[Wittrs] Re: Meaning, Intent and Reference (Parsing Fodor?)

  • From: "jrstern" <jrstern@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 05:08:12 -0000

--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:
>
> > The short version is that there must be a "language of thought",
> > Wittgenstein to the contrary, and that the formal (aka
> > computational) and semantic (aka conceptual) aspects of that
> > language are a "dual aspect all the way down".
>
> If I understand this right, he's arguing for something going on in brains 
> that has a one-to-one relationship with the referents outside of brains and 
> he is further saying that the languages we speak and think in and the 
> meanings our thoughts embody are the flip side(?) of the causal events in 
> brains, i.e., that there's a precise parallel of brain event with every 
> meaning, every thought we think linguistically without which our thoughts 
> would lack meaning (content)?

Oh, ... if I put in Fodor's own words, it would give us both headaches, and I'm 
not sure I quite understand yours, either.  Of course his books are there for 
your perusal, if you like.  But I
warn you, even as Fodor concedes in his most recent, he is very
easy to misread.

Certainly he's a physicalist in that physical brain state
corresponds with meaning, but just what that means (!) is not
necessarily clear, in regards to balancing "methodological solipsism" and 
correspondence with distal objects.

> How does this Fodorian view (if I've got it right) sit with the account I 
> gave earlier of meaning as connection in a complex web of conserved 
> connections?

I'm not sure if I read your message.  Fodor's term of choice is
"modularity", which he corresponds roughly to the idea that you
must have symbolic and semantic genericity a la Chomsky.

It's Fodor's mention of semantics that is easiest to misread,
and that happens to be about 50% of his theory.  I've been reading
his stuff for over thirty years, and I am still untangling the
threads.

Josh


=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

Other related posts:

  1. Home
  2. wittrsamr
  3. Archive
  4. 02-2010