Fodor: A Theory of Content: Notes

The problem for the physicalist: How do purely physical systems or bits of them acquire intentionality?

(A flag gets to refer to eg France by human beings adopting a convention. A computer circuit gets to refer to a horse as a result of a human being interpreting it as a representative of a horse. But left on its own, without a human being to interpret it or to otherwise invest it in meaning, how does a circuit in the brain get to refer to something, eg a cow?)

Possible answer

A circuit firing in the brain (let's use this way of thinking about representation in the brain, 'circuits' get to fire and this is how, let us imagine, things are represented) gets its reference to the cow in virtue of a cow having played a key part in what caused the circuit to fire.

One problem with this: on some occasions a cow causes brain activity c, but on some occasions something else causes it. Eg in a case of hallucination, or when we think 'No cows in here then'.

If sometimes a cow causes c and sometimes something else causes c, what is the basis for saying it is the cow that gives c meaning and not the other thing, (or 'either the cow or the other thing' - hence the name 'disjunctive problem')?

Fodor's solution is to say there is a difference between the type of causal sequence involved when a cow causes c and when something that isn't a cow causes c.

What is this difference?

It is that the causal sequence which is responsible for giving c the meaning cow involves asymmetric dependence, whereas other causal sequences which give rise to c do not involve asymmetric dependence.

What is this notion of asymmetric dependence? Suppose x can't happen without y but y can happen without x. Then x is said to be asymmetrically dependent on y. (Eg naming can occur without paging, but paging can only happen if the name is already in place.)

That I think is the gist.

Another go at expressing the gist:

Is Fodor's thought this? - that c can only come to mean cow if some other circuit already holds information about cows, got causally, and that there is no problem about how physical systems can hold information about objects. I.e.

We accept that causal relationships can give a physical system information about objects (a computer does this all the time). The problem is how physical systems can give some of their components meaning. Fodor's point is that the causal sequence that gives a component a meaning depends on the causal sequence that result in the system acquiring information (about the object to be referred to): but not vice versa.)

And another:

Fodor uses robustness to characterise meaning as we know it. We can approach the problem again through this notion:

Robustness is the way in which c means cow even though it may be caused by things other than cows (as well as, sometimes, by cows). How are we to account for this? A simple causal theory can't - if it really is a simple causal theory it says that c comes to mean cow because a cow caused it. Such a simple theory has no answer to the objection: how come then that c sometimes occurs in the absence of cows? (This is of course the disjunctive problem again.)

What is Fodor's explanation of robustness? In a phrase, asymmetric dependence. C gets its meaning through causation, but the causation that confers meaning is of a special kind. It is one which involves asymmetric dependence. Causal sequences that involve asymmetric dependence can confer meanings, others can't: this seems to be Fodor's view.

(Earlier he has shown how asymmetric dependencies among our linguistic practices might explain how a token of 'slab' could mean slab, even when there's no slab there.)

There is much more to be said of course, but if I say more I think I will begin to make things worse again. (And when one reaches a certain point, I guess Fodor is his own best expositor.)

Thanks to Joanne for prompting this.

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