Fodor, Bruner and Beyond

Abstract This article presents an in-depth conversation with Peter Hagoort, a leading cognitive neuroscientist and director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. The interview explores the contrasting paradigms of Jerry Fodor and Jerome Bruner, focusing on their differing conceptions of the mind, including modularity, perception, and the role of cognitive processes. Hagoort reflects on Fodor’s modularity theory and Bruner’s New Look in Perception, examining their influence on his own research, particularly the language marker hypothesis, which highlights the symbolic and flexible nature of human internal models shaped by language. The discussion further addresses Fodor’s critique of relativism, his scepticism about cognitive neuroscience, and the relevance of these foundational ideas to contemporary questions in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, including the distinctions between human cognition and large language models. Through this dialogue, the article revisits key debates in cognitive science while situating them within current research and theoretical developments.