Jerry Fodor - Fodor and The Nature of Mental States

Fodor and The Nature of Mental States

In his book Propositional Attitudes (1978), Fodor introduced the idea that mental states are relations between individuals and mental representations. Despite the changes in many of his positions over the years, the idea that intentional attitudes are relational has remained unchanged from its original formulation up to the present time.

In that book, he attempted to show how mental representations, specifically sentences in the language of thought, are necessary to explain this relational nature of mental states. Fodor considers two alternative hypotheses. The first completely denies the relational character of mental states and the second considers mental states as two-place relations. The latter position can be further subdivided into the Carnapian view that such relations are between individuals and sentences of natural languages and the Fregean view that they are between individuals and the propositions expressed by such sentences. Fodor's own position, instead, is that to properly account for the nature of intentional attitudes, it is necessary to employ a three-place relation between individuals, representations and propositional contents.

Considering mental states as three-place relations in this way, representative realism makes it possible to hold together all of the elements necessary to the solution of this problem. Further, mental representations are not only the objects of beliefs and desires, but are also the domain over which mental processes operate. They can be considered the ideal link between the syntactic notion of mental content and the computational notion of functional architecture. These notions are, according to Fodor, our best explanation of mental processes.

Read more about this topic:  Jerry Fodor

Famous quotes containing the words fodor, nature, mental and/or states:

    The content of a thought depends on its external relations; on the way that the thought is related to the world, not on the way that it is related to other thoughts.
    —Jerry Alan Fodor (b. 1935)

    Spirit, that made those heroes dare
    To die, and leave their children free,
    Bid Time and Nature gently spare
    The shaft we raise to them and thee.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Here in the U.S., culture is not that delicious panacea which we Europeans consume in a sacramental mental space and which has its own special columns in the newspapers—and in people’s minds. Culture is space, speed, cinema, technology. This culture is authentic, if anything can be said to be authentic.
    Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)

    With steady eye on the real issue, let us reinaugurate the good old “central ideas” of the Republic. We can do it. The human heart is with us—God is with us. We shall again be able not to declare, that “all States as States, are equal,” nor yet that “all citizens as citizens are equal,” but to renew the broader, better declaration, including both these and much more, that “all men are created equal.”
    Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)