Jerry A. Fodor Quotes

#1. 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.

Jerry A. Fodor

#2. Only a philosopher would consider taking Oedipus as a model for a normal, unproblematic relation between an action and the maxim of the act.

Jerry A. Fodor

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

Jerry A. Fodor

#4. 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.

Jerry A. Fodor

#5. 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)

Jerry A. Fodor

#6. 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.

Jerry A. Fodor

#7. Self-pity can make one weep, as can onions.

Jerry A. Fodor

#8. It does bear emphasis that slippery-slope arguments are notoriously invalid.

Jerry A. Fodor