Abstract
Fodor’s theory of concepts holds that the psychological capacities, beliefs or intentions which determine how we use concepts do not determine reference. Instead, causal relations of a specific kind between properties and our dispositions to token a concept are claimed to do so. Fodor does admit that there needs to be some psychological mechanisms mediating the property–concept tokening relations, but argues that they are purely accidental for reference. In contrast, I argue that the actual mechanisms that sustain the reference determining concept tokening relations are necessary for reference. Fodor’s atomism is thus undermined, since in order to refer with a concept it is necessary to possess some specific psychological capacities.
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Notes
Psychological essentialism is typically considered to be a variety of the theory-theory (see e.g. Laurence and Margolis 1999). Except for psychological essentialists, the theory-theorists have not been so much interested in categorisation as they have been in the structure and development of concepts (see e.g. Carey 1985,1999). About essentialism in the case of natural kind concepts, see e.g. Medin and Ortony 1989; Keil 1989; or Gelman 2003; in the case of artefact kinds, see e.g. Keil 1989; Bloom 1996; Kelemen 1999; Kelemen and Carey 2007).
As usually formulated (see e.g. Fodor 1998, p. 121; Laurence and Margolis 1999, p. 61; Margolis 1998, pp. 350–351). For a more elaborate discussion, see Fodor (1990), Chap. 4. Sometimes more components are assigned to Fodor’s informational semantics, in specific, the so-called robustness condition and an indexical component (see e.g. Adams and Aizawa 1994, p. 224; Adams and Aizawa 1992, p. 177). I will return to the latter in what follows; the former, in turn, is not relevant for the topic of this paper.
Essence beliefs can rarely serve as sustaining mechanisms alone, since the essences are usually unknown; the essence beliefs need to be backed up with some mechanisms based on more readily perceivable properties. What matters most from the present point of view is that the essence beliefs make the fake-property/C-relation asymmetrically dependent on the real-property/C-relation, thus guaranteeing reference to the real property.
Fodor describes the possibilities as follows: (i) ‘In nearby worlds where XYZ can’t be distinguished from H2O, if you break the H2O/”water” connection you lose the XYZ/”water” connection and vice versa.’ And (ii) ‘In nearby worlds where XYZ can be distinguished from H2O, if you break the H2O/”water” connection you lose the XYZ/”water” connection, but not vice versa’ (1990, p. 115, emphasis original).
Fodor does also mention psychological essentialism in his discussion, but does not want to directly relate it to his own suggestion. The reason for this is that he takes the conditions for possessing natural kind concepts ‘as such’ (his words) to be stricter than the essentialists do (pp. 154–155).
Fodor would say ‘to possess natural kind concepts as such’ (1998, p. 156 ff.), in contrast to applying a concept to members of a natural kind accidentally. I believe that what Fodor calls possessing natural kind concept as such is the only way to truly possess a natural kind concept—if speakers applied a concept to a natural kind purely accidentally, then they would not really refer to the natural kind, but to some functional kind whose members actually happen to belong in a natural kind.
One rather whimsical counterexample could be raised against this argument. An extreme behaviourist might argue that it is possible that, say, a mad scientist implants a module in a speaker’s brain that causes the speaker to token a concept C whenever the experts token C. Moreover, suppose that once having heard about how the experts use the concept, the module causes that the speaker is disposed to use the concept accordingly ever since. Let us also suppose that the speaker does not have any intentions to defer, or possess any socio-externalistic beliefs (her concept tokening behaviour caused by the module is a mystery even to herself). Does the module sustain the same p/C-relations as genuine deferential intentions or socio-externalistic beliefs? My answer is twofold. First, probably no speaker’s deferential behaviour is as simple as that caused by the module. The module, as described above, is simply an automaton that blindly follows some unspecified experts in causing concept tokenings. On the contrary, when speakers actually defer, they rationally consider and reflect on various, possibly disagreeing expert opinions to judge which of the experts are reliable—and this is something the simple module cannot do. Second, if the module were indeed as complex as to produce behaviour equivalent to actual human deferring, then the module-caused behaviour would arguably deserve the title of deferring as well.
However, even though it is impossible for two different syndromes to sustain the same property/concept tokening -relations, it is theoretically possible for two different syndromes to sustain the same object/concept tokening -relation: if for some (sets of) features F1 and F2, it is necessary that for any object x, F1(x) ↔ F2(x), then two sustaining mechanisms M1 and M2, such that M1 is sensitive to F1 and M2 to F2, co-refer (to objects, not properties) in each possible world. Needless to say, this is cold comfort to Fodor.
One last counterargument: what if the properties a and a′, and a and a* are necessarily conjoined? I believe that instances of such properties can be found mainly from mathematics and logic, and Fodor takes his theory of concepts not to apply to them. On the other hand, arguably there can also be necessarily conjoined natural properties, such as water and H 2 O. Could two sustaining mechanisms, one sensitive to water and the other to H 2 O, sustain the same reference? I believe not, since there are epistemically possible worlds where water is not H2O (see section "Essence Beliefs and Natural Kind Concepts".). Moreover, even if the two mechanisms could sustain the same reference, this could only be because the properties water and H 2 O are identical, and in this case the syndrome representations would in fact be sensitive to the same features, and be identical.
In fact the similarity is typically calculated according to Amos Tversky’s (1977) contrast principle, but I use weighted sum for purposes of illustration, as it is less complex. The differences between the two functions don’t matter here.
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Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Jussi Haukioja for helpful discussions and comments on earlier drafts of this paper. This work has been financially supported by the Academy of Finland (project 214088).
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Jylkkä, J. Why Fodor’s Theory of Concepts Fails. Minds & Machines 19, 25–46 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-008-9118-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-008-9118-2