The Lemma Dilemma
Jerry Fodor,
Oct 24, 2003
Jerry Fodor treats us to a retelling of the Stanley and Livingstone story, one in which Stanley first had to rule out the possibility that he was seeing Queen Victoria before uttering, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume." Fodor is reacting, in this review, to the non-inferential theory of cognition offered by José Luis Bermúdez in his book Thinking without Words. Fodor, of course, is well known for his belief that cognition is, in essence, a linguistic phenomenon, that we, quite literally, think in words. "English, or something like it, is prima facie plausible as a model of the system of symbols that we think in," he writes. I think Fodor is wrong, and the shallow arguments (and cheap dodges) he offers in this item do not change my mind.
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