central processes. Much subsequent research focused on the modules and whether processes like speech perception or spatial vision are truly modular. Much less attention has been given to Fodor's writing on the central processes, what would today be called higher‐level cognition. In “Fodor's First Law of the Nonexistence of Cognitive Science,” he argued that central processes are “bad candidates for scientific study” and would resist attempts at empirical analysis. This essay evaluates his argument for this remarkable claim, concluding that although central processes may well be “messier” than input modules, this does not mean that they cannot be studied and understood. The article briefly reviews the scientific progress made in understanding central processes in the 35 years since the book was published, showing that Fodor's prediction is clearly falsified by massive advances in topics like decision making and analogy. The essay concludes that Fodor's Law was not based on a clear argument for why the complexities of central systems could not be studied but was likely based on intuitions and preferences that were common in psychology at the time.     

Robustness without asymmetry: A flaw in Fodor's theory of content

We wish to thank Fred Adams, Ken Aizawa, Lynne Rudder Baker and Carol Slater for helpful comments on an earlier version of this essay.     

More Troubles for Epiphenomenalism

I have argued that to say qualia are epiphenomenal is to say a world without qualia would be physically identical to a world with qualia. Dan Cavedon-Taylor has offered an alternative interpretation of the commitments of qualia epiphenomenalism according to which qualia cause beliefs and those beliefs can and do cause changes to the physical world. I argue that neither of these options works for the qualia epiphenomenalist and thus that theory faces far more serious difficulties than has previously been recognized.

Masculinity-femininity as a national characteristic and its relationship with national agoraphobic fear levels: Fodor's sex role hypothesis revitalized

Hofstede's dimension of national culture termed Masculinity-Femininity [. Cultures and organizations: software of the mind. London: McGraw-Hill] is proposed to be of relevance for understanding national-level differences in self-assessed agoraphobic fears. This prediction is based on the classical work of Fodor [. In: V. Franks & V. Burtle (Eds.), Women in therapy: new psychotherapies for a changing society. New York: Brunner/Mazel]. A unique data set comprising 11 countries (total N=5491 students) provided the opportunity of scrutinizing this issue. It was hypothesized and found that national Masculinity (the degree to which cultures delineate sex roles, with masculine or tough societies making clearer differentiations between the sexes than feminine or modest societies do) would correlate positively with national agoraphobic fear levels (as assessed with the Fear Survey Schedule-III). Following the correction for sex and age differences across national samples, a significant and large effect-sized national-level (ecological) r=+0.67 (P=0.01) was found. A highly feminine society such as Sweden had the lowest, whereas the champion among the masculine societies, Japan, had the highest national Agoraphobic fear score.     

唯理论、普遍论与进化论——乔姆斯基语言天赋论思想探源

本文对乔姆斯基语言思想的认识论基础进行了梳理,作者认为唯理论是其语言天赋论萌芽的土壤,普遍语法是普遍主义在语言理论中的具体体现,语言天赋论告别了古典唯理论里的"灵魂"与"上帝",走向了同样具有不朽与万能品质的生物"基因"。     

Troubles with Theoretical Virtues: Resisting Theoretical Utility Arguments in Metaphysics

In this paper we examine theoretical utility arguments in metaphysics. While philosophers claim a procedural continuity with science when using such arguments, we argue that examining famous instances from the history of science expose their fundamental flaws. We find that arguments from theoretical utility invoke considerations that are not truth conducive and that justifications for claims that a theory possesses theoretical virtues often assume the truth of the theory such virtues are supposed to support. We conclude that theoretical utility arguments provide no epistemic grounds for metaphysical inquiry.