Fodor Jerry A. (b.1935), influential contemporary American philosopher of psychology, known for his energetic (and often witty) defense of intensional realism, a computationalrepresentational model of thought, and an atomistic, externalist theory of content determination for mental states. Fodor’s philosophical writings fall under three headings. First, he has defended the theory of mind implicit in contemporary cognitive psychology, that the cognitive mind-brain is both a representational/computational device and, ultimately, physical. He has taken on behaviorists (Ryle), psychologists in the tradition of J. J. Gibson, and eliminative materialists (P. A. Churchland). Second, he has engaged in various theoretical disputes within cognitive psychology, arguing for the modularity of the perceptual and language systems (roughly, the view that they are domain-specific, mandatory, limited-access, innately specified, hardwired, and informationally encapsulated) (The Modularity of Mind, 1983); for a strong form of nativism (that virtually all of our concepts are innate); and for the existence of a ‘language of thought’ (The Language of Thought, 1975). The latter has led him to argue against connectionism as a psychological theory (as opposed to an implementation theory).
Finally, he has defended the views of ordinary propositional attitude psychology that our mental states (1) are semantically evaluable (intentional), (2) have causal powers, and (3) are such that the implicit generalizations of folk psychology are largely true of them. His defense is twofold. Folk psychology is unsurpassed in explanatory power; furthermore, it is vindicated by contemporary cognitive psychology insofar as ordinary propositional attitude states can be identified with information-processing states, those that consist in a computational relation to a representation. The representational component of such states allows us to explain the semantic evaluability of the attitudes; the computational component, their causal efficacy. Both sorts of accounts raise difficulties. The first is satisfactory only if supplemented by a naturalistic account of representational content. Here Fodor has argued for an atomistic, externalist causal theory (Psychosemantics, 1987) and against holism (the view that no mental representation has content unless many other non-synonymous mental representations also have content) (Holism: A Shopper’s Guide, 1992), against conceptual role theories (the view that the content of a representation is determined by its conceptual role) (Ned Block, Brian Loar), and against teleofunctional theories (teleofunctionalism is the view that the content of a representation is determined, at least in part, by the biological functions of the representations themselves or systems that produce or use those representations) (Ruth Millikan, David Papineau). The second sort is satisfactory only if it does not imply epiphenomenalism with respect to content properties. To avoid such epiphenomenalism, Fodor has argued that not only strict laws but also ceteris paribus laws can be causal. In addition, he has sought to reconcile his externalism vis-à-vis content with the view that causal efficacy requires an individualistic individuation of states. Two solutions have been explored: the supplementation of broad (externally determined) content with narrow content, where the latter supervenes on what is ‘in the head’ (Psychosemantics, 1987), and its supplementation with modes of presentation identical to sentences of the language of thought (The Elm and the Expert, 1995). See also COGNITIVE SCIENCE , CONNECTION – ISM , FOLK PSYCHOLOGY, HOLISM , LANGUAGE OF THOUGHT, MEANING , PHILOSOPHY OF MIN. B.V.E.