18+ Jerry Fodor Quotes On Education, Ethics

Jerry Fodor is an American philosopher and cognitive scientist. He is one of the most influential philosophers of mind of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Fodor is known for his contributions to the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Jerry Fodor on education, life, leadership.

I hate relativism. I hate relativism more than I hate anything else, excepting, maybe, fiberglass powerboats. Surely, surely, no one but a relativist would drive a fiberglass powerboat. — Jerry Fodor

I rather doubt that life has a meaning. If I thought perhaps it did, and I wanted to find out what its meaning is, I don't imagine I'd ask someone whose credentials consist of a PhD in philosophy. — Jerry Fodor

I take it that computational processes are both symbolic and formal. They are symbolic because they are defined over representations, and they are formal because they apply to representations, in virtue of (roughly) the syntax of the representations. — Jerry Fodor

Philosophers who pay for their semantics by drawing checks on Darwin are in debt way over their heads. — Jerry Fodor

No doubt, intuitions deserve respect. ...[but] I think that it is always up for grabs what an intuition is an intuition of. At a minimum, it is surely sometimes up for grabs. — Jerry Fodor

...there are special sciences not because of the nature of our epistemic relation to the world, but because of the way the world is put together: not all natural kinds (not all the classes of things and events about which there are important, counterfactual supporting generalizations to make) are, or correspond to, physical natural kinds. — Jerry Fodor

Self-pity can make one weep, as can onions. — Jerry Fodor

The data that can bear on the confirmation of perceptual hypotheses includes, in the general case, considerably less than the organism may know. — Jerry Fodor

The degree of confirmation assigned to any given hypothesis is sensitive to properties of the entire belief system... simplicity, plausibility, and conservatism are properties that theories have in virtue of their relation to the whole structure of scientific beliefs taken collectively. A measure of conservatism or simplicity would be a metric over global properties of belief systems. — Jerry Fodor

Methodological individualism is the doctrine that psychological states are individuated with respect to their causal powers. — Jerry Fodor

If, in short, 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. — Jerry Fodor

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. — Jerry Fodor

To the best of my recollection, I became a philosopher because my parents wanted me to become a lawyer. It seems to me, in retrospect, that there was much to be said for their suggestion. On the other hand, many philosophers are quite good company; the arguments they use are generally better than the ones that lawyers use; and we do get to go to as many faculty meetings as we like at no extra charge. — Jerry Fodor

...monetary exchanges have interesting things in common; Gresham's law, if true, says what one of these interesting things is. But what is interesting about monetary exchanges is surely not their commonalities under physical description. A natural kind like a monetary exchange could turn out to be co-extensive with a physical natural kind; but if it did, that would be an accident on a cosmic scale. — Jerry Fodor

On my bad days, I sometimes wonder what philosophers are for. — Jerry Fodor

The theory of natural selection reduces to a banal truth: if a kind of creature flourishes in a kind of situation, then there must be something about such creatures (or about such situations, or about both) in virtue of which it does so. — Jerry Fodor

...if it isn't literally true that my wanting is causally responsible for my reaching, and my itching is causally responsible for my scratching, and my believing is causally responsible for my saying . . . If none of that is literally true, then practically everything I believe about anything is false and it's the end of the world. — Jerry Fodor

Who wins a... competition [between two traits] is massively context sensitive. — Jerry Fodor

Life Lessons by Jerry Fodor

1. Jerry Fodor's work emphasizes the importance of rationality and logical thinking in understanding the world and making decisions.
2. He argues that there are limits to how much we can understand about the world, and that we should be careful not to make assumptions about the nature of reality.
3. He also suggests that we should be open to new ideas and be willing to challenge our existing beliefs in order to better understand the world around us.