Modularity in cognition: framing the debate

Modularity has been the subject of intense debate in the cognitive sciences for more than 2 decades. In some cases, misunderstandings have impeded conceptual progress. Here the authors identify arguments about modularity that either have been abandoned or were never held by proponents of modular views of the mind. The authors review arguments that purport to undermine modularity, with particular attention on cognitive architecture, development, genetics, and evolution. The authors propose that modularity, cleanly defined, provides a useful framework for directing research and resolving debates about individual cognitive systems and the nature of human evolved cognition. Modularity is a fundamental property of living things at every level of organization; it might prove indispensable for understanding the structure of the mind as well.     

Emotions of "higher" cognition

The target article by Lindquist et al. considers discrete emotions. This commentary argues that these are but a minor part of human emotional abilities, unifying us with animals. Uniquely human emotions are aesthetic emotions related to the need for the knowledge of "high" cognition, including emotions of the beautiful, cognitive dissonances, and musical emotions. This commentary touches on their cognitive functions and origins.     

Relativism,rationality and repression

This paper was presented at the Pacific Division Meeting of the APA on 28 March 1987.     

Evolution,rationality, and testability

Cosmides, Wason, and Johnson-Laird, among others, have suggested evidence that reasoning abilities tend to be domain specific, insofar as humans do not appear to acquire capacities for logical reasoning that are applicable across different contexts. Unfortunately, the significance of these findings depends upon the specific variety of logical reasoning under consideration. Indeed, there seem to be at least three grounds for doubting such conclusions, since: (1) tests of reasoning involving the use of material conditionals may not be appropriate for representing ordinary thinking, especially when it concerns causal processes involving the use of causal conditionals instead; (2) tests of domain specificity may fail to acknowledge the crucial role fulfilled by rules of inference, such as modus ponens and modus tollens, which appear to be completely general across different contexts; and, (3) tests that focus exclusively upon deductive reasoning may misinterpret findings involving the use of inductive reasoning, which is of primary importance for human evolution.     

Reasoning,rationality, and representation

Synthese - Recently, a cottage industry has formed with the goal of analyzing reasoning. The relevant notion of reasoning in which philosophers are expressly interested is fixed through an...     

Relational knowledge: the foundation of higher cognition

Accumulating evidence on the nature, function and acquisition of relational knowledge indicates a crucial role of such knowledge in higher cognitive processes. In this review, we specify the essential properties of relational knowledge, together with the role it plays in reasoning, categorisation, planning, quantification and language. Furthermore, we discuss the processes involved in its acquisition and how these processes have been implemented in contemporary neural network models. We present evidence demonstrating that relational knowledge integrates heuristic and analytic cognition, is important for symbolic processes and the creation of novelty, activates specific regions of the prefrontal cortex, and is the most recently evolved and slowest-developing cognitive process. Arguably, relational knowledge represents the core of higher cognition.     

Entitlement, value and rationality

In this paper I discuss two fundamental challenges concerning Crispin Wright’s notion of entitlement of cognitive project: first, whether entitlement is an epistemic kind of warrant since, seemingly, it is not underwritten by epistemic reasons, and, second, whether, in the absence of such reasons, the kind of rationality associated with entitlement is epistemic in nature. The paper investigates three possible lines of response to these challenges. According to the first line of response, entitlement of cognitive project is underwritten by epistemic reasons—and thus supports epistemic rationality—because, when P is an entitlement, trust in P is a dominant strategy with respect to promotion of epistemic value. The second line of response replaces dominance with maximization of expected utility. I argue that both of these proposals are flawed and develop an alternative line of response.     

Modularity and attention

Abstract

There is abundant evidence that the visual information-processing systems of higher animals are modular systems-systems consisting of relatively isolated networks of neurons that take the visual world apart (for example, Felleman & Van Essen, 1991, for an overview). Within contemporary psychology this modularity is often seen as a problem that requires a solution. The problem is: How does the brain put together all these different activities to produce a unified picture, so that, for example, for any object the right colour is associated with the right shape? The solution is that focal attention integrates the initially separable features in unitary objects.

In this contribution the opposite point of view is defended-not modularity as a problem solved by attention, but attention as a problem solved by modularity. The starting-point is that contemporary experimental psychology has to explain observed behaviour, not visual perception as a subjective experience. In these explanations the theoretical construct “focal attention” forms a major theoretical or conceptual problem. That problem can be solved in terms of modularity. It is argued that the modular character of the information-processing system is at the basis of the solutions nature has offered to solve two major selection problems in vision: the selection of an action and the selection of the object to act upon.     

Subjective preferences, rationality, and justice

Three main types of subjectivist ethics are distinguished and specified by the use of elementary game-theoretical notions. It will be argued that all these theories run into difficulties that cannot be overcome within the self-imposed limits of subjectivism.     

Instrumental rationality,symmetry and scope

Instrumental rationality prohibits one from being in the following state: intending to pass a test, not intending to study, and believing one must intend to study if one is to pass. One could escape from this incoherent state in three ways: by intending to study, by not intending to pass, or by giving up one’s instrumental belief. However, not all of these ways of proceeding seem equally rational: giving up one’s instrumental belief seems less rational than giving up an end, which itself seems less rational than intending the means. I consider whether, as some philosophers allege, these “asymmetries” pose a problem for the wide-scope formulation of instrumental rationality. I argue that they do not. I also present an argument in favor of the wide-scope formulation. The arguments employed here in defense of the wide-scope formulation of instrumental rationality can also be employed in defense of the wide-scope formulations of other rational requirements.     

Modularity,mental retardation and speed of processing

This paper briefly outlines Anderson's (1992) theory of the minimal cognitive architecture underlying intelligence and development and briefly discusses its application to understanding mental retardation and specific cognitive deficits. An experiment on the relationship between face perception and mental retardation serves as an illustration of how the theory might be informative about the relationship between intelligence and cognitive architecture.