Psychology Dictionary of Arguments

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Lawlikeness: Here we are concerned with the status of statements which describe regularities but may not be laws of nature. See also Laws of nature, Regularities, Regularity theory, Laws.
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Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments.

 
Author Concept Summary/Quotes Sources

Jerry Fodor on Lawlikeness - Dictionary of Arguments

IV 86
Holism/radical interpretation/RI/Davidson/Fodor/Lepore: Davidson's argument for holism is based on his assumption that individual sentences, e.g. "Kurt belongs to the German-speaking Community and Kurt holds true": "It is raining on Saturday afternoon and it is indeed raining in Kurt’s area on Saturday afternoon" are lawlike (laws).
>Radical interpretation
, >Holism, >Laws.
Fodor/LeporeVsDavidson: the generalizations thereof e.g. (x)(t)(if x belongs to the German-speaking community, then x holds "it s raining" to be true at t if and only if it is raining in the vicinity of x at t) do not support counterfactual conditionals and therefore, according to Davidson's definition of the law, are not lawlike. There is no support of counterfactual conditionals. E.g. the meaning of "it is raining" could be: "the cat is on the mat", then it does not follow that the cat is not on the mat when it is not raining.
IV 87
Solution: "... for a relation R and each speaker S..." then the statement is nomological, but not yet a radical interpretation. Lawlikeness: we only had to assume lawlikeness because of the conventionality of language. Problem: the radical interpretation cannot find out conventionality by definition.
IV 89
Radical Interpretation/RI/Fodor/Lepore: our image of the radical interpretation is much richer than that of Davidson.
IV 90
Problem: the nomological approach is not holistic.

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Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments
The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition.

F/L
Jerry Fodor
Ernest Lepore
Holism. A Shoppers Guide Cambridge USA Oxford UK 1992

Fodor I
Jerry Fodor
"Special Sciences (or The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis", Synthese 28 (1974), 97-115
In
Kognitionswissenschaft, Dieter Münch, Frankfurt/M. 1992

Fodor II
Jerry Fodor
Jerrold J. Katz
Sprachphilosophie und Sprachwissenschaft
In
Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle, Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995

Fodor III
Jerry Fodor
Jerrold J. Katz
The availability of what we say in: Philosophical review, LXXII, 1963, pp.55-71
In
Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle, Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995


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