Fodor, Jerry

"Cognitive science reveals that we're stranger to ourselves than we ever imagined."

"Evolution didn't give us truth-tracking abilities; it gave us reproduction-tracking abilities."

"The mystery of consciousness dissolves when you understand what mental representation involves."

"Thought experiments are not luxury items in philosophy - they're essential tools for understanding mind."

"Internalism about semantics is false, but that doesn't make externalism simple."

"The biological basis of mind is real, but it doesn't explain the logical structure of thought."

"We construct the world in thought, but we don't construct the world itself."

"Cognitive diversity means that minds work differently, and that's not a defect."

"The price of thought is information processing, and our brains have budgeted carefully."

"Mental states are relational - they reach out to the world and past causes."

"If you want to know what something is, ask what it does - that's the functionalist insight."

"The hard problem of consciousness evaporates once you understand content and causation."

"Language learning is possible because children are born knowing more than anyone suspected."

"Representation is the bridge between the physical brain and the rational mind."

"Minds are not unified wholes but assemblies of semi-independent systems."

"Philosophy of mind is methodology applied to the most difficult subject matter possible."

"We are rational in ways we don't fully understand because our rationality is built-in."

"The unconscious is not a Freudian cauldron but a vast computational apparatus."

"Mental causation requires that thoughts have both content and causal powers."

"The semantic properties of mental states depend on facts about the external world."

"Fodor's First Law: Never say never in cognitive science."

"Thinking is a kind of computation, but computation is abstract - it doesn't depend on any particular medium."

"We cannot step outside our cognitive systems to evaluate them - we're stuck inside the machine."

"Mental content is not intrinsic to the brain - it's determined by causal relations to the environment."

"The architecture of mind reveals the architecture of reality, insofar as we can know it."

"Intentionality is not a minor feature of mental states - it's what makes them mental."

"Cognitive science without neuroscience is incomplete, but neuroscience without cognitive science is blind."

"The mind traffics in symbols that have both form and meaning."

"Explanation in psychology must respect the autonomy of the psychological level."

"You cannot think your way out of the limits of your cognitive architecture."