672833

research-article2016
POSXXX10.1177/0048393116672833Philosophy of the Social SciencesPalecek

Article
Philosophy of the Social Sciences
2017, Vol. 47(2) 132­–144
Modularity of Mind: Is It © The Author(s) 2016
Reprints and permissions:
Time to Abandon This sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0048393116672833
Ship? journals.sagepub.com/home/pos

Martin Palecek1

Abstract
This article evaluates the idea of the modularity of mind and domain
specificity. This concept has penetrated the behavioral disciplines, and in
the case of some of these—for example, the cognitive study of religion—
has even formed their foundation. Although the theoretical debate relating
to the idea of modularity is ongoing, this debate has not been reflected in
the use of modularity in behavioral research. The idea of domain specificity
or modularity of mind is not without its controversies, and there is no
consensus regarding its acceptance. Many neuroscientists, as well as several
evolutionary psychologists and philosophers, have raised a number of
objections that cannot remain overlooked. I will show the areas in which
the idea is problematic, what attempts have been made to preserve it, and
how social scientific research can move beyond post-Fodorian modularity
without losing any valuable insights.

Keywords
philosophy of social science, modularity of mind, domain specificity, Eliasmith,
neuroscience, Wason selection task

Received 13 September 2016

1University of Hradec Králové, Hradec Králové, Czech Republic

Corresponding Author:
Martin Palecek, University of Hradec Králové, Hradec Králové 50003, Czech Republic, EU.
Email: martin_palecek@hotmail.com
Palecek 133

1. Psychological Foundation of Culture?

When Cosmides and Tooby published “The Psychological Foundation of
Culture” (Tooby and Cosmides 1992), they argued that the social sciences
were insufficiently scientific, lacking the capacity to distinguish good from
bad theories. (Tooby and Cosmides 1992, 22) As a result, the social sciences
have been unable to make progress. The root mistake, they suggested, was
the wrong understanding of the human mind. Social scientists tended to
believe that mind is a general purpose organ, a blank slate on which culture
and social norms could be inscribed. That view implied that the biological
nature of humans can play no role in their cultural life. For instance, when
Margaret Mead (1935) published Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive
Societies, the message was simple.
You are not a woman or man by nature. Gender is a program installed in
your mind like software. The only appropriate way to study culture, then, was
to interpret it.
Cosmides and Tooby suggested that advances in cognitive science have
made the interpretivist view obsolete. With better knowledge of human psy-
chology, we can test hypotheses about how social and cultural information is
learned, processed, and stored. By linking culture and the cognitive sciences,
the social sciences would finally achieve some progress.
The debate between interpretivism and naturalism has its origin in the
19th-century social sciences. Early anthropologists like Tylor and Morgan,
for example, theorized in evolutionary terms. They understood all social
innovations and historical changes as a development of the mind, and see this
evolution as progress. This decision let them see Western civilization as the
pinnacle of human progress and to classify existing societies according to
distance from the Western civilization.
The evolutionary approach was criticized by Boas and his students. They
argued that there is a lack of evidence for this kind of theorizing. They also
rejected the idea that race and culture were intertwined, and were concerned
about the racism implicit in the evolutionist’s conception of progress.
Ultimately, Boas and his students argued that to understand human social life,
habits, and kinship, we need not know anything about human biology.
Cosmides and Tooby’s naturalistic approach to the social sciences rejects
the dualism of nature and culture proposed by the interpretivists. Their pic-
ture of the mind followed Fodor’s idea of modularity. Modularity is “the view
that many fundamentally different kinds of psychological mechanisms must
be postulated in order to explain the facts of mental life” (Colombo 2013,
358). Fodor argued that instead of mind as one general organ, there are many
modules dedicated to special tasks. Modularity bridges studies of culture and
134 Philosophy of the Social Sciences 47(2)

natural science because it shows that culture is deeply rooted in our psychol-
ogy, and knowledge of the mind is indispensable for knowledge of society.
Moreover, it reconnects the social sciences with evolution. Finally, it brings
rigor to social scientific research because it enables us to validate hypotheses
about culture with cognitive experimentation.
The concept of modularity is thus central to the debate between interpre-
tivists and naturalists. Modularity, however, has been criticized, and even
rejected in some quarters. What if the idea of modularity is wrong? Would it
bring back the idea of the mind as a blank slate and reinstate interpretivism?

2. Modularity of Mind: Where Are We?

The idea of the modularity of mind was first introduced by Jerry Fodor in
1983 (Fodor 1983) in his book bearing the title The Modularity of Mind.
What was actually new about this conception? Empiricists and their follow-
ers saw mind as a universal tool, which acquires all its capacities by means of
a universal computation process through its relationship with its surround-
ings. This image was of a more or less empirical nature. In his book, Fodor
combined two concepts. He adopted Chomsky’s idea (Devitt and Hanley
2006) that language structures are innate. Only a preset capacity explains the
human ability to learn language despite the poverty of stimuli in a person’s
surroundings. Second, he drew on the observation of characteristic develop-
mental features of the mind of the human child, as well as a number of note-
worthy psychological experiments relating to the striking inability of our
mind to detect certain deceptions.
As an example of such a deception, we can present the well-known
Müller–Lyer illusion.
Palecek 135

The image above shows two lines, ended with arrows pointing in opposite
directions. At first glance, it is immediately apparent that these lines are not
of equal length. The second appears longer than the first one. However, once
we measure them with a ruler, we can easily verify that the length of both
lines is in fact identical. And now there follows a problem that makes the
trick interesting: from the classic conception of the mind we could deduce
that once we are aware of a particular deception, on the basis of this knowl-
edge we would also be able to correct “our vision.” In this case, however, we
are not capable of anything of the kind.
Our knowledge manifests a remarkable incapacity to penetrate our vision
and change what we see. On the basis of this and other analogous illusions,
Fodor asks: what if our “image” of the brain is false? What if during the course
of evolution, the structure of the mind was formed, from different functional
units, just as our brain is composed of various parts that are of different ages.
Each individual block would have its own purpose. Each would receive its
own kind of input and output, and be relatively closed to other kinds of access
from other parts of the brain/mind (Coltheart 1999; Fodor 1985).
The crucial defining feature of modules is their informational encapsula-
tion and domain specificity. Any module is informationally encapsulated in
the sense that it is less open to pass through information located elsewhere in
the mind. A mechanism is domain specific if it has a restricted subject matter.
The fact that both features are defined vaguely does not make any specific
characterization of both any easier. It is not clear how far encapsulation goes
or how much each module is domain specific (Colombo 2013, 359).
Carruthers as well as the other post-Fodorian defenders of modularity
(Colombo 2013) have largely settled on the picture of a strongly modular
periphery (perceptual, motor, and information processing), and a weakly
modular core (reasoning, judgment, and decision making; Barrett and
Kurzban 2006; Colombo 2013).
On this view, the mind is modular around its boundaries: the perceptual
and motor systems. Boundaries of cognitive system are then understood as
modular in the strong sense. All of them are domain specific and less encap-
sulated. The central system is weakly modular in the sense that it is not com-
posed of encapsulated or domain-specific sub-systems (Carruthers 2006;
Colombo 2013, 359; Robbins 2015; see also Barrett and Kurzban 2006;
Carruthers 2006; Coltheart 1999; Tooby and Cosmides 1992; Pinker 2003;
Sperber and Hirschfeld 2006).
The modularity hypothesis fundamentally alters the picture of the mind. It
replaces the empiricist conception of the mind as a blank slate that can be
overwritten essentially by anything with the concept of mind that is com-
posed of several domain-specific gadgets, and thus replaces also the mind as
136 Philosophy of the Social Sciences 47(2)

a universal tool. For 21st-century readers, the metaphor of the smartphone

with its individual applications captures the idea of modularity. The essence
of this technical innovation lies precisely in the possibility of installing indi-
vidual applications on the platform of the general program. These receive
specific inputs and process them quickly. The internal functioning of the indi-
vidual applications is inaccessible to other applications. Naturally, they all
run on the basis of a single operating system that controls their interaction.
The evolution of the smartphone confirms the appropriateness of the meta-
phor. Early smart devices worked with a universal program. However, it was
demonstrated that such a construction is impractical, because it slows down
computation. The connection of individual applications to a core operating
program was more useful because it improved the stability of functioning,
speeded up the response, and enabled easier handling. Although this is a mere
analogy, it is entirely possible to conceive the evolution of the human mind
as necessitated by similar reasons.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the metaphor of the mind as a blank
slate dominated the social sciences. The advent of modularity motivated
some to suggest that the social sciences could have an entirely new founda-
tion. Cosmides and Tooby pointed to the Wason selection task as demonstrat-
ing the power and importance of the modularity hypothesis for the social
sciences. The original Wason selection task consists of four cards, on which
the subject sees a number on two and a letter on the other two. The test is
composed of a calculation of the type “which cards is it necessary to turn over
in order to confirm the assumption that a certain number corresponds with a
certain letter.” The task is noteworthy due to its results, in which such a sim-
ple calculation is performed erroneously in 70% to 80% of cases, and in fact
without a more general positive result even in cases of actual experts in math-
ematics or logic. The results did not change even when the letters and num-
bers were replaced by different characters (McCauley 2013, 54-56). It
appeared that in certain cases, our mind has a tendency to fail systematically,
or systematically guide us to misleading results.
Cosmides and Tooby (Cosmides 1989; Cosmides and Tooby 1989)
replaced the original test questions with content of a social nature. For exam-
ple, subjects were asked to determine age, a drink a particular person was
drinking, and whether in this case it was possible to drink an alcoholic bever-
age legally or not. This was not random content, but there were examples
related to social rules and their contravention. It was demonstrated that in this
case, the error rate dramatically fell to approximately 20% to 30%. This result
seems to show that our mind not only contains a cluster of domain-specific
cognitive mechanisms, but also these mechanisms support social interaction.
In this case, it appears that our mind has developed in its capacity to identify
Palecek 137

quickly a person who is cheating at the expense of the wider community

(Cosmides 1989; Cosmides and Tooby 1989). Cosmides and Tooby under-
stand this as a confirmation of the hypothesis that the human mind has devel-
oped modules particularly for solutions and orientation within social issues.
Modularity and domain specificity has given rise to the field of the cogni-
tive science of religion. Proponents of this scientific approach agree that reli-
gion is a product of our cognition. What they do disagree about is whether
religion is directly a product of our evolution (that means does it somehow
improve our fitness; Henrich 2015; Johnson 2015; Norenzayan 2013,
Norenzayan et al. 2016; Norenzayan and Gervais 2013) or if religion is just a
byproduct of our other cognitive skills (Atran 2002; Boyer 2001; McCauley
2013). Both approaches build their theories on the idea that our cognition is
basically modular. Some modules could be directly dedicated to our religious
belief, increasing our chances of survival. Another hypothesis is that a special
domain dedicated to Big Gods can be switched on to make us more coopera-
tive (Norenzayan 2013). Some proposed modules are so sensitive for our
own benefits that they are able to give us a false-positive response in the same
way as the shape of clouds can look like a face, as a false-positive response
to our ability to recognize faces (Guthrie 1995). Or, as Pascal Boyer (2003,
122) explains,

the way people connect misfortune or protection on the one hand and gods,
spirits or ancestors on the other is generally in terms of social exchange, that is,
in terms of services and goods given versus received. They attribute to
supernatural agents an intuitive “logic of social exchange” that is active in non-
religious contexts.

Boyer particularly sees modularity as necessary for religious concepts that

are “are strongly constrained by the structure and logic of intuitive ontology,
where this ontology is delivered by innately-channeled modular systems for
folk-psychology, folk-physics, naive-biology and the domain of artefacts”
(Carruthers and Chamberlain 2000, 9).

3. Critical Voices
Although modularity represented a clear stimulating impulse in our under-
standing of the mind and its application across the social sciences has enabled
its further development and greater credibility, modularity is not without con-
troversy. Proponents of modularity have contended that it will revolutionize
the social sciences. Do the controversies undermine the revolution? Let us
look at the different concerns about modularity that have been raised.
138 Philosophy of the Social Sciences 47(2)

First, the empirical findings that are supposed to support modularity can be
interpreted in different ways: in favor or against the idea of modularity itself.
One very noteworthy study, further enhanced by a valuable intercultural com-
parison, is related to the above-mentioned Müller–Lyer illusion. Segall’s stud-
ies were conducted among 17 ethnic groups (Segall, Campbell, and Herskovits
1966). Children from the Suku tribe and adults from the San tribe, as well as
laborers from the South African mines, had no problem with the Müller–Lyer
illusion or were resistant to the illusion. McCauley and Henrich (McCauley
and Henrich 2006, 19) interpret Segall’s findings as showing that modularity
is weak, even in a perceptual system. They take the view that it is possible to
consider modularity to be diachronically permeable. What remains preserved
of modularity is its synchronous impermeability (McCauley and Henrich
2006; Robbins 2015). That means that impermeability depends on the stage of
life. Evidence suggests that “during the first 20 years of humans’ lives it
appears that their visual input systems exhibit diachronic cognitive penetrabil-
ity” (McCauley and Henrich 2006, 19). The environment shapes the individ-
ual cognitive system and any modules cannot be encapsulated in Fodorian
sense. This kind of evidence seems to speak for weak sense of modularity.
A second criticism of the modularity is focused on the process of learn-
ing. Supporters of the idea of modularity follow Chomsky’s argument of the
poverty of stimulus in the process of learning. According to them, just as the
domain-general learning system could not learn language, domain-general
learning is not able to explain how it is possible that infants can reach sophis-
ticated competencies like numerosity, goal-directed behavior, or recognition
of the physical properties of objects. In response, proponents of a more gen-
eral purpose mind have developed alternative accounts of learning and
related cognitive functions (Eliasmith 2014; Prinz 2006; 2012).
Connectionism has provided an alternative framework for developing such
explanations.
Recently, Chris Eliasmith has developed a connectionist-based “Semantic
Pointer Architecture.” Interestingly, the model developed by Chris Eliasmith
not only deploys the idea that mind is a general learning device, but also his
simulations undermine Cosmides and Tooby’s cheater detector as an account
of Wason selection task phenomenon.
Let us just briefly summarize the key elements of Eliasmith’s work. Unlike
other attempts to simulate the mind, Eliasmith does not begin with syntax,
from which we would derive semantics, but with semantics directly (Eliasmith
2014, 84). In this position, in his own words, it is close to cognitive linguistics.
His simulation, SPAUN, is capable of simulating several distinct and impor-
tant cognitive functions. Interestingly, SPAUN does not need to be repro-
grammed after each simulation, nor are the different capacities modular.
Palecek 139

As discussed above, Comides and Tooby interpret their implementation of

the Wason selection task as a confirmation of the hypothesis that the human
mind has developed specifically for solutions and orientation within social
issues, more specifically, that our mind has evolved as a kind of “cheater
detector” to be able to quickly detect an individual who is cheating at the
expense of the wider community. When SPAUN did the Wason task with the
standard, abstract, content, its performance conformed to the usual human
values (Eliasmith 2014, 234). Like humans, when the abstract content was
replaced with concrete concepts, such as “drinking” and age, SPAUN’s per-
formance improved, just as human performance does. But also like humans,
any concrete concepts facilitate better performance than abstract concepts.
The content need not be social. Eliasmith’s model lets him explain the
improved performance in terms of the role of semantics in the task. That
means we do not need any “cheating detector” to explain Wason task results.
It appears that we are facing a dilemma. Models have been created that
can simulate higher cognitive functions without the need for modularity or
domain specificity. However, evolutionary psychology, following on from
the idea of modularity and domain specificity, presents us with a range of
relatively convincing experiments demonstrating that the human mind is
not a universal tool. In certain areas, the mind is pronouncedly more effec-
tive and elsewhere systematically fails, which seems to confirm domain
specificity and modularity. If both schools of thought are capable of
achieving such results and coming to opposing conclusions without an
apparent error of judgment or in the structure of their experiments, then it
appears that we—that is, both sides simultaneously—are missing some-
thing fundamental.

4. Saving Modularity?
There are serious doubts if modularity is sustainable especially because of
lack of progress within the modularity debate. Even many of evolutionary
psychologists started to doubt the idea itself, or have tried to avoid the main
flaws. I argue that the reverse engineering method was the main cause that
led modularity-based research to the dead end. However, there are other
kinds of empirical evidence based on neuroscientific research that support
the idea of modularity on the neurological bases. It means that the functional
view of modularity can merge with the neuroscientific understanding of mod-
ularity, and Eliasmith’s model is somehow inappropriate.
If we wish to become evolutionary psychologists, we will most probably
reach for David Buss’s book The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology
(Buss 2005; 2015). However, if we compare both editions—2005 and
140 Philosophy of the Social Sciences 47(2)

2015—we will find that the section devoted to the modularity of mind and
domain specificity, which was written by Boyer and Barrett, differs markedly
between the two editions (Boyer and Barrett 2015). Whereas the original ver-
sion from 2005 presents arguments in favor of massive modularity, the new
version of the chapter is in many ways more cautious. Boyer and Barrett
emphasize the idea that modules are functional, not anatomical. This move
seems to worsen the troubles that we have with the idea of modularity.
Evolutionary psychologists propose new modules on the basis of reverse
engineering (Colombo 2013, 362). That means they speculate about the pos-
sible adaptive problem and try to deduce a way how evolution could solve
this kind of problem. Opponents have argued that this kind of individuation
of adaptive problems is far from straightforward (Colombo 2013, 363).
Without constraints on what counts as an adaptive problem, there could be a
never-ending speculation about modules.
To combine the reverse engineering with stepping down from the idea of
anatomical location of any modularity, modularity seems to become more
speculative and to lack of criteria of reliability.
Is all therefore lost and is it time to abandon modularity completely? Not
necessarily. The way to make modularity productive again is to modify post-
Fodorian modularity: to abandon the reverse engineering and speculation
about adaptation, and understand modularity within a network science per-
spective, that means to merge neuroscientific advance with Boyer and
Barrett’s approach. According to Colombo, “understanding modularity from
a network science perspective can enable us to integrate neurophysiological
and structural information about cognitive mechanisms, while freeing the
notion of functional specialization from adaptationism” (Colombo 2013,
364). That means try to better describe patterns of brain connectivity, and try
to understand the way the real brain is organized through modeling its infor-
mation-processing system (Colombo 2013, 365).
Recent neuroscientific approaches focus on structural, functional, and
effective connectivity, and these three modes of connectivity are an indis-
pensable part of the up-to-date theory of brain cognitive architecture
(Colombo 2013, 365). This approach in fact shows that our brain is modu-
larly organized in the sense that some parts of the neural network communi-
cate during different tasks densely between each other, while remaining free
from adaptationism. There are a number of methods of testing this kind of
modularity (Boccaletti et al. 2006; Fortunato 2010; Reijneveld et al. 2007;
Schaeffer 2007). According to Colombo (2013), one of the most prominent
measures of modularity has been developed by Newman (Newman 2006;
Newman and Girvan 2004): “The basic idea is that the modularity of a net-
work is identified on the basis of “the number of edges falling within groups
Palecek 141

[of nodes] minus the expected number in an equivalent network with edges
placed at random” (Newman 2006, 8578). Modularity corresponds to ““sta-
tistically surprising arrangement of edges” in the network (8578)” (Colombo
2013, 367).
These findings mean that Eliasmith’s SPAUN is somehow an inappro-
priate model of human brain if it lacks modules. I can only speculate that
these findings might lead Eliasmith toward the same kind of solution that
smartphones went through: combine a general program with domain-spe-
cific apps.
What does the merger of functional modularity with network science
modularity mean for social science, specifically for cognitive science of reli-
gion? There is a dominant view in the cognitive science of religion that is
based on the idea that religion is a byproduct of architecture of mind that
consists of cluster of domain-specific modules (Powell and Clarke 2012,
457). Their arguments hold together and appear so strong just due to the
modularity argumentation. Nevertheless, this dominant view is based on the
post-Fodorian kind of modularity and therefore it suffers from all the flaws I
have already described.
Does it mean that we should abandon cognitive science of religion as
such? On the contrary, moving from post-Fodorian modularity toward func-
tional and network science modularity means that modularity that combines
Boyer and Barrett’s functionalism with a neuroscientific approach can be
very productive exactly due to the ability to disprove any unsatisfied theory.
It brings even more naturalism to cognitive science of religion. Moreover, the
idea of religion as a byproduct of domain-specific mental modules seems to
be with this move even more likely.
The combination of Boyer and Barrett’s functionalism and network sci-
ence modularity seems necessary to me, because recent speculation about
cognitive bases of religion despite its very stimulating results remains very
close to just “so-stories.” It seems to me that they should abandon reverse
engineering and speculation about adaptation. Without this approach their
explication that “religion is natural and science is not” (McCauley 2013)
remains plausible, but without sufficient method to explain this statement.
Any research that can prove that some region in the brain (in the sense of
specific connectivity) is dedicated to religion is still open. But it is really
doubtful that it can give us any straightforward answer in the sense of its
adaptability. The whole discussion within cognitive science boosted up all
kinds of researches that can be very useful for all social sciences. It seems to
me that it became clear that the modularity and cognitive function should be
studied more, but in a context-sensitive way (Colombo 2013, 372).
142 Philosophy of the Social Sciences 47(2)

5. Conclusion
The modularity of mind or domain specificity represented a genuinely
groundbreaking metaphor for our understanding of the human mind. Its
advent, and especially the idea of massive modularity, has enabled better
documentation of the mind’s functioning. Furthermore, it has also inspired
new areas of research within the social sciences because it offered a natural-
istic approach to the study of culture. This naturalistic approach enabled
some of anthropologists to break up the “nature versus culture” dualism and
see any differences between biology and social science as heuristic or meth-
odological differences, not ontological. The concept of modularity offered a
bridge between social and natural sciences to show us that culture is deeply
rooted in our psychological settings.
However, although convincing, the concept of modularity is not without
controversy. Its opponents are to be found primarily within the ranks of neu-
roscientists. The neuroscientific approach to the study of modularity seems to
be more promising. Research that follows it should be focused more on the
dynamic patterns of brain-region connectivity during different cognitive
tasks, rather than the post-Fodorian speculative postulation of individual
modules.
That means that modularity not only should not be abandoned, but we can
expect more interesting results based on context-sensitive research.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publi-
cation of this article.

References
Atran, S. 2002. In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Barrett, H. C., and R. Kurzban. 2006. “Modularity in Cognition: Framing the Debate.”
Psychological Review 113 (3): 628-47.
Boccaletti, S., V. Latora, Y. Moreno, M. Chavez, and D.-U. Hwang. 2006. “Complex
Networks: Structure and Dynamics.” Physics Reports 424 (4): 175-308.
Boyer, P. 2001. Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought.
New York: Basic Books.
Palecek 143

Boyer, P. 2003. “Religious Thought and Behaviour as By-Products of Brain Function.”

Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7 (3): 119-24.
Boyer, P., and H. C. Barrett. 2015. “Intuitive Ontologies and Domain Specificity.”
In The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, edited by David M. Buss, 2nd ed,
161–80. Wiley.
Buss, D. M. ed. 2005. The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. Hoboken, NJ: John
Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Buss, D. M. ed. 2015. The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. 2nd ed. Vol. 1.
Wiley.
Carruthers, P. 2006. The Architecture of the Mind: Massive Modularity and the
Flexibility of Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Carruthers, P. and A. Chamberlain, eds. 2000. Evolution and the Human Mind.
Cambridge University Press
Colombo, M. 2013. “Moving Forward (and beyond) the Modularity Debate: A
Network Perspective.” Philosophy of Science 80 (3): 356-77.
Coltheart, M. 1999. “Modularity and Cognition.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 3 (3):
115-20.
Cosmides, L. 1989. “The Logic of Social Exchange: Has Natural Selection Shaped
How Humans Reason? Studies with the Wason Selection Task.” Cognition 31
(3): 187-276.
Cosmides, L., and J. Tooby. 1989. “Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation
of Culture, Part II: Case Study: A Computational Theory of Social Exchange.”
Ethology and Sociobiology 10 (1): 51–97.
Devitt, M., and R. Hanley, eds. 2006. The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of
Language (Blackwell Philosophy Guides). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.
Eliasmith, C. 2014. How to Build a Brain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fodor, J. A. 1983. The Modularity of Mind. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Fodor, J. A. 1985. “Precis of the Modularity of Mind.” Behavioral & Brain Sciences
8 (1): 1-5.
Fortunato, S. 2010. “Community Detection in Graphs.” Physics Reports 486 (3): 75-
174.
Guthrie, S. 1995. Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion. Oxford University
Press.
Henrich, J. 2015. The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human
Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Johnson, D. 2015. God Is Watching You. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McCauley, R. N. 2013. Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
McCauley, R. N., and J. Henrich. 2006. “Susceptibility to the Müller-Lyer Illusion,
Theory-neutral Observation, and the Diachronic Penetrability of the Visual Input
System.” Philosophical Psychology 19 (1): 79-101.
Mead, M. 1935. Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. Oxford.
Newman, M. E. J. 2006. “Modularity and Community Structure in Networks.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103 (23): 8577-82.
144 Philosophy of the Social Sciences 47(2)

Newman, M. E. J., and M. Girvan. 2004. “Finding and Evaluating Community

Structure in Networks.” Physical Review E 69 (2): 26113.
Norenzayan, A. 2013. Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and
Conflict. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Norenzayan, A., and Will M. Gervais. 2013. “The Origins of Religious Disbelief.”
Trends in Cognitive Sciences 17:20-25.
Norenzayan, A., A. F. Shariff, A. K. Willard, E. Slingerland, W. M. Gervais, R.
A. McNamara, and J. Henrich. 2016. “The Cultural Evolution of Prosocial
Religions.” Behavioral and Brain Science 39 (e1). https://www.cambridge.org/
core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/the-cultural-evolution-of-
prosocial-religions/01B053B0294890F8CFACFB808FE2A0EF
Pinker, S. 2003. The Blank Slate. London: Penguin.
Powell, R., and S. Clarke. 2012. “Religion as an Evolutionary Byproduct: A Critique
of the Standard Model.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 63
(3): 457–86.
Prinz, J. 2006. “Is the Mind Really Modular.” In Contemporary Debates in Cognitive
Science, edited by R. J. Stainton, 22-36. Blackwell.
Prinz, J. 2012. Beyond Human Nature: How Culture and Experience Shape the
Human Mind. W.W. Norton.
Reijneveld, J. C., S. C. Ponten, H. W. Berendse, and C. J. Stam. 2007. “The
Application of Graph Theoretical Analysis to Complex Networks in the Brain.”
Clinical Neurophysiology 118 (11): 2317-31.
Robbins, P. 2015. “Modularity of Mind.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
edited by E. N. Zalta. Summer 2015 Edition. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/
sum2015/entries/modularity-mind/.
Schaeffer, S. E. 2007. “Graph Clustering.” Computer Science Review 1 (1): 27-64.
Segall, M. H., Campbell, D. T., and M. Jean Herskovits. 1966. The Influence of
Culture on Visual Perception. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
Sperber, D., and L. Hirschfeld. 2006. “Culture and Modularity.” In The Innate Mind:
Culture and Cognition, edited by T. Simpson, P. Carruthers, S. Laurence, and S.
P. Stich, 149–64.
Tooby, J., and L. Cosmides. 1992. “The Psychological Foundations of Culture.” In
The Adapted Mind : Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture:
Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, edited by J. H. Barkow,
L. Cosmides, and J. Tooby, 19–136. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Author Biography
Martin Palecek is an assistant professor of philosophy and social sciences, and a
director of Language, Mind, Society Center at the University of Hradec Kralove,
Czech Rep., EU. He was also holder of the Fulbright-Masaryk scholarship at Emory
University. His research examines issues of philosophy of social sciences, theory of
cultural anthropology, and cognitive sciences.