Abstract
‘Modularity’ refers to the encapsulation of information within specific systems such that these systems are isolated from one another. A less Platonic way of phrasing this would be to claim that biases exist in neuro-cognitive response systems that are geared to specific classes of stimuli. Fodor (1983) advanced the view that perceptual and sensory input systems are strongly modular but that cognitive systems are not.
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Notes
- 1.
To run ahead a bit, the reader will shortly learn that ‘strong’ modularity and ‘massive’ modularity are not synonymous. ‘Massive’ modularity refers to the extension of modularity to higher brain function.
- 2.
I believe the term ‘massive’ was first proposed by Fodor (2000) to apply specifically to the evolutionary psychologist’s conception of domain-specificity.
- 3.
It is interesting to note that Fodor claims that it takes a synthetic integrated general intelligence to see that things you know about cows (natural intelligence) and things you know about fires (technical intelligence) can be used to conceive of how to make steak au poivre (Fodor 1998, p. 159). I believe we can therefore assume that the Neanderthal menu was quite impoverished compared to that of Cro-Magnon.
- 4.
Mithen uses the metaphor of a cathedral to characterize the existence of an un-encapsulated mental region. Please note that neo-Platonists always seem to end up in church at the end of the day.
- 5.
Mithen’s view of language and conciousness is modeled after Sperber’s concept of the ‘meta-representational module’ (Sperber 1994).
- 6.
Unfortunately, Sperber and Girotta formulate their critique of Cosmides and Tooby in the idiom of propositional-attitude psychology. This results in a lot of “I believe that she believes that he believes that I believe” formulations that are unwarranted. This sentence happy model of mental representation was originally advanced by Sperber and Wilson (1986) and further refined in the 2nd edition (Sperber and Wilson 1995).
- 7.
I argued in Chap. 2 that emotional circuitry is modular and Buller would seem to agree (2005, p. 151). Recall that Fodor, on the other hand, does not include emotional processing in the pantheon of cognition and so would find arguments about emotional modularity irrelevant.
- 8.
This not to imply, however, that processing centers involved in human language are conducted in a kind of language-of-thought as proposed by Fodor (1975; 2008). I maintain, as I argued in Chap. 1, that some variant of connectionist AI is capable of modeling the neurobiology of language (see Churchland and Churchland 1998).
- 9.
Pun intended.
- 10.
It is little wonder that Fodor recently attempted to sink the entire Darwinian flagship. See Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini (2010). Their destroyer, however, was torpedoed immediately upon leaving port by Block and Kitcher (2010) who deftly explained the fundamental misunderstandings of Darwinism that were leveled in the Fodor/Piattelli-Palmarini critique. I submit that Fodor’s underlying motivation in the critique is to preserve Platonism from being parted out through Darwinian evolution, since the differential reproduction of genetic materials over multiple generations would necessarily decimate the Platonic wholes that Fodor needs to preserve in order to sustain his own highly Platonic position. (Dennett incisively refers to the implications of Darwinism for Platonism as ‘Darwin’s Dangerous Idea’ (Dennett 1995). The full-bodied Platonist will eventually turn on any position that is less than the fully committed version, and so a Piagetian-Lamarckian such as Piattelli-Palmerini will be cast off in a leaky boat as soon as the common enemy, in this case Darwin, is thought to be successfully torpedoed.
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Walter, A. (2012). Postscript: The Virtues of Weak Modularity. In: Evolutionary Psychology and the Propositional-attitudes. SpringerBriefs in Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2969-8_3
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