Has Fodor Really Changed His Mind on Narrow Content?

Mind and Language 12 (3-4):422-458 (1997)
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Abstract

In The Elm and the Expert (1994), Fodor rejects the notion of narrow content as superfluous. He envisions a scientific intentional psychology that adverts only to broad content properties in its explanations. I show that there has been no change in Fodor's treatment of Frege cases and cases involving the so‐called deferential concepts. And for good reason: his notion of narrow content (1985‐91) couldn't explain them. The only apparent change concerns his treatment of Twin Earth cases. However, I argue that the notion of broad content that his purely informational semantics delivers is, in some interesting sense, equivalent to the mapping notion of narrow content he officially gave up. I also critically reconstruct the evolution of Fodor's thinking between 1980 and 1994.

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Author's Profile

Murat Aydede
University of British Columbia

Citations of this work

The language of thought hypothesis.Murat Aydede - 2010 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Fodor on concepts and Frege puzzles.Murat Aydede - 1998 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 79 (4):289-294.
Are Frege cases exceptions to intentional generalizations?Murat Aydede & Philip Robbins - 2001 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 31 (1):1-22.

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