Fodor Quotes

Self-pity can make one weep, as can onions.

Only a philosopher would consider taking Oedipus as a model for a normal, unproblematic relation between an action and the maxim of the act.

The Rough Guide to Nepal; The Great Sights of Canada; America by Car; Fodor's Guide to the Bahamas; Let's go Bhutan.

The sun will rise tomorrow morning; I know that perfectly well. But figuring out how I could know it is, as Hume pointed out, a bit of a puzzle.

I don't have any friends in English Departments.

One man's modus ponens is another man's reductio, as epistemologists are forever pointing out (In Critical Condition, p. 70)

There is a gap between the mind and the world, and (as far as anybody knows) you need to posit internal representations if you are to have a hope of getting across it. Mind the gap. You’ll regret it if you don't.

Some philosophers hold that philosophy is what you do to a problem until it’s clear enough to solve it by doing science. Others hold that if a philosophical problem succumbs to empirical methods, that shows it wasn’t really philosophical to begin with.

This is not a book about God; nor about intelligent design; nor about creationism. Neither of us is into any of those. We thought we’d best make that clear from the outset, because our main contention in what follows will be that there is something wrong–quite possibly fatally wrong–with the theory of natural selection; and we are aware that, even among those who are not quite sure what it is, allegiance to Darwinism has become a litmus for deciding who does, and who does not, hold a ‘properly scientific’ world view. ‘You must choose between faith in God and faith in Darwin; and if you want to be a secular humanist, you’d better choose the latter’. So we’re told.

As Uncle Hegel used to enjoy pointing out, the trouble with perspectives is that they are, by definition, PARTIAL points of view; the Real problems are appreciated only when, in the course of the development of the World Spirit, the limits of perspective come to be transcended. Or, to put it less technically, it helps to be able to see the whole elephant.

Why isn’t every basic law a miracle by definition?

Light bulbs are very, VERY complicated.

One man's affirmation of the consecuent is another's man inference to the best explanation (Psychosemantics, pp. 149)

It does bear emphasis that slippery-slope arguments are notoriously invalid.

Az éhes szív árvább, mint az éhes gyomor

Halál annyi van, amennyit rettegsz tőle s keringsz körötte.

Mindegy, hogy az én gyermekem vagy másé, enni mindegyik szeret.

If the Mentalese story about the content of thought is true, then there couldn't be a private language argument. Good. That explains why there isn't one. (In Critical Condition, p. 68)

It cannot be an objection to a theory that there are some distinctions it does not make; if it were, it would be an objection to every theory. (Aristotelians thought that it was an argument against the Galelean mechanics that it did not distinguish between sublunary and heavenly bodies; i.e., that its generalizations were defined for both. This line of argument is now widely held to have been ill-advised.)

People think they want to know. Actually, if you ask—-how much would you pay to know, the answer is not much. . . . Do you care how your refrigerator works? No, as long as there’s a repairman around when it breaks down. Nobody really cares.

Yosemite is so large that you can think of it as five parks. Yosemite Valley, famous for waterfalls and cliffs, and Wawona, where the giant sequoias stand, are open all year. Hetch Hetchy, home of less-used backcountry trails, closes after the first big snow and reopens in May or June. The subalpine high country, Tuolumne Meadows, is open for summer hiking and camping; in winter it’s accessible only via cross-country skis or snowshoes. Badger Pass Ski Area is open in winter only. Most visitors spend their time along the park’s southwestern border, between Wawona and Big Oak Flat Entrance; a bit farther east in Yosemite Valley and Badger Pass Ski Area; and along the east–west corridor of Tioga Road, which spans the park north of Yosemite Valley and bisects Tuolumne Meadows.

In the philosophy of mind - as, indeed, in more important matters - [the twentieth century] has been a less than fully satisfactory century. We pretty much wasted the first half, so it seems to me, in a neurotic and obsessive preoccupation with refuting Cartesian skepticism about other minds. In the event, it didn't matter that the skeptics weren't refuted since there turned out not to be any. The only philosophers who really were doubtful about the existence of other minds were relentless anti-Cartesians like Wittgenstein, Dewey, Ryle, Quine and Rorty, and they were equally doubtful about the existence of their own. What we got for our efforts was mostly decades of behaviorism and the persistent bad habit of trying to run epistemological or semantic arguments for metaphysical conclusions. The end of this, I fear, is still not with us.

The first is Fodor’s Extreme Nativism (in cognitive science, the term “nativism” refers to an emphasis on innate mental organization; it has nothing to do with the political term for anti-immigrant bigotry). The second is Radical Pragmatics, the idea that the mind does not contain fixed representations of the meanings of words .7 Words are fluid, and can mean very different things in different circumstances. We give them a meaning only on the fly, in the context of the current conversation or text. And what we draw upon in memory is not a lexicon of definitions but a network of associations among words and the kinds of events and actors they typically convey.8 The third radical alternative, Linguistic Determinism, upends the view of language and thought I have been assuming. Rather than language being a window into human thought, which is couched in a richer and more abstract format, our native language is the language of thought, and so determines the kinds of thoughts we can think.

If your ship anchors in the harbor, you will have to take a small boat—called a launch or tender—to get ashore. Tendering is a nuisance; however, participants in shore excursions are given priority. Passengers wishing to disembark independently may be required to gather in a public room, get sequenced tendering passes, and wait until their numbers are called. The ride to shore may take as long as 20 minutes. If you don’t like waiting, plan to go ashore an hour or so after the ship drops its anchor. On a very large ship, the wait for a tender can be quite long and frustrating. Because tenders can be difficult to board, passengers with mobility problems may not be able to visit certain ports.

Vehicle reservations on Vancouver to Victoria and Nanaimo and Vancouver to the Sunshine Coast routes are optional (but recommended especially for Vancouver to Victoria) and cost an additional C$15 to C$22. There is no

Fodor’s Choice | The Ledbury.

What was Fodor like? Funny you should ask that, as I had a little dust-up over at Daily Nous not long ago, with an old graduate-school friend, Samir Chopra, on the subject of Fodor, in a discussion thread about him, after he’d just died. It turns out that one thing I really liked about Fodor was what Chopra disliked the most about him, namely his (in my view) hilarious argumentative affect and manner. Some of the shit he would do in class and at colloquia was just legendary. One thing I remember was a philosophy of mind class, where a really wacko student – you know, the guy who everyone silently prays isn’t going to talk or ask a question – just said something completely bizarre – I think it was that material objects are “waves of probability” or something like that – and Fodor, looking tormented, staggered over to the wall, drew a square on it with a black marker, and began banging his head in the center of it, going “No, no, no….” I almost pissed myself, it was so hilarious. And the square stayed there long after, so you’d be in some other class, and people would ask, “Why is there a square drawn on the wall in marker?” and you’d get to tell the story and crack up all over again. Now Samir takes this sort of thing as evidence of just how what a meanie Fodor was and as representative of a kind of meanie philosophy that too many philosophers engage in, and he lamented how it “alienated” him. It was all very much in the mode of the current sensitivity-culture everyone seems to be in the grip of, which I just find humorless and precious and representative of everything about the current cultural moment that I can’t stand.

Thought about the world is prior to thought about how to change the world. Accordingly, knowing-that is prior to knowing-how. Descartes was right and Ryle was wrong. Why, after all these years, does one still have to say these things?

Fodor’s Choice | The Spice House

You could perfectly well have a machine whose function is to produce things that are themselves functionless. In a consumer society you might have quite a lot of these.

Jerry Fodor, a fierce critic of pragmatist approaches to mind and language, puts this sort of criticism in a nutshell when he says: “First the pragmatist theory of concepts, then the theory theory of concepts, then holism, then relativism. So it goes” (Fodor 1994, p. 111).

Peterhof (Petrodvorets). Nicknamed the “Russian Versailles,” the elaborate interiors, formal gardens, and beautiful fountains of Peter the Great’s summer palace live up to their moniker. This is St. Petersburg’s most famous imperial residence, located in the suburbs about 40 minutes away.

Milan is Italy’s business hub and crucible of chic. Between

Rome may be bigger and have the political power, but Milan and the affluent north are what really make the country go. It’s

PACKING CHECKLIST Light, khaki, or neutral-color clothes are universally worn on safari and were first used in Africa as camouflage by the South African Boers, and then by the British Army that fought them during the South African War. Light colors also help to deflect the harsh sun and are less likely than dark colors to attract mosquitoes. Don’t wear camouflage gear. Do wear layers of clothing that you can strip off as the sun gets hotter and put back on as the sun goes down. Smartphone or tablet to check emails, send texts, and store photos (also handy as an alarm clock and flashlight), plus an adapter. If electricity will be limited, you may wish to bring a portable charger. Three cotton T-shirts Two long-sleeve cotton shirts preferably with collars Two pairs of shorts or two skirts in summer Two pairs of long pants (three pairs in winter)—trousers that zip off at the knees are worth considering Optional: sweatshirt and sweatpants, which can double as sleepwear One smart-casual dinner outfit Underwear and socks Walking shoes or sneakers Sandals/flip-flops Bathing suit and sarong to use as a cover-up Warm padded jacket and sweater/fleece in winter Windbreaker or rain poncho Camera equipment, extra batteries or charger, and memory cards; a photographer’s vest and cargo pants are great for storage Eyeglasses and/or contact lenses, plus extras Binoculars Small flashlight Personal toiletries Malaria tablets and prescription medication Sunscreen and lip balm with SPF 30 or higher Basic medication like antihistamine cream, eye drops, headache tablets, indigestion remedies, etc. Insect repellent that is at least 20% DEET and is sweat-resistant Tissues and/or premoistened wipes/hand sanitizer Warm hat, scarf, and gloves in winter Sun hat and sunglasses (Polaroid and UV-protected ones) Documents and money (cash, credit cards, etc.). A notebook/journal and pens Travel and field guide books A couple of large white plastic garbage bags Ziplock bags to keep documents dry and protect electronics from dust

Ontological priority is normatively neutral, Plato to the contrary notwithstanding.

Look, suppose you’re an official in the National Science Foundation, and a guy comes to you and says: Listen I have this interesting idea, give me $100,000 and I’ll work on it. And then 50 of the most respected people in the field come up to you and say: Look, the guy’s crazy, that can’t be true. Who are you going to believe? You’re going to end up supporting a very conservative, middle brow scientific institution. It’s hopeless.

Another idiosyncracy: I mentioned earlier [Jerry Fodor's] concern with science as opposed to ordinary talk. This concern can, however, sometimes seem belied by the folksy, informal character of much of his philosophical writing. I once asked him, “Jerry, you probably know more scientific psychology than any other philosopher: why when you give an example of a psychological law do you take a trivial folk example, such as “Eating more potato chips can make you want eat more,” instead of any serious ones from actual psychology?” Without hesitation, he replied, “citing the science would be vulgar.

I met Jerry Fodor a number of times at conferences in the 1960s. Sometime in the mid-1960s, after a long day made longer by my talk on the Competence-Performance distinction, as we waited for the last speaker to finish, I saw Jerry writing a note which he passed across the room through a series of audience members all the way to me. Expecting a withering critique of the talk we just heard – or of my earlier talk – I opened the piece of folded paper and read “My shirt is nicer than your shirt.

this is Disco Central and the township’s most popular

Unfortunately for the Inuit (and their Paleo imitators), the rest of the story isn’t so rosy. Turns out the Inuit are not healthy at all. They suffer from many chronic diseases and live, on average, ten years less than statistically matched Canadians (Choinière 1992; Iburg, Brønnum-Hansen, et al. 2001). In fact, they have the worst longevity of all populations in North America. There are many reasons for their short life expectancy: high rate of infections and TB, as well as a high suicide rate. While these may not be diet related (although more and more evidence suggests a strong connection between diet and the ability to fight of infection, and between diet and mood), Inuit also die of cancers of the GI tract and stroke, afflictions strongly correlated to diet (Paltoo and Chu 2004). Autopsy studies show they have less heart disease, likely due to their high omega-3 and low omega-6 and low-saturated-fat diet, but they are by no means free of heart disease (McLaughlin, Middaugh, et al. 2005). And there’s a possibility that autopsy statistics showing low heart disease are unreliable, based on really poor data collection (Bjerregaard, Young, et al. 2003; Bell, Mayer-Davis, et al. 1997). In fact, one of the likely reasons for their apparent low rates of heart disease and some cancers is their short life expectancy: Inuit eating their traditional diet simply don’t live long enough to demonstrate heart disease and cancer. In fact, the Westernization of their diet—adding the very foods the Paleo movement vilifies—may actually be prolonging their lives. A recent review of the literature suggests that a diet high in seafood does not lead to less heart disease and may lead to worse health (Fodor, Helis, et al. 2014)!

There is another possibly apocryphal story about the philosopher Jerry Fodor (he’s the Yogi Berra of philosophy). Someone asked what his stream of consciousness was like as he wrote philosophy. His reply was that it mostly said, “Come on, Jerry, you can do it, Jerry, keep going, Jerry.

Empiricism isn't true, and it is time to put away childish things.

For Helen Keller, it was not visual perception that sustained the meaning-making dog-DOG relation. Yet she and I, each in our way, can both satisfy the conditions for DOG-possession according to the present [rationalist] account of those conditions.

One drawback to living in a medical research town is that they’re paranoid about health, both physical and mental. The adults get off easy. Not the kids. Sneeze twice in a row and the teacher calls the school nurse. Drop out of a sport or let your grades fall and you’re whisked off to Dr. Fodor’s couch. They especially monitor the teens, as if hormonal surges could make us spontaneously combust at any moment.

My point... is of course not that solipsism is true; it's just that truth, reference, and the rest of the semantic notions aren't psychological categories. What they are is: they're modes of Dasein. I don't know what Dasein is, but I'm sure that there's lots of it around, and I'm sure that you and I and Cincinnati have all got it. What more do you want?

Pinker quotes Chomsky’s remark that ‘ignorance can be divided into problems and mysteries’ and continues: ‘I wrote this book because dozens of mysteries of the mind, from mental images to romantic love, have recently been upgraded to problems (though there are still some mysteries too!)’ Well, cheerfulness sells books, but Ecclesiastes got it right: ‘the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning.

The correlation between elms and the botanist's elm thoughts was hard earned; think of all the dreary years he must have spent in graduate school learning to be a reliable elm-detector. Whereas I can now correlate my thoughts with elms practically instantaneously: My mind-world correlation co-opts his [insofar as I use his expertise to identify elms], much as, in the other case, the correlation between my acid thoughts and acids co-opts the correlation between acidity and the color of litmus. What philosophers call 'linguistic deference' is actually the use of experts as instruments; not Marxist division of labor in semantics but capitalist exploitation in epistemology.

Magnus Ridolph inspected the paper with interest. Thirteen identities were listed: Lester Bonfils, with Abu Toko Homup Viamestris Diasporus Thorn 199 Fodor Impliega Fodor Banzoso Scriagl Hercules Starguard Fiamella of Thousand Candles Clan Kestrel, 14th Ward, 6th Family, 3rd Son (No name)

May I interrupt?” asked Magnus Ridolph. “I think I may save time for everyone. As you know, Mr. Pascoglu, I spent a certain period this morning in research. I chanced on a description of the Cambygian sacrificial rites. In order for the rite to be valid, the victim must kneel, bow his head forward. Two skewers are driven into his ears, and the victim is left in this position, kneeling, face down, in a state of ritual composure. Bonfils was sprawled without regard for any sort of decency. I suggest that Fodor Impliega and Fodor Banzoso are guiltless, at least of this particular crime.

Ahogy a szerencséshegyen baktatott elcsigázottan, megpillantotta, hogy egy toportyán fekszik előtte, aminek két fa közé szorult a lába.

Évekig dolgoztam közhivatalnokként, és meg kell mondjam, a hivatali kreténség, szarrágás, a felelősség tologatása és az élet-valóság iránti érzéketlenség mit sem változott az elmúlt két és fél száz évben. Talán nem érdektelen körülmény, hogy II. József közigazgatási reformjai nyomán pont 1783-84-ben születik meg a bürokrácia Magyarországon.