Jerry A. Fodor
Jerry Alan Fodor was born on April 22, 1935, in New York City, a setting that would remain closely tied to his professional life throughout his career. A citizen of the United States, Fodor worked and wrote in English across a career that placed him at the intersection of philosophy of mind and cognitive science.
Fodor was educated at Columbia University, Princeton University, and the University of Oxford, a formation that equipped him for sustained work in analytic philosophy. He went on to teach at MIT and at the City University of New York Graduate Center before holding the position of State of New Jersey Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, a post he retained in emeritus status at the time of his death. As a philosopher and university teacher, his writings addressed philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and they laid the groundwork for the modularity of mind and the language of thought hypotheses, two frameworks that became central reference points in those fields.
In recognition of his contributions, Fodor received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Jean Nicod Prize, and he was elected a Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society. These distinctions reflected the reach of his work across both philosophical and scientific communities. His engagement with questions about mental representation and cognitive architecture sustained his standing as a significant voice in the disciplines he worked within.
Fodor died on November 29, 2017, in Manhattan — the borough of the city where he had been born more than eight decades earlier. At the time of his death he held the emeritus professorship at Rutgers University, a position that marked the final chapter of a career conducted largely within the universities and intellectual communities of the northeastern United States.
Quotes by Jerry A. Fodor
Some philosophers hold that philosophy is what you do to a problem until it’s clear enough to solve it by doing science. Others hold that if a philosophical problem succumbs to empirical methods, that shows it wasn’t really philosophical to begin with.
People think they want to know. Actually, if you ask—-how much would you pay to know, the answer is not much. . . . Do you care how your refrigerator works? No, as long as there’s a repairman around when it breaks down. Nobody really cares.
As Uncle Hegel used to enjoy pointing out, the trouble with perspectives is that they are, by definition, PARTIAL points of view; the Real problems are appreciated only when, in the course of the development of the World Spirit, the limits of perspective come to be transcended. Or, to put it less technically, it helps to be able to see the whole elephant.
My point... is of course not that solipsism is true; it's just that truth, reference, and the rest of the semantic notions aren't psychological categories. What they are is: they're modes of Dasein. I don't know what Dasein is, but I'm sure that there's lots of it around, and I'm sure that you and I and Cincinnati have all got it. What more do you want?
The sun will rise tomorrow morning; I know that perfectly well. But figuring out how I could know it is, as Hume pointed out, a bit of a puzzle.
There is a gap between the mind and the world, and (as far as anybody knows) you need to posit internal representations if you are to have a hope of getting across it. Mind the gap. You’ll regret it if you don't.
Ontological priority is normatively neutral, Plato to the contrary notwithstanding.
Only a philosopher would consider taking Oedipus as a model for a normal, unproblematic relation between an action and the maxim of the act.