Fodor on concepts and Frege Puzzles

Author: Aydede M.1

Source: Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 79, Number 4, December 1998 , pp. 289-294(6)

Publisher: Blackwell Publishing

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Abstract:

Fodor characterizes concepts as consisting of two dimensions: one is content, which is purely denotational/broad, the other the Mentalese vehicle bearing that content, which Fodor calls the mode of presentation (MOP), understood “syntactically.” I argue that, so understood, concepts are not interpersonally shareable; so Fodor's own account violates what he calls the Publicity Constraint in his (1998) book. Furthermore, I argue that Fodor's non-semantic solution to Frege cases succumbs to the problem of providing interpersonally applicable functional roles for MOPs. This is a serious problem because Fodor himself has argued extensively that if Fregean senses or meanings are understood as functional/conceptual roles, then they can’t be public, since, according to Fodor, there are no interpersonally applicable functional roles.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1111/1468-0114.00063

Affiliations: 1: University of Chicago

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