Quotes from Jerry A. Fodor

It does bear emphasis that slippery-slope arguments are notoriously invalid.

Self-pity can make one weep, as can onions.

The sun will rise tomorrow morning; I know that perfectly well. But figuring out how I could know it is, as Hume pointed out, a bit of a puzzle.

Some philosophers hold that philosophy is what you do to a problem until it's clear enough to solve it by doing science. Others hold that if a philosophical problem succumbs to empirical methods, that shows it wasn't really philosophical to begin with.

There is a gap between the mind and the world, and (as far as anybody knows) you need to posit internal representations if you are to have a hope of getting across it. Mind the gap. You'll regret it if you don't.

I don't have any friends in English Departments.

Only a philosopher would consider taking Oedipus as a model for a normal, unproblematic relation between an action and the maxim of the act.

It cannot be an objection to a theory that there are some distinctions it does not make; if it were, it would be an objection to every theory. (Aristotelians thought that it was an argument against the Galelean mechanics that it did not distinguish between sublunary and heavenly bodies; i.e., that its generalizations were defined for both. This line of argument is now widely held to have been ill-advised.)

It does bear emphasis that slippery-slope arguments are notoriously invalid.

As Uncle Hegel used to enjoy pointing out, the trouble with perspectives is that they are, by definition, PARTIAL points of view; the Real problems are appreciated only when, in the course of the development of the World Spirit, the limits of perspective come to be transcended. Or, to put it less technically, it helps to be able to see the whole elephant.

Ontological priority is normatively neutral, Plato to the contrary notwithstanding.

People think they want to know. Actually, if you ask—-how much would you pay to know, the answer is not much. . . . Do you care how your refrigerator works? No, as long as there's a repairman around when it breaks down. Nobody really cares.

My point... is of course not that solipsism is true; it's just that truth, reference, and the rest of the semantic notions aren't psychological categories. What they are is: they're modes of Dasein. I don't know what Dasein is, but I'm sure that there's lots of it around, and I'm sure that you and I and Cincinnati have all got it. What more do you want?