This excerpt from

A Theory of Content and Other Essays.

Jerry Fodor.
© 1990 The MIT Press.

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Introduction

With the exception of two enjoyable , but essentially digressive, interludes

of Connectionist bashing (see Fodor and Pylyshyn , 1988;
Fodor and Mclaughlin , 1989) the essays included here represent my
major professional preoccupations for the last five or six years. As
the reader will see at a glance, they divide in two . On the one hand ,
there ' s a batch of more or less philosophical pieces on mental representation
and the foundations of intentionality ; and , on the other
hand , there ' s a batch of more or less psychological pieces on cognitive
architecture . You may wonder whether these topics have anything
in common other than my recent interest in both . I thought that a
brief introductory note on that might be appropriate .
Here is one way that the two topics might be taken to connect: a
goal that theories of cognitive architecture pursue is to say whatever
there is that' s general about the character of the causal interactions
that can occur among cognitive states. You might think of such
theories as hying to provide a taxonomy of the nomologically possible
mental processes, where a " nomologically possible" mental process
is one that' s compatible with psychological law . Now , among
the views of intentional content that have, from time to time , found
favor in the philosophical community , there is this familiar " functionalist
" one: the intentional
contents of mental states are constituted
- or , anyhow , constrained- by their causal interrelations . So,
according to such views , part (or maybe all ) of what it is for your
current mental state to be a thought that somecats havewhiskersis its
being a state that has a disposition to cause you to think the thought
that some animals do . It is thus intrinsic to cat thoughts that they
tend to cause animal thoughts ; so this sort of story goes. Suppose,
for the moment , that this is true . Then a theory that says what kinds
of causal relations among mental states are possible would , ipso
facto, be a theory of the (or of one of the ) determinants of content .
Functionalism proposes a bridge from cognitive architecture to semantics
, to put the point in a nutshell . Given functionalism , what
x Introduction

mental processes there can be partly determines what thoughts you

can have.
I say you might suppose this , but I don ' t . Finding alternatives to
functionalist accounts of mental content is a major concern in these
studies. Here ' s why :
I take it very seriously that there is no principled distinction between
matters of meaning and matters of fact. Quine was right ; you
can' t have an analytic/ synthetic distinction . In the present context ,
this means that you can' t have a principled distinction between the
kinds of causal relations among mental states that determine content
and the kind of causal relations among mental states that don ' t . The
immediate consequence is that you can' t have functionalism without
holism ; if any of the function of a mental state bears on its content ,
then all of its function bears on its content . But if all of function bears
on content , then no two mental state tokens ever have the same
content and there can be no such thing as psychological explanation
by subsumption under intentional law .
So the story is that if you take it seriously that there is no analytic/
'
synthetic distinction , then there s a prima facie inference from functionalism
to holism and from holism to skepticism ; and the question
is what to do about it . As far as I can tell , there are two main camps:
either you accept the inference and live with the skepticism , or you
try to block the inference by taking it less than absolutely seriously
that there is no analytic / synthetic distinction . The first kind of philosopher
" - in a first -class conceptual
says: Well , very strictly speaking
' t true that
system, and like that - it really isn people act out of their
beliefs and desires. Very strictly speakingthere can' t be a scientific
intentional psychology , however much belief- desire explanation may
be a human necessity and however well it may work in practice." The
other kind of philosopher says:: " 1 know , of course, that you can' t
have a full -blown analytic synthetic distinction ; but perhaps you can
have a graded , or relativized , or localized , or otherwise denatured
't
analytidsynthetic distinction . In which case, functionalism doesn "
imply holism and is compatible with intentional realism after all .
But it seems to me that none of this will do. If it follows from your
semantics that very strictly speakingnobody has ever thought that
perhaps it was going to rain , then there is something wrong with
your semantics. (Cf . G. E. Mooreonepistemologies from which it
follows that very strictly speakingyou don ' t know whether you have
hands.) And the arguments that there is no analytic/ synthetic distinction
are arguments that there is no analytic/ synthetic distinction ;
not even a little one. Quine ' s point (utterly convincing, in my view )
is that what pass for intuitions of analyticity are in fact intuitions of
 Introduction xi

centrality ; and centrality is an epistemicrelation , not a semantical one.

That is to say: a functional analysis which would account for intuitions
of analyticity , wouldn ' t determine content. It wouldn ' t be a
semantictheory (even if we had one - which we don ' t ) .
The semantical parts of this book are largely about how to square
intentional realism with Quine ' s being right about analytidsynthetic .
The way to do it is to be relentlessly atomistic about meaning (which
means, of course not being a functionalist about meaning; see above) .
What' s nice about informational theories of meaning is precisely that
they point the way to relentless semantic atomism . In the general
case, the information that a symbol carries is independent of it causal
relations to other symbols ; a symbol can satisfy the constraints for
'
carrying information evenif it doesnt belongto a language. Informational
theories of meaning have their problems , to be sure, many of which
raise their heads in the chapters that follow . But holism is not among
the problems that they have. Informational semanticists can therefore
be robustly realist about content ; something that no other kind of
semanticist has thus far figured out how to be.
So much , then , for what the two parts of this book don' t have in
common ; they aren' t linked by a semantics that makes cognitive
architecture a determinant of intentional content .
In fact, the unity is thematic . Just as an informational view of
semantics, of the sort developed in part I , offers the possibility of
atomism about meaning , so a modular view of cognitive architecture ,
of the sort developed in part ll , offers the possibility of atomism
about perception . Semantic atomism is the idea that what you mean
is largely independent of what you believe; perceptual atomism is
the idea that so too is what you see.
These ideas come together in epistemology in a way that the last
essays in this volume only begin to explore . It is, perhaps , the characteristic
strategy of (serious) philosophers in our time to appeal to
semantic and psychological holism to support epistemic relativism .
(Our frivolous philosophers arrive at much the same conclusion ,
though by worse arguments , or by none) .
Thus , if what you mean depends on what you believe, it must be
a fallacy of equivocation to suppose that Jones' theory could assert
what Smith ' s theory denies. So the theory Jones believes must be
compatible with the theory Smith believes. Between compatible theories
there is, however , nothing to choose. Thus semantic holism
leads to incommensurability and incommensurability leads to relativism
. Or again, if what you see is determined by what you believe,
then scientists with different theories see different things even when
they are in the sameexperimentalenvironment. So experimental obser-
xii Inb' oduction

vations are theoretically biased, not just horn time to "time but in the
'
nature of the case. So unbiased experimental observation isn t what
decides scientific controversies . So maybe nothing that' s unbiased
does. Thus holism about perception leads to skepticism about observation
, and skepticism about observation leads to relativism about
confirmation . This is all very rough , to be sure; but I suppose that
'
the geography is familiar ~
I hate relativism . I think it af &onts intellectual dignity . I am appalled
that it is thought to be respectable. But , alas, neither my hating
it nor its af &onting intellectual dignity nor my being appalled that it
is thought to be respectable shows that relativism is false. What' s
needed to show that it is false is to take away the arguments that
purport to show that it is true . The argument , par excellence, that
purports to show that relativism is true is holism . So this book is an
attempt to take away holism . Hate me, hate my dog .
I do not think that - -- - this
- - - book is a successfulattempt to take away
holism . But I don ' t think it' s an oubight failure either . Quite generally
'
, I don t think of philosophy as a kind of enterprise in which the
sole options are oubight failure or success. What I hope for , rather ,
is this : I would like to convince you that the arguments for (semantic
and psychological ) holism really aren' t very substantial ; that there
are serious atomistic alternatives to each; that the possibilities for
further development of such alternatives look sufficiently bright to
merit our careful and detailed attention . Everybody takes holism for
granted these days , but not , I think , for any very good reasons;
certainly not for any very good reasons that they' ve managed to
make explicit . I' d like to change all that .
That' s what I' d like . What I' ll settle for is just convincing you that
holism might not be true (and therefore must not be assumed inargu -
ments for relativism ) . Then , maybe, my next book will convince you
'
that holism really might not be true . And so on . You ve got to start
somewhere , I suppose; and everybody tells me it' s the first million
that' s the hard one.
This excerpt from

A Theory of Content and Other Essays.

Jerry Fodor.
© 1990 The MIT Press.

is provided in screen-viewable form for personal use only by members

of MIT CogNet.

Unauthorized use or dissemination of this information is expressly

forbidden.

If you have any questions about this material, please contact

cognetadmin@cognet.mit.edu.