Mental representation: An introduction. Jerry Fodor (1987)

 DRAFT (to be proofread)


CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS BELIEFS.

When Fodor distinguishes two kinds of mental states he presents “propositional attitudes” defending the notion of unconscious mental states (1987, 106) and adds “For example, beliefs and desires, unlike itches and after images, can and often do lead an entirely dispositional existence; and what is entirely dispositional is presumably ipso facto not conscious” (107). While the primary feature of Qualitative mental states is awareness, the essential property of Intentional mental states, such as beliefs and desires, is aboutness (108), that is, they have intentional content. Cognitive science deal with the later kind of mental states (in fact, “from the cognitive scientist´s point of view, consciousness is an embarrassment, a pathological condition of the mental states that he studies” -106-).

CAUSAL AND INFERENTIAL RELATIONS.

 “The intentional mental states seem to be closely implicated in the causation of behaviour; specifically, of intelligent, higher cognitive behaviour” (Fodor 1987, 108).  Cognitive science shares with commonsense or folk psychology the idea that the behaviour of people is explained by their intentional mental states, basically because they play a causal role with respect to this behaviour.

Moreover, there are also causal relations among beliefs and desires (Fodor 1987, 123).

Fodor introduces inferences when considers the, perhaps, “hardest” question “that a theory of mind has to face” (123), namely “what is for a mental state to have

Intentional content” (ibid.). Fodor suggests that the answer can lies in the connection between the intentional content and the inferential role of a mental state. The examples of this inferential role are logical: “conjuntive belief is inferable from both of its conjunts while the discjuntive belief is inferable from either of its disjuncts” (124). This connection will turn out crucial in the Fodor view since it underlies his main aim: a theory which provide a bridge between causal role and intentional content. Such a bridge will be a sort of “parallelism” (124), due to the fact that inferential relations among symbols can be “mimicked” by their syntactic relations[A1] .

[Another question: It is consistent the statement that “Beliefs have their causal roles in virtue of their contents” (Fodor 1987, 111) with the claim that the causal power depend upon the syntax (see 125)?]

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 [A1]Thus, a semantic relation, such as deducibility (this is the inferential element), can be mimicked by a syntactic relation, such as derivability (see 125).