Jerry Fodor - The Nature of Content

The Nature of Content

From the beginning of the 1980s, Fodor adhered to a causal notion of mental content and of meaning. This idea of content contrasts sharply with the inferential role semantics to which he subscribed earlier in his career. As of 2010 Fodor criticizes inferential role semantics (IRS) because its commitment to an extreme form of holism excludes the possibility of a true naturalization of the mental. But naturalization must include an explanation of content in atomistic and causal terms.

Read more about this topic:  Jerry Fodor

Famous quotes containing the words nature and/or content:

    No man’s nature is able to know what is best for the social state of man; or, knowing, always able to do what is best.
    Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)

    Science asks no questions about the ontological pedigree or a priori character of a theory, but is content to judge it by its performance; and it is thus that a knowledge of nature, having all the certainty which the senses are competent to inspire, has been attained—a knowledge which maintains a strict neutrality toward all philosophical systems and concerns itself not with the genesis or a priori grounds of ideas.
    Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)