Abstract
InPsychosemantics Jerry Fodor offered a list of sufficient conditions for a symbol “X” to mean something X. The conditions are designed to reduce meaning to purely non-intentional natural relations. They are also designed to solve what Fodor has dubbed the “disjunction problem”. More recently, inA Theory of Content and Other Essays, Fodor has modified his list of sufficient conditions for naturalized meaning in light of objections to his earlier list. We look at his new set of conditions and give his motivation for them-tracing them to problems in the literature. Then we argue that Fodor's conditions still do not work. They are open to objections of two different varieties: they are too strong and too weak. We develop these objections and indicate why Fodor's new, improved list of conditions still do not work to naturalize meaning.
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We wish to thank Ray Elugardo, Pat Manfredi, and Donna Summerfield for comments on a draft of this paper, as well as other members of the CMU Mind Group (David Drebushenko, Gary Fuller, and Naomi Reshotko) for helpful discussion and support. A version of this paper was presented at the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology in Atlanta, March, 1991, and at the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Science in Kingston, Ontario, in May, 1991.
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Adams, F., Aizawa, K. “X” means X: Semantics Fodor-style. Mind Mach 2, 175–183 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00704456
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00704456