fodor and prototypes

[Dan Everett]

Ah, Elizabeth, I see you have the same sense of humor. Math has not
changed since the 70s either. Are we outdated becausewe haven't changed
it? If something is right, how can it be anachronistic to point out that
the recent work (recent for some, aberration to others) is misguided?

But I really have no opinion and I really would like to see some
responses.

Here is one reference.

Fodor, Jerry. 1998. _Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong_,
Oxford Univ. Press.

There is enough in that book to make plenty of people upset, including
formal linguists (an interesting chapter criticizing the very idea of
lexical semantics, including work by Pinker & Jackendoff.

Reactions welcome.

Dan

Dan Everett
SIL International
Caixa Postal 129
Porto Velho, RO
BRAZIL 78900-970

Elizabeth Bates wrote:

> it sounds like Fodor hasn't left the 1970's.  Cognitive Science has
> really moved on with respect to models of mental representation, and
> the important ideas and evidence that Eleanor Rosch brought to our
> attention have long since been incorporated (with modifications,
> of course) into other theories and implementations that preserve
> some of the best aspects (fuzzy boundaries, probabilistic mappings,
> distributed internal representations, heterogeneous membership)
> but go well beyond them in precision, formalization, and machine
> modeling.  I should read Fodor's critiques before going any
> further than this, but judging only by Dan Everett's message, it
> sounds a lot like Fodor as Austin Powers.  -liz bates
>