Jerry Fodor: biography and work of this American philosopher.

We review the legacy of this American scientist and thinker.

Science is constantly advancing. Some scholars and authors, however, have more influence than others and leave a legacy of knowledge that is difficult to compare. This is the case of Jerry Fodor, a renowned American philosopher and psycholinguist, who passed away in 2017..

In this article we will briefly review his biography and learn about his contributions in the field of cognitive sciences. We will talk about the contributions he made in different fields of study and explain what his most outstanding work, "The Modularity of Mind" (1983), consists of.

Jerry Fodor: who was he?

Jerry Fodor was an American philosopher, psycholinguist, scientist and university professor, becoming a professor of philosophy. He was born on April 22, 1935 in New York, and died on November 29, 2017 also in New York, at the age of 82.

Fodor, in addition to being a philosopher and psycholinguist, was a great student of the human mind. He proposed an important theory in psychology: the theory of the modularity of the mind, which postulates that the mind is divided into compartments with specific functions, which we will see below.

In addition, Jerry Fodor was one of the founders of functionalism, an important current in psychology, together with other authors such as: William James, James R. Angell, and John Dewey.

Biography

Jerry Fodor studied philosophy, and began to develop his work in the 1960s. Some of his collaborators consider Fodor as the creator of the "philosophy of psychology", and his contributions and knowledge, as we will see below, were especially between these two disciplines.

In the early 1960s, Fodor began working as a professor of philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on the staff of Noam Chomsky, a leading American linguist. He worked at MIT until 1986.

Thanks to his work, dedication and trajectory, Jerry Fodor became a professor of philosophy in New Jersey, at Rutger's University..

Functionalism

A noteworthy fact about Jerry Fodor was his relationship with functionalism; Fodor is considered one of the fathers of functionalism in psychology. This philosophical current postulates that mental life and behavior have the fundamental purpose of allowing us to adapt to the environment. In addition, it considers that mental processes are mediating functions between sensory inputs and motor outputs.

On the other hand, functionalism allowed the development of other psychological theories and currents.

Work and contributions

Jerry Fodor's work is extensive and has resulted in a large body of work, including more than a dozen books, many of which are clearly informative in tone.He also wrote some thirty publications for the London Review of Books, a well-known British literary and political magazine.

Fodor's work focused on various fields, fields and disciplines, such as linguistics, psychology, semiotics, logic, artificial intelligence and computer science, among others.

Cognitive science

One of the most important things to know about this philosopher of the mind is that his contributions helped to create cognitive science, a relatively modern discipline that deals with the scientific study of the mind and its processes.

Specifically, Fodor made outstanding contributions in the fields of philosophy and psychology.He focused especially on the theories that postulate a modularity of the mind. These theories, which we will see below, propose that the mind is divided into certain functions, and that each of them is highly specialized; all of them, moreover, although independent, are related to each other.

On the other hand, Jerry Fodor also delved into the philosophy of language, a branch of philosophy that studies language itself through its nature, meaning and relation to thought.

Modularity theory of mind

In developing his work, Jerry Fodor followed a theoretical orientation centered on the information processing (IP) paradigm.. Through his vision, and as we have already advanced, he elaborated one of his most important works: "The Modularity of Mind" (The Modularity of Mind), dated 1983.

This work shows the influence that Franz Joseph Gall, the German physiologist who founded phrenology (pseudoscience that establishes a relationship between the shape of the skull and the features and personality traits), had on him.

Characteristics of the theory

The theory of the modularity of the mind proposes a division of the mind into two types of systems: input systems (the so-called input analyzers, which are modular) and central systems.

The input systems pass the information to the central systems so that they can process it.. According to Jerry Fodor's theory, only input systems are empirically testable (because they are modular), as opposed to core systems (which are not).

But how does the human mind work according to Fodor? In his theory of the modularity of mind, he believes that the mind is divided into several innate, compartmentalized subsystems. Each subsystem develops a specific function: for example, we can talk about language, mathematical ability, musical ability, etc.

Fodor adds in his theory that these functions and mental faculties work in a similar way as computers do, through abstract algorithms.

Science and technology

Another interesting fact about this philosopher is his relation to the sciences and the use of technology. Thus, Jerry Fodor drew heavily on technology and computer science to talk about the human mind and the brain. Fodor was of the opinion that the brain could be studied very well thanks to technology, but always up to a certain point, where the mind became abstract and imprecise.

Thus, Fodor, through his contributions, tried to answer the oldest questions of human cognition and the functioning of the mind, through the technology and computer science of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Recognition and death

Jerry Fodor received a number of recognitions throughout his academic and work career.. Some of them were: the Guggenheim Fellowship (in 1972), and a little later the Jean Nicod Prize (in 1993).

Fodor died in 2017 at the age of 82 in his hometown, New York, as a result of the Parkinson's disease he suffered from and a stroke. His legacy, but, lives on and is likely to remain so for many decades to come. The mark he has left on the field of psychology and philosophy is undeniable.

Bibliographical references:

• Fodor, J. A. (1983). The Modularity of Mind. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. [English translation in Ed. Morata, 1986].

• Fox, M. (2017). Jerry A. Fodor, Philosopher Who Plumbed the Mind's Depths, Dies at 82. The New York Times.

• García-Albea, J. E. (2003). Fodor and the modularity of the mind (twenty years later). Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Anuario de Psicología, 34(4): 505-571.