Jerry Fodor

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Lore & Background

Fodor was born in New York City on April 22, 1935, of Jewish descent. He graduated with a B.A. in philosophy, summa cum laude, from Columbia University in 1956, writing a senior thesis on Søren Kierkegaard and studying with Sidney Morgenbesser and Arthur Danto. He earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University in 1960 under the direction of Hilary Putnam. From 1959 to 1986 he was on the faculty of MIT. From 1986 to 1988 he was a full professor at the City University of New York. From 1988 until his retirement in 2016 as emeritus, he was State of New Jersey Professor of philosophy and cognitive science at Rutgers University. He died at home on November 29, 2017. Fodor argued in his 1975 book The Language of Thought that mental states, such as beliefs and desires, are relations between individuals and mental representations. He maintained that these representations can only be correctly explained in terms of a language of thought (LOT) in the mind, which is an actually existing thing codified in the brain. He adhered to a species of functionalism, holding that thinking and other mental processes consist primarily of computations operating on the syntax of these representations. For Fodor, significant parts of the mind, such as perceptual and linguistic processes, are structured in terms of modules, or 'organs,' defined by their causal and functional roles. These modules are relatively independent of each other and of the 'central processing' part of the mind. He later developed an asymmetric causal theory of reference and argued against semantic holism. Fodor strongly opposed reductive accounts of the mind, arguing that mental states are multiple realizable and that higher-level psychological generalizations cannot be captured by low-level neural explanations. He also emerged as a prominent critic of what he characterized as ill-grounded Darwinian theories of natural selection as an explanation of mind.

Reader's Guide

Fodor's significance lies in his foundational contributions to the philosophy of mind, particularly the language of thought hypothesis and modularity of mind. His 1975 book The Language of Thought argued that mental states are three-place relations between individuals, mental representations, and propositional contents. He revived the idea of modularity in the 1980s with his 1983 monograph The Modularity of Mind, emphasizing two properties: informational encapsulation and domain specificity. Fodor insisted that the mind is not 'massively modular,' contrary to cognitive scientists like Steven Pinker and Henry Plotkin, and argued that most cognition is abductive and global, creating the frame problem for computational theory. He also defended intentional realism, arguing for the reality of mental representations, and criticized Daniel Dennett's instrumentalism. His insistence on the irreducibility of mental states to neural explanations shaped debates on mental content and scientific explanation.

Did You Know?

• Fodor wrote a senior thesis on Søren Kierkegaard as an undergraduate at Columbia University.
• He studied under Sidney Morgenbesser and Arthur Danto as an undergraduate, and earned his Ph.D. under Hilary Putnam at Princeton.
• Fodor regularly wrote columns for the London Review of Books on opera and other topics.
• His first marriage was to applied psychologist Iris Goldstein, with whom he had one son; after their divorce, he married linguist Janet Dean.
• Fodor died at home on November 29, 2017.

Academic Trajectory and Institutional Home

Jerry Alan Fodor's intellectual journey began in New York City, where he was born in 1935 to a Jewish family. He earned his bachelor's degree in philosophy from Columbia University in 1956, graduating summa cum laude after writing a senior thesis focused on Søren Kierkegaard and studying under Sidney Morgenbesser and Arthur Danto. He followed this with a doctorate at Princeton in 1960, working under the supervision of Hilary Putnam. His teaching career spanned nearly six decades and three major institutions: he spent twenty-seven years on the MIT faculty from 1959 to 1986, then held a full professorship at the City University of New York Graduate Center for two years before joining Rutgers University in 1988. At Rutgers he held the title of State of New Jersey Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science until his retirement as emeritus in 2016. He passed away at his home on November 29, 2017, leaving behind a career that touched virtually every major center of American philosophical and cognitive-science thought.

The Language of Thought and Computational Mind

In his landmark 1975 volume The Language of Thought, Fodor proposed that beliefs, desires, and other intentional mental states are best understood as relations between a person and internal mental representations. He argued that these representations can only be adequately characterized through a mental language—a system of symbolic structures that he insisted is not merely a convenient metaphor but a genuine, physically codified feature of the brain. Aligning himself with a particular form of functionalism, he held that thinking amounts to computation performed on the syntax of these representational structures. Crucially, Fodor rejected both the Carnapian idea that mental states relate individuals to sentences of ordinary language and the Fregean view that they relate individuals to abstract propositions. Instead, he championed a three-place relation linking the individual, the representation, and the propositional content it carries. This framework, which he called representative realism, positioned mental representations as simultaneously the objects of attitudes and the domain over which cognitive processes operate, bridging syntactic content with functional architecture.

Modularity, Nativism, and the Architecture of Cognition

Building on the nativist tradition inaugurated by Noam Chomsky, Fodor developed a robust commitment to the innateness of core cognitive capacities. His rejection of behaviorism and associationism led him to propose that much of the mind is organized into relatively autonomous modules—what he sometimes called organs—each defined by its specific causal and functional role. He pointed to perceptual phenomena such as the Müller-Lyer illusion as evidence that visual processing operates independently of higher-level knowledge: a person who knows two lines are the same length still perceives them as different. These modules, he argued, are insulated from one another and from the mind's central processing system, which handles the more global, domain-general logical relations among inputs, outputs, and stored contents. The modular structure, in his view, is what allows causal connections between the mind and external objects, thereby grounding the aboutness of mental states in the world.

Anti-Reductionism, Philosophy of Language, and Broader Influence

In his later career, Fodor turned his considerable analytical energy toward the philosophy of language, particularly the problems of meaning and reference for mental content. He advanced what is known as the asymmetric causal theory of reference and mounted sustained arguments against semantic holism. Throughout his work he remained a staunch opponent of reductive explanations of the mind, insisting that mental states are multiply realizable and that the explanatory generalizations of psychology or linguistics cannot be fully captured by descriptions of neurons and synapses. He also emerged as a pointed critic of Darwinian natural-selection accounts of cognition, which he regarded as insufficiently grounded. Beyond academia, Fodor was a devoted opera enthusiast and a regular columnist for the London Review of Books. He was married first to applied psychologist Iris Goldstein, with whom he had a son, and later to linguist Janet Dean, with whom he had a daughter; the couple lived in Manhattan. His influence on the philosophy-of-mind literature from the 1960s onward has been described as enormous.