TRIVIALIZING MODULARITY. AN ASSOCIATIVE-REPRESENTATIONAL ACCOUNT OF COGNITION.
In the present paper I analyse the modularity thesis and, more specifically, the thesis of domain-specificity of processing. I argue that this thesis is not trivial only under the assumption of a variety of processes which differ from each other at the implementation level; otherwise, the variety of...
| Publicado en: | Epistemologia Vol. 38; no. 2; pp. 201 - 216 |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Springer Nature
2015
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=116116873&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 116116873 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 03929760 1C1A jtl: Epistemologia issn: 03929760 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: 2015 vid: 38 iid: 2 pid: 26615 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 116116873 ppf: 201 ppct: 15 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 483KB tig: atl: TRIVIALIZING MODULARITY. AN ASSOCIATIVE-REPRESENTATIONAL ACCOUNT OF COGNITION. aug: au: Mazzone, Marco affil: University of Catania, DISUM (Dipartimento Scienze Umanistiche), Piazza Dante 32, 95124 Catania sug: keyword: association conscious attention domain-specificity memory modularity ab: In the present paper I analyse the modularity thesis and, more specifically, the thesis of domain-specificity of processing. I argue that this thesis is not trivial only under the assumption of a variety of processes which differ from each other at the implementation level; otherwise, the variety of cognitive processes can only be explained as emergent on the basic mechanism of associative activation in that it operates on domain-specific representations, which is something that no one would deny. But that assumption is untenable: there are no other processes than associative activation (and inhibition) at the implementation level. Any claim to the contrary is the result of a conceptual confusion between two senses of "associative": a behavioural one, relative to which there are cognitive processes that exceed the ability to code elementary spatio-temporal contingencies, and one that lies instead at the implementation level. Since the assumption of a plurality of processes at the implementation level is untenable, the only viable interpretation of modularism (as far as domain-specificity is concerned) is a trivial one. By this I do not mean that the thesis is devoid of any content. However, its content is scarcely debatable, and far less thrilling than the debate has suggested so far. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Epistemologia is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Epistemologia holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2015 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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