Instant Scholar: Jerry Fodor's 'where cognitive science went wrong'

Time of India

26-06-2025

Jerry Fodor
(1935–2017) was one of the most influential philosophers of mind and cognitive science in the 20th century. A towering figure in analytic philosophy,
Fodor
advanced a rigorous framework for understanding the mind, language, and computation through his Language of Thought hypothesis, his support of modularity, and his resistance to certain trends in evolutionary psychology and connectionism. However, what makes Fodor particularly compelling is not just the framework he proposed but also the trenchant critique he launched in his later years against what he saw as the failings of cognitive science. In Fodor's view, the discipline had taken a wrong turn by abandoning the classical computational theory of mind and succumbing to vague, often biologically speculative, models of mental architecture.
The Foundations: Fodor's Language of Thought Hypothesis
At the heart of Fodor's philosophy is the Language of Thought Hypothesis (LOTH), proposed in his 1975 book The Language of Thought. According to LOTH, human cognition is structured like a formal language—a mentalese—that has its own syntax and semantics. Just as a computer operates by manipulating symbols based on formal rules, the mind works by computing over internal representations.
This view aligned with the classical computational theory of mind (CTM), which posits that cognitive processes resemble digital computation: they manipulate structured symbols according to algorithmic rules. Fodor argued this approach offered a rigorous and scientifically tractable model for explaining mental processes such as reasoning, problem-solving, and language use.
Modularity of Mind and Encapsulation
In his 1983 work The Modularity of Mind, Fodor made a further contribution by proposing that certain cognitive functions—particularly perceptual systems—are modular. That is, they are:
Domain-specific (dedicated to a specific type of information),
Informationally encapsulated (do not draw on beliefs or knowledge from other domains),
Fast and automatic, and
Innately specified.
He made a distinction between modular systems (like vision or language parsing) and central systems (like belief formation), which he considered non-modular and much harder to formalise. The modularity concept provided a bridge between psychology and neuroscience and offered a counterpoint to holistic models of cognition.
Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong: The Shift to Connectionism and Evolutionary Psychology
Fodor's discontent with cognitive science began when it moved away from classical models toward connectionism—the idea that cognition arises from networks of simple, neuron-like units operating in parallel. While this model captured some aspects of learning and pattern recognition (as in artificial neural networks), Fodor argued it failed to account for the structured and systematic nature of thought.
1. Rejection of Structured Representation
Fodor and his co-author, Zenon Pylyshyn, in their paper 'Connectionism and Cognitive Architecture: A Critical Analysis' (1988), argued that connectionist models could not explain systematicity and compositionality in thought. For example, if someone understands the sentence 'John loves Mary,' they should also understand 'Mary loves John.' This ability to recombine elements of thought is systematic and compositional, and Fodor believed connectionism could not replicate this feature without covertly reintroducing symbolic structure—thus undermining its own claim.
2. Against Darwinizing the Mind
In his 2010 book What Darwin Got Wrong, co-authored with Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, Fodor mounted a major critique of evolutionary psychology and the application of Darwinian natural selection to explain cognitive traits. While not denying evolution as a fact, Fodor attacked selectionist explanations for mental phenomena. His central concern was what he called the 'problem of correlated traits': when two traits are correlated, natural selection doesn't 'know' which one is being selected for.
He also questioned the explanatory power of adaptationism, arguing that just-so stories about how cognitive traits evolved were unfalsifiable and speculative. In Fodor's view, these evolutionary narratives lacked the precision and predictive capacity of genuine scientific theories.
The Hard Problem: Central Cognition Is Still a Mystery
Fodor consistently acknowledged the limits of cognitive science. While he believed that perceptual and linguistic systems might be successfully explained in modular and computational terms, he argued that 'central cognition'—how we form beliefs, make decisions, and reason abstractly—remained a scientific mystery.
He wrote:
'Nobody has the slightest idea how anything could be a cause of anything else in a system as plastic and context-sensitive as central cognition.'
For Fodor, this was not a temporary limitation but a deep epistemic gap. Unlike modular systems, central cognition was not domain-specific or encapsulated. It was holistic, global, and sensitive to virtually all information available to the organism. That made it hard—perhaps impossible—to model computationally or neurologically.
The Linguistic Turn: Alignment with Chomsky
Fodor's intellectual kinship with
Noam Chomsky
reinforced his critique of mainstream cognitive science. Both thinkers defended nativism, modularity, and the poverty of the stimulus argument (the idea that language acquisition cannot be explained by experience alone). They shared a skepticism toward behaviorist or empiricist accounts of the mind.
But while Chomsky remained primarily focused on linguistics, Fodor ventured more directly into philosophy of mind and cognitive theory. Both, however, resisted the neurobiological reductionism that sought to reduce cognitive science to brain science.
The Legacy: A Disciplinary Provocation
Fodor's legacy is not one of solving all the mysteries of the mind but of articulating them with clarity, precision, and honesty. He had no patience for fuzzy theories or metaphysical speculation disguised as science. His central warning was that without a coherent notion of representation and computation, cognitive science would become incoherent or revert to descriptive psychology.
His critics accused him of being overly pessimistic or stuck in outdated models. But many also admitted that his challenges forced the field to sharpen its assumptions. Fodor's insistence on rigor, his wit, and his philosophical sharpness made him a thorn in the side of many, but also a guardian of scientific seriousness.
Jerry Fodor believed cognitive science began with great promise—applying computational and representational models to explain the mind. But he saw the field go astray by embracing connectionism, evolutionary storytelling, and neurological reductionism without first solving foundational problems about mental representation, compositionality, and central cognition. Fodor didn't claim to have all the answers—but he was unafraid to say when a discipline didn't either. In doing so, he preserved a space for serious philosophical inquiry within a field increasingly tempted by technological and theoretical trends.
'Instant Scholar' is a Times of India initiative to make academic research accessible to a wider audience. If you are a Ph.D. scholar and would like to publish a summary of your research in this section, please share a summary and authorisation to publish it. For submission, and any question on this initiative, write to us at [e-mail]
Read full pdf:
Is your child ready for the careers of tomorrow? Enroll now and take advantage of our early bird offer! Spaces are limited.