ABSTRACT
Fodor’s thought has developed considerably since the publication of The Language of Thought (Fodor 1975), driven by problems arising from his commitment to the computational theory of mind and the language of thought hypothesis. Just as I argued that his fundamental commitment to these theses led to a retrenchment of the explanatory domain of scientific psychology, so problems concerning the holistic character of belief and the semantics of mental representations lead Fodor to solutions that further diminish the explanatory scope of cognitivism. In this Postscript I shall examine the ways in which Fodor addresses the problem of background belief and the problem of mental content. These two major problems lead to further retrenchments of the claims made on behalf of cognitivism. These are not viewed as retrenchments by Fodor, but as temporary setbacks awaiting further theoretical innovation.
