Philosophy of Mind
Modularity: the architecture of the mind
The way in which it is built
How should we categorise mental states? Should they be thought of as modules or something else?
This topic is related to a number of other topics.
Theoryladenness of observation. All you observe is directed by your theories and hypotheses and preconceptions about the world.
Fodor’s concept of modulary is the most classical. Then there is a divide between the kind that scientists generally use which lack many of the specifics that Fodor attributes to it.
Fodor says the mind is a dual system with a central system of problem solving and then peripheral systems of emotions and sensations and so on. Then there is massive modularity which holds that basically all mental capacities are modular in nature.
The questions to these two answers are related. Depending on how you define modularity you’ll defend some conception of the mind in itself.
What is modularity?
There is a minimum conception of modularity, and then there is the fodorian robust module. A fodor module is a robust module.
Richard Feynman: philosophy of science is as useful to science as ornithology is to birds.
Fodor makes a case study on modularity and its conception in science. Fodor’s work goes back to the 80s. The first book he wrote is called the modularity of mind. The mind is not just modular, but is a dual-core system, two types of systems. Perception and cognition. Perception, or the peripheral systems, are modular. Cognition is not.
In order for a function be a modular function in Fodor’s sense, it needs to fulfill the following criteria: Domain-specific, Mandatory, Inaccessible, Fast, Encapsulated, Shallow, Localisable, Dissociable, Innate.
The concept of modularity is a vague concept.
Encapsulated & inaccessible: it means that when the module processes information it lacks access to other information in the mind. Some aspects of visual perception are not affected by other pieces of information, though then there are parts of visual perception which is not encapsulated.
Inaccessibility refers to the idea that if there is some kind of central agency in the mind, then basically the information processing in it escapes introspection. We don’t have access to whatever is happening in the module in question. To some extent the cognising and perceptual are each other opposites.
Think about the human mind. What makes it special ? We have certain features that are quite special. We can compare stuff to things that don’t really make sense. Like a comparison between a person and a sunny day. This seems to require a mind that allows information to flow freely between different systems. If the human mind is to some extend encapsulated it cannot be massively encapsulated because that fails to explain what happens in our mental life.
Many mental processes process very quickly. Fodor puts the bar at below 0.5 seconds. Some capacity is modular if it is that fast. It is also energy-efficient. And they are also mandatory, which means that they are not under conscious control. When some piece of information is there, and your senses pick it up, they will process the information.
If you show an image, like a movie, and you only do it for a few miliseconds, you will have captured the image but you won’t have realised it consciously. Or at least this is the kind of subliminal messaging that marketing companies want us to believe.
Fodor wants the modules to be anchored in biological facts. Dissociability means that you can switch off one function without switching off the function of another system, as it is localised to one specific part of the body.
The module sare also domain-specifc. Each module has its own domain. A set of relevant stimuli that it reacts to. Fodor says that a domain is the range of questions for which a device provides answers.The less questions it deals with, the smaller is the domain.
”a face recognition module, a spatioal relations module, a rigid objects mechanics module, a tool-use module, a fear module, a social-exchange module, an emotion-perception module, a kind oriented motivation module, an effort allocation and recalibration module. These are the kinds of things which are modules.
Modules are also innate. And they should be canalised. There are clever people that argue that we should eliminate the concept of innateness. The word has many meanings. When we say something is innate, we mean that it is there from the moment you are conceived. Most people have four limbs, and is innate to the extent that we come into the world with four limbs. And some also say that homosexuality is innate, but this seems quite questionable now a days. The more meanings a term has, the less useful it becomes for the sciences, and this is the case with the word innate. We don’t want our terms to be polysemic. What do they suggest instead? Canalisation. If a trait is canalised, it means that that particular trait in many different individuals develops in a certain way and follows a certain trajectory, and reaching an identical endpoint after some time. Despite all sorts of variation, at the beginning of the process of development, it manifests in many individuals in different contexts, and then devleops in a certain way, and then ends up in a state that is largely identical. When we say homosexuality is innate, we are rather saying that it is canalised. In many different societies, and social situations, people observe themselves being gay. Despite differences between different societies. Some societies do everything they can to suppress people being gay, and people will still be gay. There are many ways of being gay.
Kinaidos in ancient Greece. This is basically a particularly effeminate type of gay man. In ancient Greece there were plenty of ways of being gay. They had sex all the type. But not as a Kinaidos. That was a passive homosexual who wanted to penetrated. And this was deviant. These people were shunned and ostracised. Even in societies like ancient greek society, people turn out to be gay in this very particular way. And one way to make sense of that is to say that it is canalised.
Kids learn to speak an awfully early age. It is such a complex feature, it is really quite something. And babies do that even with a minimal brain. They learn to speak in a certain canalised manner. All children after a few months end up being able to speak, despite growing up in very different situations. In the end babies end up using language in a similar way.
Modest modularity:
Some parts of the mind are modular. In the beginning Fodor is this because he argues that cognition is non-modular. Fodor is at loss at describing non-modular systems like reasoning, thinking etc. Fodor talks about modular systems being stupid. They are minding their own busines and do what they are supposed to do and nothing more.
The central systems are smart.
Are language and percpeption modular?
No because it is not encapsulated, and because they are not purely innate.
Language and encapsulation by Jesse Prinz: Phoneme restoration effect. A phoneme is a bit of spoken language. We have the ability to fill in the gaps in a spoken message. If someone is talking to us and we can’t quite hear everything they say we can still kind of fill in the gaps.
Non-modular systems effect the way we hear language being spoken to us. We fill in the gaps based on certain memories etc we have. So our mind can influence the functions of a certain module, which means it cannot be encapsulated.
Heinrich study: a bunch of populations shows the PSE (the point of subject equality), which is basically how much longer we have to make the upper horizontal line in the Muller-Lyer illusion until both lines seem equal in length. Both adults and children from the Kalahari, they’ll immediately see that they are the same length. They are not susceptible to the illusion. A student population in Evanston who need like 20mm stretching in order for them to be equal.
Heinrich is arguing against Fodor in saying that visual perception is not encapsulated, as there is information flowing from more central parts of the mind. Heinrich is talking about diachronic permeability, whereas Fodor is talking about synchronic. Fodor is focusing on only one point in time and asking whether there is a free flow of information to a particular module. Heinrich is focusing on the diachronical aspect, not at any one point but throughout time.
Adults are less susceptible to the illusion.
We cannot make sense of all human features in Fodor’s frame of central systems being modular, or at least encapsulated.