Abstract
In Psychosemantics Jerry Fodor offered a list of sufficient conditions for a symbol "X" to mean something X. The conditions are designed to reduce meaning to purely non-intentional natural relations. They are also designed to solve what Fodor has dubbed the "disjunction problem". More recently, in A Theory of Content and Other Essays, Fodor has modified his list of sufficient conditions for naturalized meaning in light of objections to his earlier list. We look at his new set of conditions and give his motivation for them-tracing them to problems in the literature. Then we argue that Fodor's conditions still do not work. They are open to objections of two different varieties: they are too strong and too weak. We develop these objections and indicate why Fodor's new, improved list of conditions still do not work to naturalize meaning.
| Original language | American English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 175-183 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Minds and Machines |
| Volume | 2 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 1992 |
| Externally published | Yes |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Philosophy
- Artificial Intelligence
Keywords
- Fodor
- Meaning
- asymmetric causal dependency
- disjunction problem
- information semantics
- representation