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OverviewAI-generated
Jerry Alan Fodor (1935–2017) was an American philosopher and university teacher. Born in New York City, he was educated at Princeton University, Columbia University, and the University of Oxford, with Hilary Putnam serving as his doctoral advisor. His academic career included positions at Rutgers University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the City University of New York. Fodor was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and received both a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Jean Nicod Prize.
His written works include *Elm and the Expert*, *In Critical Condition*, *A theory of content and other essays*, *Gli errori di Darwin*, and *De Vienne à Cambridge*. Fodor identified as an atheist and spoke English. He died of natural causes in Manhattan on November 29, 2017, due to Parkinson's disease.
Synthesized by Vinony from 31 facts across 7 sources: Wikidata, Open Library, Crossref, MusicBrainz, Last.fm, Vinony collections, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Person · Open Library
- Works
- 47
Top works
- De Vienne à Cambridge
- Gli errori di Darwin
- Elm and the Expert
- In Critical Condition
- A theory of content and other essays
via Open Library + Wikidata
Listeners · Last.fm
- Listeners
- 4
- Total plays
- 4
<a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Jerry+Fodor">Read more on Last.fm</a>
Recent publications · Crossref
5 total works indexed
- General atomic and molecular electronic structure system
· 1993 · cited 19,130x
- Global and regional mortality from 235 causes of death for 20 age groups in 1990 and 2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010
· 2012 · cited 10,801x
- Global, regional, and national prevalence of overweight and obesity in children and adults during 1980–2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013
· 2014 · cited 9,235x
- Diagnostic criteria for multiple sclerosis: 2010 Revisions to the McDonald criteria
· 2011 · cited 7,706x
- Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for 291 diseases and injuries in 21 regions, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010
· 2012 · cited 6,816x
via Crossref · CC0
Quotes
- “If there is a community of computers living in my head, there had also better be somebody who is in charge; and, by God, it had better be me.”
- “I hate relativism. I hate relativism more than I hate anything else, excepting, maybe, fiberglass powerboats... surely, surely, no one but a relativist would drive a fiberglass powerboat.”
- “The data that can bear on the confirmation of perceptual hypotheses includes, in the general case, considerably less than the organism may know.”
- “[T]he degree of confirmation assigned to any given hypothesis is sensitive to properties of the entire belief system … simplicity, plausibility, and conservatism are properties that theories have in virtue of their relation to the whole structure of scientific beliefs taken collectively. A measure of conservatism or simplicity would be a metric over global properties of belief systems.”
via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA
Key facts
- Born
- Jerry Alan Fodor , ( 1935 -04-22 ) April 22, 1935, New York City, US
- Died
- November 29, 2017 (2017-11-29) (aged 82), New York City, US
- Awards
- Jean Nicod Prize (1993)
- Alma mater
- Columbia University , Princeton University
- Thesis
- The Uses of "Use": A Study in the Philosophy of Language (1960)
- Doctoral advisor
- Hilary Putnam
- Other advisor
- Sidney Morgenbesser
- Era
- 20th- / 21st-century philosophy
- Region
- Western philosophy
- School
- Analytic
- Institutions
- Rutgers University
- Main interests
- Philosophy of mind , Philosophy of language , Cognitive science , Rationalism , Cognitivism , Functionalism
- Notable ideas
- Modularity of mind , Language of thought
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- Jerry
- Family name
- Fodor
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- United States
- Place of birth
- New York City
- Place of death
- Manhattan
- Occupation
- university teacher
- Educated at
- University of Oxford
- Employer
- City University of New York
- Languages spoken
- English language
- Religion
- atheism
- Doctoral advisor
- Hilary Putnam
- Field of work
- philosophy
- Image
- Jerry Fodor.jpg
Show 6 more facts
- date of birth
- 1935-04-22
- date of death
- 2017-11-29
- cause of death
- Parkinson's disease
- birth name
- Jerry Alan Fodor
- manner of death
- natural causes
Sources (6)
via Wikidata · CC0
~33 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Jerry Alan Fodor (/ˈfoʊdər/ FOH-dər; April 22, 1935 – November 29, 2017) was an American philosopher and the author of works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His writings in these fields laid the groundwork for the modularity of mind and the language of thought hypotheses, and he is recognized as having had "an enormous influence on virtually every portion of the philosophy of mind literature since 1960." At the time of his death in 2017, he held the position of State of New Jersey Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Rutgers University, and had taught previously at the City University of New York Graduate Center and MIT.
Life and career
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Jerry Fodor” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.