A Cognitive-Functionalist Interpretation of Modularity

Abstract

Modularity has been the subject of intense debate in philosophy, psychology, and especially, in the cognitive sciences since the early 1980s, due to the publication of Fodor's ground-breaking book The Modularity of Mind (1983). However, in most cases of such modular views of the mind, misunderstandings have impeded an access to a more conceptually plausible account of modularity; a case that concerns us most here. This paper identifies the most striking arguments in the relevant literature, with special attention on the modularity argument proclaimed by J. Fodor (1983) that has been either limited in scope and depth, or misconceptualized by proponents. In particular, it reviews briefly the most modular assumptions made in this argument; those related to the cognitive architecture of the mind, and the perceptual-linguistic processes that are structured in terms of modules, or "organs". It is proposed here that modularity, clearly defined, may provide a useful framework for directing research works about human cognitive system, in general, and cognitive systematic processes of language use, in particular. Modularity might prove indispensable for understanding the structure of the mind, and offering insights into those mental mechanisms of human language processing as well. To that end, the paper, largely following  the stance of Modern Massive Modularity, proposes a hierarchically cognitive-functionalist model of the modularity of mind, whose biggest claim is to argue that the architecture of the mind is more pervasively modular than the Fodorian perspective permits, and that the line of modularity might be drawn, not only up to the high-level systems responsible for thought, but also at the low-level systems (sub-systems) underlying perception and language.