Fodor Variations i: Minding Meaning

Getting there... I think!

“Fodor? Yes, Jerry Fodor, that's who Victor Gomes looks to for help in advancing our understanding of the mind.”

A friend recently asked me who my favorite philosopher was, a question I hadn’t really considered if I’m being honest. Now, naturally, I remembered my commitment to the bit (you know the one) and immediately responded: Jerry Fodor, no question. But, this presents a bit of a problem. A lot of people outside of cognitive science haven’t heard of him so naturally my answer didn’t really excite. So, I was in a bit of awkward position: I actually had to justify my opinion. I thought, well, maybe I’ll start with the argument he’s notorious for putting forth. Fodor argued everything’s innate - he called it Mad-Dog Nativism. But it’s audacious because it’s so counterintuitive (read: requires lots of set up) and also quite silly, as Fodor himself acknowledged. Then I thought, but certainly most people care about concepts! and that’s when I knew I really lost the plot because that’s so vague I may assume everyone’s interested in stuff.*

Later, I thought back to a few conversations I had at SPP, and I think I have a (slightly) better answer that brings out some of the political questions surrounding meaning that have become more interesting to me the more I read about concepts. And, well I tried writing the first entry, but then I realized I was trying to do too much in one go, so I went back to the drawing board. I tried turning the list in the last post into this pseudomindmap thing on freeform:

This already felt like a bit much and I was like “man, you’re really trying to force all your interests together and maybe also justify yourself too much,” to which I could only say… ouch, but fair. But, at the end of the day, I think I could make it even more too much, so I ported it over to Obsidian (to link w notes mostly) and tried developing it a bit.

Definitely has a bit of a conspiracy corkboard quality… But I guess the real problem is that things got pretty ambitious and at a certain point you can tell I just liked coming up with titles. So, I’m now just considering what I want to remove and how to prioritize the remainder. I’m thinking I may only do a few things in the Fodor Variations, but that I’ll try compiling some of my notes into some sort of “side-primers” that are either reflections on things in the field or attempts to condense some info. Hopefully they can be somewhat useful or relevant to someone looking to get into this stuff. I also want to talk about Pivot Grammars and the refinement of the Performance/Competence distinction, which naturally means some posts on Janet Dean Fodor’s work, who we also tragically lost recently… it’s a sad time for cogsci... But, I feel like maybe this doesn’t need to be a board for everything I want to write about? Importantly, I just want to be clear, I’m not saying they’re not all gonna be about Fodor because of this tweet:

Screenshot of tweet by “alleged” philosopher Jake Quilty-Dunn.

My thinking is that if I can kinda break stuff down into small chunks, I can write more easily about a very specific point in a still digestable way. Some of them will require more decomposition than I’ve gotten to yet (like the Tower of Babels), so I wanna think about how to do that or whether that’s even something for here since I don’t really know how to use it yet. I haven’t gotten much writing done, but that paper I was working on mostly just needs a section removed (on pivot grammar, which is what I may just move here…). I’ve also to be honest, just been having a hard time with stuff. I mean, I think a lot of people have been. Times just are hard, and since I’m starting to think about postdocs and continuing onwards in academia, there’s an undeniable way in which my own process will affect how I interpret these things. I talked with someone about doing a postdoc and basically said that since the job market’s so rough, I don’t want to study anything that I’ll regret wasting my time on if I don’t stay in academia. So, I suppose if it seems like I’m trying to tie everything together, and justify myself too much that’s because I am. I want to know that I can be the type of person that I’d like to be if I stay. If not, then I guess I’d like to figure out where I can do that, and how. But, regardless, I like these ideas and I’ll keep thinking them regardless.

Part 1 in a series inspired by reading too much Fodor & just enough Blake while in an unnecessary and entirely self-imposed hermitage this summer. For intro post see:

*Except I’m actually not all that interested in mereology tbh.