Intentional explanation and attributions of mentality -- International systems -- Reply to Arbib and Gunderson -- Brain writing and mind reading -- The nature of theory in psychology -- Skinner skinned -- Why the law of effect will not go away -- A cure for the common code? -- Artificial intelligence as philosophy and as psychology -- Objects of consciousness and the nature of experience -- Are dreams experiences? -- Toward a cognitive theory of consciousness -- Two approaches to mental (...) images -- Why you can't make a computer that feels pain -- Free will and personhood -- Mechanism and responsibility -- The abilities of men and machines -- Conditions of personhood -- On giving libertarians what they say they want -- How to change your mind -- Where am I? (shrink)

Currently, there is widespread skepticism that higher cognitive processes, given their apparent flexibility and globality, could be carried out by specialized computational devices, or modules. This skepticism is largely due to Fodor’s influential definition of modularity. From the rather flexible catalogue of possible modular features that Fodor originally proposed has emerged a widely held notion of modules as rigid, informationally encapsulated devices that accept highly local inputs and whose opera- tions are insensitive to context. It is a mistake, however, to (...) equate such features with computational devices in general and therefore to assume, as Fodor does, that higher cognitive processes must be non-computational. Of the many possible non-Fodorean architectures, one is explored here that offers possible solutions to computational problems faced by conventional modular systems: an ‘enzymatic’ architecture. Enzymes are computational devices that use lock-and-key template matching to iden- tify relevant information (substrates), which is then operated upon and returned to a common pool for possible processing by other devices. Highly specialized enzymes can operate together in a common pool of information that is not pre-sorted by information type. Moreover, enzymes can use molecular ‘tags’ to regulate the operations of other devices and to change how particular substrates are construed and operated upon, allowing for highly interactive, context-specific processing. This model shows how specialized, modular processing can occur in an open system, and suggests that skepti- cism about modularity may largely be due to failure to consider alternatives to the standard model. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

No wonder, then, that I wanted to share this book with my friends--but I also wanted to keep it for myself! If you don't read this book, you'll be left wondering what everyone (else) is talking about.

A provocative assessment of human thought and behavior, reissued with a new afterword, explores a range of conundrums from the ability of the mind to perceive three dimensions to the nature of consciousness, in an account that draws on ...

Jerry Fodor argues against the widely held view that mental processes are largely computations, that the architecture of cognition is massively modular, and...

Second, this collection of cognitive programs evolved in the Pleistocene to solve the adaptive problems regularly faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors-...