15 Quotes by Jerry Fodor

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)

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

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?

Light bulbs are very, VERY complicated.

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

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.

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.

If there is a community of computers living in my head, there had also better be somebody who is in charge; and, by God, it had better be me.

The content of a thought depends on its external relations; on the way that the thought is related to the world, not on the way that it is related to other thoughts.