Heck, Fodor, and the Afterlife

The philosopher Jerry Fodor passed away on November 29th.

Fodor was very influential on the philosophical discussion of psychology and of language.

My understanding is that Fodor was very much on Chomsky's side of the notorious Skinner/Chomsky divide, conditioning versus nativism as an explanation of "verbal behavior."

On December 3, Richard Heck posted a whimsical blog entry about a philosopher's heaven, in which Fodor is now talking ...

"to Hume and Descartes and Darwin -- what a lot they have to figure out! -- and [reuniting] with his old friend Hilary Putnam and his old enemy B.F. Skinner (who's no longer thus)." They all presumably have learned to acknowledge "how little, ultimately, those agreements and disagreements mattered," because it is love that matters.

I've taken advantage of Heck's comments section to ask him for further elucidation especially of that issue of nativism and the now-transcended "enmity" mentioned there.

I also mentioned my longstanding view that nativism about language or ideas is difficult to reconcile with Darwinism, requiring an extraordinary leap of a sort that stretches natural selection as explanatory tool and tempts theorists to put something very different in their tool kits.

Heck replied quite promptly:

Yes, Fodor was entirely on Chomsky's side in the nativism debate. Have a look at this review. http://ruces.rutgers.edu/jerry/26-personal-sites/jerry-fodor/277-doing-without-what-s-within-fiona-cowie-a-critique-of-nativism
for a good account of his position.

Fodor's views about evolution are an entirely other story, and I'm not sure how they interact with his nativism. See this summary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Darwin_Got_Wrong
of a book he wrote on that topic (which I hasten to add I have not read).

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