Jerry Fodor

Mental states are like software running on neural hardware—distinct but interdependent.

If cognition were a democracy, intuitions would lose every vote to evidence.

The modularity hypothesis explains why we're so good at vision but terrible at introspection.

Philosophy without cognitive science is armchair speculation; science without philosophy is blind empiricism.

Meaning isn't derived from the world; it's imposed by the mind's representational system.

Cognitive architecture is the blueprint of the mind—get it wrong, and everything collapses.

Life's too short for bad arguments; stick to the ones that withstand scrutiny.

Intentionality is the mark of the mental, but don't confuse it with mysticism.

In the republic of letters, cognitive scientists are the engineers building the bridges.

The mind's eye sees patterns where the physical eye sees chaos.

Chomsky's revolution was linguistic; mine is cognitive—both shake the foundations.

Doubting one's theories is the sign of a healthy mind, not a weak one.

Computation isn't cold; it's the fire that warms our thoughts.

Folk psychology survives because it's useful, not because it's true.

The best ideas in philosophy come from wrestling with impossibilities.

Neural networks are trendy, but without modularity, they're just fancy noise.

Meaning emerges from syntax in the mind's hidden language.

Aging philosophers get cranky, but their insights sharpen with time.

Cognitive science teaches us that error is the engine of learning.

If minds were books, mine would be a dense treatise on modularity.