[quickphilosophy] Re: Fodor on Concepts III: Other Arguments Against BCP
- From: wittrsl@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- To: quickphilosophy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 01 Sep 2010 01:07:23 -0000
--- In quickphilosophy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Ron Allen <wavelets@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Walter:
> Â
> I've been out of town and unable to devote much time to Fodor.
> Â
> Just an observation: I think you are reformulating Fodor's development and
> combining parts of different arguments. That's OK, though.
> Â
> I agree completely that he's attacking BCP as if it were committed to
> sorting and inference as sufficient conditions for concept possession, when,
> in all likelihood, they are just necessary conditons. Individually and
> conjoined, then, they are still weaker than concept possession.
> Â
> Would not a kind of Chinese Room Argument be relevant to this question?
It seems so to me.
>For example, suppose I had a person inside the CRA who was asked to sort and
>make inferences upon objects that were presented to the window. The little
>guy in the CRA has to sort dieseldowns and he has to make inferences about
>them. But, he just follows a set of ad hoc rules that somehow,
>coincidentally, just happen to work for the particular sequence of dieseldown
>and non-dieseldown examples we hold up in the window and for the dieseldown
>and non-dieseldown deductive problems we hold up to the window. Now, this ad
>hoc, rule-driven luck is not sufficient to say that the Room has the concept
>of a dieseldown, even though, sure enough, it made a whole handsome series of
>sortations and a pretty decent pattern of inferences.
> Â
Yes.
> Also, another thing about your reformulated argument below. In your point (2)
> you define compositionality as concepts being decomposed into smaller ones.
> This is different from Fodor, who only asserts that they add together or
> permute in some fashion, not that they decompose.
(2) doesn't require that all concepts decompose. It just says what's supposed
to follow from concepts that do.
> Â Also, the decomposition leads to an infinite regress. I either come to some
> concepts that are not compositional (and not composed of smaller ones) or I
> have compositional concepts all the way down (to minus infinity). But, if we
> don't regress, then all of our concepts are built up from atomic concepts,
> and a BCP advocate with an Atomic Propositions and Atomic Perceptions
> foundationalism underneath would not at all be unsatisfied with that result.
> If Fodor were to argue for the kind of compositionality that you seem to
> suggest here, then his Dog as such concept would be just a collection of
> atomic perceptions, better or worse known to a subject.
I take from that article that he actually is some sort of atomist.
> Â
> So, at least with your (2) below, I think that you have an infinite regress,
No, there's no regress from (2), which, again, only says what's supposed to
follow if a concept IS "decomposable." It doesn't require that every concept
is.
and if not that, then you dissolve concepts as such into a variant acceptable
to BCP.
> Â
I don't see that. Can you explain?
I repost the argument below for easy reference.
W
>
>
> (1) For language/understanding to work (be generative), most concepts must be
> compositional.
>
> (2) For any concept C, C is compositional iff (if C is composed of (littler
> concepts) A + N, then for any person S, if S understands A + S understands N,
> then S will also understand C).
>
> (3) For the BCPer, for all persons S and concepts C, if S undertands C, then
> S can sort representative Cs in favorable conditions.
>
> (4) Therefore, for the BCPer, a concept C is compositional iff (for all Cs
> and Ss, if C is composed of A and N, then if S can sort both As and Ns in
> favorable conditions, then S can also sort representative ANs (i.e.
> representative Cs) in favorable conditions. [from (2) and (3)]
>
> (5) But for many (perhaps most?) concepts of the AN type, there are many
> (perhaps most?) Ss who can sort both representative As and representative Ns
> in favorable conditions but CANNOT sort representative ANs in favorable
> conditions. [Fodor gives his night bluebird as an example here].
>
> (6) Language/understanding is generative and does work.
>
> (7) Therefore, BCP is wrong.
>
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