Concepts

Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong

Bibliographic Data

ID23399451
AuthorsJerry A Fodor (Rutgers University, New Jersey, corresponding author)
Year1998
Publication date1998-02-05
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueConcepts (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University PressOxford (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/0198236360.001.0001
OpenAlexW4253689767
ISBN9780198236368
LanguageEN
Citations received220
References cited32

Jerry Fodor presents a strikingly original theory of the basic constituents of thought. He suggests that the heart of a cognitive science is its theory of concepts, and that cognitive scientists have gone badly wrong in many areas because their assumptions about concepts have been seriously mistaken. Fodor argues compellingly for an atomistic theory of concepts, and maintains that future work on human cognition should build upon new foundations. He starts by demolishing the rival theories that have prevailed in recent years—that concepts are definitions, that they are prototypes or stereotypes, that they are abstractions from belief systems, etc. He argues that all such theories are radically unsatisfactory for two closely related reasons: they hold that the content of a concept is determined, at least in part, by its inferential role; and they hold that typical concepts are structurally complex. Empirical and philosophical arguments against each of these claims are elaborated. Fodor then develops his alternative account, arguing that conceptual content is determined entirely by informational (mind—world) relations, and that typical concepts are atomic. The implications of this ‘informational atomism’ are considered in respect of issues in psychology, lexical semantics, and metaphysics, with particular attention to the relation between informational atomism and innateness.

Atomism · Cognition · Cognitive science · Epistemology · Metaphysics · Relation (database) · Sociology · Child and Animal Learning Development · Computer Science · Language and cultural evolution · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Philosophy · Psychology

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