Bound to be widely read and much discussed, The Elm and the Expert, written in Jerry Fodor's usual highly readable, irreverent style, provides a lively discussion of semantic issues about mental representation, with special attention to issues raised by Frege's problem, Twin cases, and the putative indeterminacy of reference. The book extends and revises a view of the relation between mind and meaning that the author has been developing since his 1975 book, The Language of Thought.

There is a general consensus among philosophers that a referential semantics for mental...

Psychosemantics explores the relation between commonsense psychological theories and problems that are central to semantics and the philosophy of language. Building on and extending Fodor's earlier work it puts folk psychology on firm theoretical ground and rebuts externalist, holist, and naturalist threats to its position.

This book is included in the series Explorations in Cognitive Science, edited by Margaret A. Boden.

A Bradford Book.

This collection of new and previously published essays reflects the major research and thought of one of today's preeminent philosophers of mind. The first seven essays are philosophical pieces that focus on mental representation and the foundations of intentionality; they are followed by four psychological essays on cognitive architecture. In his eloquent introduction, Fodor shows how the two areas are thematically united and epistemologically related, highlighting his interest in finding alternatives to holistic accounts of cognitive content.