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Title: The Mind Doesn't Work That Way: The Scope and Limits of Computational Psychology by Jerry Fodor ISBN: 0-262-56146-8 Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.88 (8 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: You've Got A Gold Tooth, I Know You're Hardcore...
Comment: Putting its concision (~100 pages) and extremely attractive presentation to one side, *The Mind Doesn't Work That Way* is actually Jerry Fodor's most ambitious effort to date and (grant protectors aside) the reigning champ of cogsci critiques. But the Giant of New Brunswick knows when to say when, and what is frequently presented as an "autocriticism" is really *nothing of the sort*: Fodor's task here is to align his version of the Computational Theory of Mind (capitals required) with Chomsky's somewhat "formalist" version, rather than the cooked-up "massive modularity" of Darwinian dreams -- Fodor is among the Coke-drinkers rather than head-splitters, and in this book (*not* soon to be a major motion picture) he begins to ask some well, Humean questions about *our* grasp of inferential processes in a way which derails nearly every major psychological research program of the present. A must-read from the veritable artiste of philosophers of mind, but how is that?
Rating: 1
Summary: Wanted a fight, found a melt down
Comment: Cognitive science is a failure. AI is a massive failure. Cognitive scientists know their computational theories of mind are wrong but they are in "deep denial". Fighting words from famous philosopher Jerry Fodor's response to famous psychologist Steven Pinker's "How The Mind Works". With fighting words like that, i was expecting a really good fight, with facts being offered, stats being analyzed and Pinker's analysis of topographical cortical maps and the visual processing map dissected
And instead i got... this
Let's start with writing. It's typical Fodor, which means it would put a coked-up Tigger to sleep and requires a Latin dictionary and the patience of Job to slog through. It's boring and difficult to read. But since it's a Fodor book, you probably already knew that. He's a fun guy and in previous books had some good points but man is he boring
But i didn't expect good writing, good structure or brevity. i expected good ideas. But unless they're hiding on the last page (sorry, i can't keep reading this thing), there are none in this book. You might wonder why a philosopher whose interest is in symbolic logic and grammar is writing a book about psychologists who use a very loose analogy about the mind being like computer software. After reading this book, so am i
So why is Pinker and everyone else in cognitive science wrong? Fodor's argument in a nutshell - because computer subroutines can't access information outside of the subroutine. To use Fodor's example (of which he has *very* few), you want to go to Chicago. It's not windy. Is that good? If you're sailing a boat, yes, otherwise no. A computer can't figure that out because it lacks context - it needs to know how you're traveling before judging the meaning of wind conditions. And computers, Fodor argues, can't do that. Since computers have subroutines and subroutines have no access to relevant data, computers can't solve simple problems and so the mind can't be like a computer. Take that Pinker! Makes sense? Of course not
Fodor approaches the topic of psychology and computers from a logician's standpoint, which is to say he makes some really bad, sweeping assumptions then uses really high level logic to prove that reality doesn't exist. For Fodor, it's just 5 steps - 1.A mental representation must have a syntax, 2.If you change the sytax the "Turing machine" can no longer function, 3.Therefore syntax can't vary by context, 4.Therefore mental processes can't be affected by context 5.But they are so the mind isn't a computer and cognitive science is wrong. (He later adds Principle M(CTM) which says sunroutines can access external data but an exhaustive search/tablescan of all memory would be needed and that would be stupid so cognitive science is stupid)
The book is a one trick pony. Computers supposedly can't solve the simple problems he describes (logical abduction), they are required to solve them based on the way he chose to define his terms and therefore the field and its theories are irretrievably broken. The book is laced with numerous, sweeping, unfounded assumptions that are glaringly wrong to anyone familiar with computers. The book lacks common sense. The book's main and only objection is an academic exercise completely divorced from anything resembling cognitive science
Rating: 4
Summary: Good-bye evolutionary psych?
Comment: This book is an attack by an "insider" on the contemporary disciplines of cognitive science and evolutionary psychology.
Fodor does not deny that there are some valid aspects to these two disciplines. Rather, he rejects their extravagant claims to have successfully explained "The Way the Mind Works," to quote the title of a recent book by Steve Pinker, who is one of the leading evangelists for cognitive psychology and evolutionary psych.
Fodor's central complaint against evolutionary psychology is quite simple. Anyone who claims to offer an evolutionary explanation for the wings of birds can start with a great deal of solid knowledge about how bird's wings are in fact constructed, about how wings make flight possible given the laws of aerodynamics, etc.
But no one in fact yet possesses the equivalent information for the brain and the mind.
We do not yet know how the neurons are connected and in what manner they function so as to produce thought. More basically, we do not understand what "mind" really is from the viewpoint of the underlying physics of the brain (see, e.g., David Chalmers' "The Conscious Mind" or Colin McGinn's "The Mysterious Flame").
Fodor also has more specific objections. He is highly concerned with the issue of "abduction," the ability to make global judgments of simplicity, relevance, etc. over a broad intellectual domain. Fodor believes that humans are very good at this, but that the current "modular" approach pursued by cognitive scientists and evolutionary psychologists cannot explain how humans could be good at this.
I'm not sure human judgment is as powerful as Fodor believes, but he is correct that modular systems have difficulty making broad global judgments.
In his final chapter, Fodor directly addresses the issue of evolution, arguing that, for a feature to be the product of natural selection, it must be built up by a small number of steps. Using the example of the giraffe's neck, he argues, "Make the giraffe's neck just a little longer and you correspondingly increase, by just a little, the animal's ability to reach the fruit at the top of the tree; so it's plausible, to that extent, that selction stretched giraffe's necks bit by bit."
This example is somewhat misleading: there is no reason in principle why a single mutation could not have created huge giraffe necks in one fell swoop and natural selection then stepped in to preserve the mutation.
But Fodor is correct that such a "saltationist" explanation is not available to evolutionary psychology. The plethora of specialized mental modules favored by evolutionary psychologists (a language module, a "cheater detection module," a face-recognition module, a theory-of-mind module, to name only a few) are supposed to be carefully honed adaptations exquisitely polished by natural selection to serve human needs in the "ancestral environment" (the Paleolithic). Just as a complex organ such as the eye could not realistically be created in one single fortuitous mutation, so neither could these complex mental "organs" hypothesized by evolutionary psych.
But why does Fodor reject a gradual, multifaceted evolution of these hypothetical mental "organs"? He does not say, but there is a fairly powerful argument from the human genome project. We only have about 30,000 genes; most of these are shared with lower mammals and many with non-vertebrates and even non-animals. There just are not that many genes left which distinguish us from mice.
A change in a relatively small number of regulatory genes can bring dramatic changes in development -- our much larger brain, for example. But to actually create a number of new specialized "organs," not possessed by mice or cows places much greater demands on the genome. It's doubtful we have enough genes to handle it.
The evolutionary psych response, as made in Pinker's "The Blank Slate," to this argument is in essence that since these mental modules _do_ exist, our genes _must_ be able to produce the modules. That of course assumes what is to be proven, i.e., that the human mind is based on evolutionarily-derived specialized mental modules.
Fodor completely demolishes the claim that the unity of science demands that evolutionary psychology be true. The degree to which the science of evolution is relevant to the science of psychology is, he rightly argues, an empirical matter, just as (to use his example) it is an empirical matter whether "the theory of lunar geography constrains the theory of cellular mitosis." Not every science has to be relevant to every other science.
Fodor also shreds what he calls "neo-Darwinist anti-intellectualism," the view (he is quoting from Patricia Churchland) that "looked at from an evolutionary point of view, the principal function of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive...Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost."
Fodor counters that for humans "a cognitive system that is specialized for the fixation of true beliefs interacts with a conative system that is specialized to figure out how to get what one wants from the world that the beliefs are true of..." or, in simple English, humans engage in "rational actions predicated on true beliefs."
We are designed to pursue both truth and our own well-being -- there is no contradiction here. Not action instead of truth, but action based on truth.
Despite the brief length and Fodor's engaging style, this book is not easy reading. But it does raise questions which, if not adequately answered by Fodor's opponents, cast grave doubts on the grandiose claims of contemporary apostles of cognitive science and evolutionary psychology.
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Title: The Modularity of Mind by Jerry A. Fodor ISBN: 0262560259 Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 06 April, 1983 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker ISBN: 0393318486 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 January, 1999 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture by Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby ISBN: 0195101073 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: September, 1995 List Price(USD): $48.50 |
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Title: Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong (Oxford Cognitive Science Series) by Jerry A. Fodor ISBN: 0198236360 Publisher: Clarendon Pr Pub. Date: January, 1998 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: In Critical Condition: Polemical Essays on Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of Mind (Representation and Mind) by Jerry Fodor ISBN: 026256128X Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 31 January, 2000 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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