ABSTRACT
The modularity of the human mind is a hotly debated issue in philosophy of psychology and cognitive science. It’s a debate about the cognitive architecture of the mind. Recently, it was argued that the mind is not structured the way it’s assumed to be in (classical) cognitive science, but rather consists of several modules. This is often called the massive modularity hypothesis (MMH) and referred to as the modern modularity debate. MMH is a specic claim about the functional decomposition of the human mind: the idea that the human mind is a massive modular, instead of a general-purpose, device. It contains a huge number of modules, which interact and together give us an explanation not only of peripheral cognition, but also of central cognitive capacities. The account is often colorfully labeled as “the Swiss Army knife account” – instead of one general-purpose device the human mind contains a large number of tools, which are designed to be useful for very specic tasks – like screwdrivers, knives, and rasps. The modules at issue are thereby not simply small groups of neurons, but rather complex processing structures; we nd them not only at very low levels of analysis, but also at higher levels of processing and complexity. For example, modular systems are claimed to deal with cheater detection, language, mindreading, or nding a mate. Thus, the hypothesis of massive modularity contains three elements: plurality of the modular components, their compositionality, and their centrality in explanations of higher cognitive capacities (see Samuels 2006). In other words, there are many such modules, together explaining cognition, and especially higher order cognitive capacities, and they are not limited to lower levels of analysis.
