Systemic functional adaptedness and domain-general cognition: broadening the scope of evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology tends to be associated with a massively modular cognitive architecture. On this framework of human cognition, an assembly of specialized information processors called modules developed under selection pressures encountered throughout the phylogenic history of hominids. The coordinated activity of domain-specific modules carries out all the processes of belief fixation, abstract reasoning, and other facets of central cognition. Against the massive modularity thesis, I defend an account of systemic functional adaptedness, according to which non-modular systems emerged because of adaptive problems imposed by the intrinsic physiology of the evolving human brain. The proposed reformulation of evolutionary theorizing draws from neural network models and Cummins’ (J Philos 72(20):741–765, 1975) account of systemic functions to identify selection pressures that gave rise to non-modular, domain-general mechanisms in cognitive architecture.