4 ms·

I posted a link and very brief summary elsewhere here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11730489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11730489 He discusses

I posted a link and very brief summary elsewhere here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11730489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11730489 He discusses Fodor on p. 26 as part of a critique of conceptual/a priori (Hegelian) arguments.

projectramo 10y ago
This caused me some indigestion. I don't consider myself either for or against Fodor's argument but I think the summary does great injustice to his arguments. Fodor does claim that, for what he describes as language, systematicity and compositionality are essential features. However, the "evidence" he cites isn't from a study. It is primarily from facts about language. To use one of his favorite examples, take these sentences: The cat ate the rat. The rat ate the cat. If you understand sentence 1, you can understand sentence 2, and furthermore, the words "cat", "ate" and "rat" mean the same thing. He takes those facts to be uncontroversial, and he says that that is what he means by systematicity and compositionality. This "ability comes in clusters" bit is very confusing, and I am not sure what he means by it. Fodor doesn't care that connectionists don't have good models for symbolic manipulation. He says that connectionists models are only good in so far as they reduce to symbolic manipulation because symbolic manipulation are the only models we have that demonstrate compositionality and systematicity.
- panglott 10y ago
  > He takes those facts to be uncontroversial, and he says that that is what he means by systematicity and compositionality. Right, but Chemero's point is that that premise is not so empirically grounded; it is an a priori assumption. I am not familiar with this literature, but it's ultimately the same point that he makes against Chomsky's poverty of the stimulus argument (the literature on which I know much better): that it's not an empirically grounded premise, and the evidence for such an a priori argument is weak.
  - projectramo 10y ago
    Okay, which premise? Can you be specific about the premise that you believe (that Chemero believes) is not "empirically grounded"?

projectramo 10y ago

This caused me some indigestion. I don't consider myself either for or against Fodor's argument but I think the summary does great injustice to his arguments. Fodor does claim that, for what he describes as language, systematicity and compositionality are essential features. However, the "evidence" he cites isn't from a study. It is primarily from facts about language. To use one of his favorite examples, take these sentences: The cat ate the rat. The rat ate the cat. If you understand sentence 1, you can understand sentence 2, and furthermore, the words "cat", "ate" and "rat" mean the same thing. He takes those facts to be uncontroversial, and he says that that is what he means by systematicity and compositionality. This "ability comes in clusters" bit is very confusing, and I am not sure what he means by it. Fodor doesn't care that connectionists don't have good models for symbolic manipulation. He says that connectionists models are only good in so far as they reduce to symbolic manipulation because symbolic manipulation are the only models we have that demonstrate compositionality and systematicity.

panglott 10y ago
> He takes those facts to be uncontroversial, and he says that that is what he means by systematicity and compositionality. Right, but Chemero's point is that that premise is not so empirically grounded; it is an a priori assumption. I am not familiar with this literature, but it's ultimately the same point that he makes against Chomsky's poverty of the stimulus argument (the literature on which I know much better): that it's not an empirically grounded premise, and the evidence for such an a priori argument is weak.
- projectramo 10y ago
  Okay, which premise? Can you be specific about the premise that you believe (that Chemero believes) is not "empirically grounded"?