Peter Carruthers, The Architecture of the Mind

Broadly, there are two views on learning. On the associative view, the brain is plastic, with no problem-specific learning organs. Learners compute representations of varied aspects of the world, drawing entirely from interactions with it. On the other end is the view that learning is a computational problem, with the learner computing from the data a representation of the system that generates the data. Proponents of this view argue that general-purpose mechanisms are incapable of handling the computational complexity involved with mental processes. Instead, there must be task-specific learning organs ready to extract the required representations from the environment for any given task. Domain-specific organs or modules are generally characterized by the following properties. They are encapsulated, innately specified processing systems, with their own proprietary transducers and ‘shallow’ or non-conceptual outputs. Additional properties also include obligatory operations, ability for swift processing and operations that are inaccessible to other systems in cognition (see Fodor 1983). In recent years, the idea that the mind consists of multiple modules, each dedicated to a specific cognitive function, has gained popularity among many cognitive scientists. Despite this, a clear consensus on the extent to which the mind is divided into modules has not been reached. Some like Fodor (1983, 2000) argue for the modularity of lower-level cognitive processes, leaving higher-level cognitive processes (beliefs, desires) for central processing units. At the other extreme are the proponents of what Fodor calls the ‘New Synthesis’, most notably Sperber (2002), Pinker (1997), Cosmides and Tooby (2002) who claim that the mind is made of modules through and through. For them, there are no central processing units, no general-purpose systems for even higher-level cognitive processes. Peter Carruthers, with this new book, The Architecture of the Mind, secures a position in this latter camp. This book is a defense of the thesis of massive