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Philosophical Review

Review
Author(s): Robert Cummins
Review by: Robert Cummins
Source: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 94, No. 1 (Jan., 1985), pp. 101-108
Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review
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 The Philosophical Review, XCIV No. 1 (January 1985)

BOOK REVIEWS

The PhilosophicalReview, XCIV No. 1 (January 1985)

THE MODULARITY OF MIND. By JERRY FODOR. Cambridge, Bradford

Books/The MIT Press, 1983. Pp. 145.

The Modularity of Mind has three aspects. First, tying it all together is a
Picture: a picture about the functional organization of the mind. I'll sketch
this in Section II. Second, a number of claims about The Picture, and
consequences of it, are articulated and defended. I'll touch briefly on some
of these as I go along, and consider some specially in Section IV. Finally,
there is a discussion (at the beginning of the book) of the idea of psycho-
logical/mental faculties. I'll take this up in Section III. A mapping of topics
to chapters will be found at the end of that section.

II

Fodor's most recent book is held together and motivated by a certain

Picture of the mind's functional organization. The Picture, as I shall call it,
is this:I

From sensory transducers

Input systems v L7.

Belief Fixation

'The Pictureis not supposed to be complete-there is no previsionfor output to

motor systems,for example-but intended to analyzeonly that aspect of cognition
dear to epistemologists:perceptual knowledge.

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The crucial concept in The Picture is that of an input system. An input

system is (i) an informationally encapsulated (i.e., cognitively impenetra-
ble) module that mediates between (ii) sensory transducer output and (iii)
the processes of belief fixation. Let's take these in order.
(i) Informationallyencapsulatedmodules.A system is informationally encap-
sulated just to the extent that its access to data is limited in a principled
way. For the case at hand, what this amounts to is that each input system
has access only to transducer output; there is no feed-back from the belief-
fixer, nor is there access to the doings of other input systems. The arrows
in the diagram above are all the arrows there are.
Input systems are not to be identified with perceptual systems as tradi-
tionally individuated by mode. Such things as object location and bodily
orientation might be subserved by their own input systems. These func-
tions are obviously cross-modal, and use only rather special kinds of infor-
mation from the modes accessed. If language recognition is the business of
an input system as Fodor supposes, then it is also evidently cross-modal
(including touch), but sensitive to less than everything a given mode
provides.
It is essential to the plausibility of The Picture that it does not rule out
top-down feed-back within input systems. The point is just that input sys-
tems get no help from the processes that fix belief (or from other input
systems). This allows Fodor to accomodate the possibility that perceptual
and linguistic analysis are top-down to some appreciable extent while still
insisting they are, in an important sense, data driven.2 This is important: it
would be much easier to believe only what you want to believe if what you
perceived were significantly under the control of what you happened to
believe.3
(ii) Sensorytransducers.As conceived in The Picture, sensory transducers
convert surface irritations (Quine's phrase) into the types of signals over
which the computations of input systems are defined, without (at least
ideally) altering informational content in the process:
Whereastransduceroutputs are most naturallyinterpretedas specifyingthe
distributionof stimulationsat the surfaces (as it were) of the organism, the
input systems deliver representationsthat are most naturallyinterpreted as
characterizingthe arrangementof thingsin theworld(p. 42).

2The fact that we alwayssee noses (even cartoon ones) as sticking out suggests
top-down processing.The fact that we cannot see a concave nose, even when we
knowit is concave,suggests (proves?)that nose perception (in this respectat least)is
unaffected by what we believe.
3Descartes,Locke, Berkeley and Hume, to name a few names, were fond of the
fact that what we perceive is largely independent of volition as well as belief.

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It is not essential to The Picture, as I understand it, that the distinction

between sensory transducers and input systems will turn out to be the-
oretically significant. It might happen that when the data is in, as philoso-
phers say, it isjust as helpful to think of input systems as reaching right out
to the surface, that is, as having proximal stimuli as inputs. What is essen-
tial is that there be a serious distinction between (a) the process of deter-
mining the character and layout of distal objects (including sentence
tokens) on the basis of proximal stimuli, and (b) the fixation of belief.
(iii) Thefixation of belief. According to The Picture, the fixation of belief is
radically unencapsulated. Instead, belief fixation is supposed to be like
theory acceptance in science, viz., isotropic-any information can be taken
into account-and Quinian-it is sensitive to global properties of the whole
system of belief such as simplicity, intelligibility and explanatory force.

III

The Picture, as articulated in The Modularityof Mind, grows (rather pain-

fully) out of an interesting but difficult discussion of cognitivefaculties. As
Fodor remarks, this is a propos not only because faculty psychology is very
much back in vogue, but because psychological faculties have been con-
ceived in a number of quite different ways. Fodor gives us the following
distinctions to chew on.
Verticalvs. Horizontal. Vertical faculties are domain specific abilities. The
now standard example is language recognition (computing the token to
type relation as opposed to understanding what someone meant). The
hypothesis that language recognition is a vertical faculty amounts to the
claim that language processors are just that and no more: they don't (and
can't) do anything else. In contrast, horizontal faculties cut across domains.
Recall-the ability to retrieve information from memory-seems a likely
candidate; If there is such a thing as general problem solving, that's an
example as well. All cognitive capacities can be viewed as problem-solving
capacities, but it's an open question whether any, let alone all or most of
the problems (Which sentence did you utter? What color are the socks you
are wearing? How far away is the nearest wall? Are there as many prime
numbers as integers?) are or can be solved by a general purpose (horizon-
tal) problem solver.
Mechanism vs. body of information. Memory is typically conceived as a
mechanism-for example, a floppy disc. If there is a chess faculty, though,
it would be most natural to conceive it as a program or body of informa-
tion. Fodor points out that Chomsky's talk of "mental organs" tends to blur
(perhaps intentionally) this distinction. Chomsky's real view, Fodor thinks,
should be divided into several distinct claims: the language faculty is (a) a

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 BOOK REVIEWS

domain-specific program, complete with elaborate data structures, that is

(b) innate (unlearned) and (c) hard-wired (subserved by some particular
neural circuitry dedicated to that job and no other).
These two distinctions give us four kinds of faculties, or rather, four
ways of conceiving a faculty. In addition, Fodor gives us, at various places,
a variety of questions that we can ask about faculties-hence distinctive
features we can use to classify them.

1. Is it informationally encapsulated?
2. Is it innately specified?4
3. Is it assembled-that is, put together from other cognitive
processes?
4. Is it hardwired-that is, instantiated by a dedicated neural circuit?
5. Is it computationally autonomous-that is, does it not have to com-
pete for/share resources (attention, memory ... ) with other
faculties?

Fodor's main claim about input systems is that they are informationally
encapsulated. But he argues also that they are innately specified, unas-
sembled, hardwired, computationally autonomous vertical faculties. Fac-
ulties like that-that is, having all the features just mentioned, including
encapsulation, he calls cognitive modules. The doctrine of the book, then,
is that there are input systems, and that they are cognitive modules.
Chapter One (Four accounts of mental structure) lays the groundwork
for The Picture and the concept of a cognitive module by identifying and
discussing various different uses of the concept of a psychological faculty.
Chapter Two (A functional taxonomy of cognitive mechanisms) intro-
duces The Picture-especially the idea of an input system. Chapter Three
(Input systems as modules) argues that input systems exist and are cog-
nitive modules. This is the psychological meat. While the empirical argu-
ments are often breathtakingly fast, they all repay careful study. Chapter
Four (Central systems) explains and defends the view that belief fixation is
isotropic and Quinian, hence not subserved by a bundle of modules.5
Chapter Five (Caveats and Conclusions) suggests that the psychology of
belief fixation is in the same state as the theory of scientific theory accep-
tance-viz., primitive-and for the same reason: we don't understand
isotropic or Quinian "constraints" on inference.

41t's important to distinguish learnedfrom acquired.Acquired capacitiesmay be

innatelyspecified, and many cognitive changes occur without learning.
5Here Fodor takes issue-though he doesn't say so-with what seems to be im-
plied by current research in Al, viz., that belief fixation is subserved by a bundle of
domain specific expertsystems.

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IV

In this section, I want to touch on and briefly discuss four issues raised
by Fodor along the way. Let me emphasize, though, that these issues are a
more or less random selection from about twenty I might have picked.
Space, patience, and my own interests and ignorance forbid discussing
them all.
First Issue: Associationist/behavioristrejectionoffaculties. Fodor makes four
excellent points about the demise of faculty psychology in the "old days"
before its current revival.
(a) Critics of faculty psychology tended to identify faculties with capaci-
ties. There might conceivably be a chess faculty (in a machine, anyway) but
the capacity to checkmate a lone king with a king, a bishop and a knight is
certainly not a faculty. Assimilating faculties to capacities gratuitously al-
lowed critics of faculties to heap scorn on alleged faculty explanation of the
ability to checkmate a lone king with. . . etc. Behaviorists still pull this
stunt.
(b) Critics tended (and still tend) to ignore the distinction between what
the faculty does and what the organism does-between what Dennett calls
the sub-personal and personal levels. People used to object to modern
psycholinguistic theories on the grounds that speakers are not aware of,
and can't be made aware of, the rules defining phrase structures and
transformations. Berkeley made a similar objection to the "geometrical"
theory of depth perception (see the first few pages of The New Theoryof
Vision). Attributing sub-personal capacities to persons makes faculty psy-
chology look silly, but no faculty psychologist is committed to such a move,
as is now generally recognized. Less generally recognized is the fact that
faculty psychology is not committed to attributing personal capacities to
sub-personal faculties. If I have a language faculty, it isn't it, but I, who
know the language, although I know it in virtue of having a language
faculty. If you take this seriously-and why not?-you will realize that
implementing a language faculty on a computer is not necessarily going to
result in a system with knowledge of the language (or linguistic compe-
tence) any more than installing an artificial heart in a solar water heater is
going to make a circulatory system.
(c) Critics of faculty psychology almost always argue that explanatory
appeals to faculties are vacuous. This only looks plausible, however, when
faculties are identified with capacities. There's nothing wrong with dor-
mitival virtues and their kin unless one can't say anything about them
beyond specifying their typical manifestations. If one has a virtue (faculty)
for every behavioral capacity, one won't be able to say anything more about
any of them. Thus (a) and (c) are almost inseparable in the anti-faculty

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literature (especially in Skinner). Fodor rightly points out that faculty psy-
chologists have generally been fairly conservative about multiplying fac-
ulties. Exceptions are Galen-hence Moliere's justified scorn of faculty
talk in the medical tradition Galen founded-and certain Hullians-hence
Skinner's sensitivity to curiosity drives and the like.
(d) What really in the old faculty psychology was the emergence of
behaviorism as an alternative, not genuine methodological weaknesses in-
herent in the postulation of faculties.6
SecondIssue: assemblyand learning. Knowing how a capacity is assembled
doesn't give you learning on a plate. Except sometimes. Watson analyzed
playing a tune from memory into a sequence of conditioned responses.
Before the tune is "memorized," we have each printed note (S) producing
a given action (R)-for example, plunking a piano key. But since each
behavior itself produces stimuli (proprioceptive, visual, auditory), and
since these immediately proceed or are coincident with looking at the note,
stimulus substitution will render the notes unnecessary with repetition.
Here, knowing how the capacity is assembled does hand you learning on a
plate.
It doesn't work, of course: what if two tunes share a note? Watson had
the assembly wrong. When we get it right, the learning story is no longer
trivial. Nothing remotely like stimulus substitution will do the job, which
requires an abstract mental representation of the tune. And in general:
when we analyze a complex capacity into more elementary capacities, we
reduce the problem of learning to the problem of acquiring the analyzing
capacities plus their assemblyinto the analyzed capacity. Stimulus substitution
accomplished the assembly in Watson's fairy tale. What principles of learn-
ing will account for the assembly of a chess program? (Don't rush to the
text books to look up the answer....)
Third Issue: representationand hard-wiring.

I assume that something like a representationof a grammar for L must be

containedin any systemthat is able to compute the token-to-typerelationfor L
(p. 28).
Fodor also assumes that the language faculty is "hard-wired." There is
some (some)tension between these assumptions. Part of the point of hard-
wiring-of saying that something is hard-wired-is that rules (as opposed
to input) needn't be represented. We could build a device that represents
and executes the rule IF PULLED THEN STRETCH, but a rubber band
has it hard-wired: it executes the rule without representing it. When we

6This,of course, doesn't explain-indeed leaves mysterious-the fact that behav-

iorism was preferred. I discuss this in The Nature of PsychologicalExplanation, IV. 1.

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hard-wire a program what we do is build something that, like the rubber

band, executes the rules in question without representing them. I don't
know how it is with grammar, but I know it makes a difference. A device
that represents the rules executes them only if and when control is passed
to them (as we say in the hacking biz), and that by itself requires a complex
computational background, that is, a program for passing control which is
itself, presumably, executed but not represented. Why suppose modules
are like that?
Fourth Issue: theory acceptance and belief fixation. Fodor thinks belief fixa-
tion is Quinian and isotropic on the strength of an analogy with theory
acceptance in science (which is assumed to have these properties). For what
it's worth, I don't think much of the analogy.
Theory acceptance, at least insofar as it is Quinian and isotropic, is
something the scientific community as a whole does over lots of time.
When an individual scientist accepts a theory, that's a case of belief fixation
itself, hence can't be assumed to be Quinian and isotropic without begging
the question. I think it is clear-indeed notorious-that theory acceptance
by individual scientists-even individual research groups-is less than
Quinian and isotropic. A more accurate picture, though equally over-
simplified, is that each scientist or research group is dominated by a liber-
ating ignorance of what everyone else is doing (though there is less igno-
rance of what was done in other fields/labs years ago), together with a
commendable desire to save their current hypothesis at almost any cost.
Quinian and isotropic consensus is the result of the interactions and com-
petitions among these narrow-minded zealots and does not, except in
virtue of a simple argument from the authority of the institution, underlie
the reasoning of individual scientists. Even the Quinian/isotropic ap-
pearance of the community endeavor may be a kind of illusion created by
the fact that every zealot gets a chance to persuade or be forgotten.
Now maybe thinking is the result of interaction and competition among
narrow minded sub-personal zealots-barons controlling local intellectual
fiefs. This would still require a referee who periodically declares a winner,
and the referee, it might seem, is not informationally encapsulated. But
this is too hasty. Perhaps all the referee does is hand the laurels to which-
ever baron gets an answer ("halts") first. Then all the referee need know is
which barons are chugging away, and which are not.7
Fantasies like this one are cheap, but as long as we are at the level of his
fantasy versus my fantasy, I think it is premature to accept Fodor's First

7See my "SOFT:an active knowledge access system,"(Proceedings

of theOakland
University conference on Artificial Intelligence, April, 1983) for a sketch of such a
system.

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Law of the Nonexistence of Cognitive Science (p. 107): the more global
(e.g., the more isotropic) a cognitive process is, the less anybody under-
stands it. We may understand more about both thinking and scientific
theory acceptance than we care to admit, once we quit assuming that it is
ideally rational. It is only to the extent that they are Quinian and isotropic
that we don't understand them. But I admit that there's a kind of paradox
in this position: I can hardly hold that, all things considered,the best theory
of theory acceptance (or belief fixation) might be one that neglects isotropy
and global features.
This is a terrific book aimed at (and hitting) a genuinely interdisciplin-
ary cognitive science audience. If you're in, or interested in, cognitive
science, you'll need and want to read The Modularity of Mind.

ROBERT CUMMINS
Universityof Colorado

The PhilosophicalReview, XCIV No. 1 (January 1985)

PHILOSOPHICAL PAPERS. Vol. 1. By DAVID LEWIS. New York, Oxford

University Press, 1983. Pp. xii, 285.

David Lewis has published so many provocative and important papers

that a collection of them is well worth owning, even though the reader is
likely to be quite familiar with almost all of its contents. This volume is
subdivided into sections entitled Ontology, Philosophy of Mind and Philos-
ophy of Language, while papers on counterfactuals, causation, probability
etc., will appear in Volume 2. To a number of the papers here Lewis has
added postscripts, which mainly further elucidate his views, or respond to
criticisms of them. There is also a brief introduction in which he states the
metaphilosophy which underlies his approach to the questions he has
grappled with.
In the space of this short review, I shall simply choose a few topics on
which to air some disagreements. I turn first to the counterpart-theoretic
interpretation of modal language which Lewis originated. Here we can
distinguish three issues: (i) the workability of the formal apparatus; (ii) the
intended interpretation of the counterpart relation; and (iii) the meta-
physical package, if any, which must be bought by a user of the apparatus.
As regards (i), Lewis's own system seems to me not to be optimal for his
purposes, since it makes 'everything necessarily exists' a theorem of coun-
terpart theory (pp. 31-32). But this is a resolvable technical difficulty. ' (ii)

'See my "CanonicalCounterpartTheory,"Analysis42 (1982), pp. 33-37.

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