9,321 research outputs found
Fodor vs. Darwin: A Methodological Follow-Up
No full textIn a series of recent publications Jerry Fodor has attacked what many believe is the core of Darwinian theory of evolution – the theory of natural selection. Not surprisingly, Fodor’s attack has provoked a strong negative reaction. Fodor’s critics have insisted both that his main argument is unsound and that his central claim that the theory of natural selection “can’t explain the distribution of phenotypic traits in biological populations” is untenable. I can generally agree with the first part of the launched criticism: Fodor’s “putative argument” does rely on controversial premises which make it unsound. However, I don’t think that Fodor’s critics have succeeded in their attempts to refute his central claim. The refutation strategy that most of them have undertaken is to show examples of successful evolutionary explanations by natural selection. In what follows, two of these examples are put into scrutiny. The analysis reveals that: (1) The theory of natural selection should be only partially credited with the explanatory success of evolutionary explanations by natural selection because these explanations rely on additional empirical hypotheses which might be true or false. That means that the selectionist explanations are fallible statements the truth value of which depends crucially on the truth value of the empirical assumptions which have been premised. (2) In both cases alternative non-selectionist explanations can be found that fit the same empirical data and no reason has been given (or could be given) why these alternative explanations should be ignored a priori as inferior. The observations (1) and (2) stand against the claim that theory of natural selection is the only legitimate explanance for the distribution of phenotypic traits. This does not mean, of course, that natural selection does not play any explanatory role or that the theory of natural selection is a false theory (as Fodor is inclined to argue for). This only means that there is indeed a problem of understanding the proper explanatory role of natural selection and that this problem is not only Fodor’s problem. The paper ends with a suggestion of what should be admitted in order to get to a better understanding of the proper role that the theory of natural selection plays in evolutionary explanations
On Fodor on Darwin on Evolution
No full textJerry Fodor argues that Darwin was wrong about "natural selection" because (1) it is only a tautology rather than a scientific law that can support counterfactuals ("If X had happened, Y would have happened") and because (2) only minds can select. Hence Darwin's analogy with "artificial selection" by animal breeders was misleading and evolutionary explanation is nothing but post-hoc historical narrative. I argue that Darwin was right on all counts. Until Darwin's "tautology," it had been believed that either (a) God had created all organisms as they are, or (b) organisms had always been as they are. Darwin revealed instead that (c) organisms have heritable traits that evolved across time through random variation, with survival and reproduction in (changing) environments determining (mindlessly) which variants were successfully transmitted to the next generation. This not only provided the (true) alternative (c), but also the methodology for investigating which traits had been adaptive, how and why; it also led to the discovery of the genetic mechanism of the encoding, variation and evolution of heritable traits. Fodor also draws erroneous conclusions from the analogy between Darwinian evolution and Skinnerian reinforcement learning. Fodor's skepticism about both evolution and learning may be motivated by an overgeneralization of Chomsky's "poverty of the stimulus argument" -- from the origin of Universal Grammar (UG) to the origin of the "concepts" underlying word meaning, which, Fodor thinks, must be "endogenous," rather than evolved or learned
Mystical Sensuality. The Erotic Poetry of Ákos Fodor
No full textFodor Ákos a hazai haikuköltészet kiemelkedő alakja, életműve szélesebb érdeklődésre is számot tart, ugyanakkor szakmai megítélése előfeltevésektől terhes, s legjobb esetben is ellentmondásosnak mondható, ebből adódóan recepciójában is jelentős hiányosságok mutatkoznak. Az erotika tárgyköre, valamint a misztikum egyaránt a versek visszatérő tárgyát adják, és sokszor ezek kölcsönviszonyba hozásával tesz szert egy-egy szöveg figyelemreméltó jelentéslétesítő erőre. Dolgozatom ezen – korábban még nem vizsgált – összefüggés vizsgálatára vállalkozik, és szövegközeli elemzésekkel igazolja néhány kapcsolódó vers poétikai teljesítményét. A szexualitás és a misztikus kapcsolódás egyaránt felfogható egyfajta erotikus aktusként, relációjuk mégis paradoxonoktól terhes, amint az Fodor Ákos általam elemzett verseiben is színre kerül. Feltételezésem szerint ezen textusok a szexualitás és szakralitás szinguláris szövetrendszerét teszik láthatóvá – a testi és a misztikus egyesülést rendszerint ugyanazon képben idézik fel. A szégyen kulturálisan elsajátított kódjai, a test reprezentációja, a hozzáférhetőség kérdése, a dichotómiák játékba hozása, destabilizálása, illetve egymásba oldása egyaránt megfigyelhetők ebben a költői korpuszban. Az erotika szakrális és szexuális vonatkozásai párhuzamosan érvényesülnek, polarizáció helyett viszont sokkal inkább egy egymást átható viszony szemlélhető a versekben.egységes, osztatlanAngol nyelv és kultúra tanára-magyartanárL
Športna rekreacija, prehranjevanje in nekateri psihološki vidiki pri zdravljenju debelosti
No full textReview: Fodor, Ferenc. 2016. Fodor Ferenc önéletirásai (\u27The Autobiographical Writings of Ferenc Fodor\u27)
No full textIt is rare enough to encounter as dedicated a chronicler of one’s own life as geographer Ferenc Fodor (1887 - 1962); it is even more rare to find one who chronicles one\u27s life in four different ways. Fodor Ferenc önéletirásai [\u27The Autobiographical Writings of Ferenc Fodor\u27] presents the autobiographical manuscripts of the prolific and influential interwar geographer in a single volume, bringing to light documents that until now only a very few specialists have had the benefit of reading. Transcribed, edited, and presented with an Introduction in both Hungarian and English by two experts in Fodor and his field, Róbert Győri and Steven Jobbitt, these texts impart an intimate perspective on over six decades of East - Central European history. Seen as a whole, they also prove to be a useful accompaniment to Fodor’s extensive professional body of work, which spanned not only the last years of the Habsburg Monarchy and the early years of the People’s Republic of Hungary, but multiple academic disciplines as well. Whereas Fodor\u27s diaries and memoirs reveal the effects of national and world events on an individual life, his narratives of his personal life likewise showcase the entanglement of biography, scholarship and nationalism in an unexpectedly engaging fashion. (8) (PDF) Fodor, Ferenc. 2016. Fodor Ferenc önéletirásai (\u27The Autobiographical Writings of Ferenc Fodor\u27). Ed. Róbert Győri and Steven Jobbitt. Budapest: ELTE Eötvös József Collegium. 350 pp. Illus
Jerry Fodor on Computation and Modularity
No full textFodor's thinking on modularity has been influential throughout a range of the areas studying cognition, chiefly as a prod for positive work on modularity and domain-specificity. In The Mind Doesn't Work That Way, Fodor has developed the dark message of The Modularity of Mind regarding the limits to modularity and computational analyses. This paper offers a critical assessment of Fodor's scepticism with an eye to highlighting some broader issues in play, including the nature of computation and the role of recent empirical developments in the cognitive sciences in assessing Fodor's position
Fodor István: A bantu nyelvek
No full textT. Attila Horváth presented the following work:
István Fodor: The Bantu Languages . L\u27Harmattan, 2007T. Horváth Attila a következő művet mutatta be:
Fodor István: A bantu nyelvek. L’Harmattan, 200
"LOT2" by Jerry A. Fodor
No full textIn G.K. Chesterton’s The Man who was Thursday, six of the seven anarchists named after different days of the week turn out to be secret policemen. Chesterton’s hero Syme finds himself opposed to not just a disparate group of anarchists, but to the unified forces of authority. A similar thing seems to have happened in recent years to Jerry Fodor. When Fodor published The Language of Thought in 1975 his targets were, as he says, ‘a mixed bag’: reductionists, behaviourists, empiricists, operationalists, holists and various followers of Wittgenstein. But today these disparate targets have become distilled into one movement, which Fodor calls ‘pragmatism’. Fodor sees pragmatism (‘perhaps the worst idea that philosophy ever had’) everywhere, and one aim of this sequel to The Language of Thought is to stamp it out
A doktori iskolákban megvédett névtani témájú disszertációk 2008-ban: N. Fodor János
No full textPhD thesis on Onomastics defended in 2008
The brief summaries and the most important data of onomastic PhD dissertations defended successfully at doctoral schools in Hungary are published regularly in Névtani Értesítő: year of completion, size, consultant, opponents, date of defence. – More detailed summaries, summaries in English and complete dissertations can be found on the home page of the Onomastic Section of the Society of Hungarian Linguistics (http://nevtan.mnyt.hu). A copy of the dissertations can be found in the libraries of the respective universities. – The dissertation presented here: N. Fodor, János: Complex linguistic analysis of personal names of Northeast Hungary (1401–1526) (ELTE, Budapest, Hungarian Linguistics)
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