Cognitive penetration and informational encapsulation: Have we been failing the module?
Jerry Fodor deemed informational encapsulation 'the essence' of a system's modularity and argued that human perceptual processing comprises modular systems, thus construed. Nowadays, his conclusion is widely challenged. Often, this is because experimental work is seen to somehow demonstrate the cogn...
| Published in: | Philosophical Studies Vol. 178; no. 8; pp. 2599 - 2621 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Springer Nature
Aug2021
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=151438184&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 151438184 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00318116 4L8 jtl: Philosophical Studies issn: 00318116 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Aug2021 vid: 178 iid: 8 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 151438184 10.1007/s11098-020-01565-1 ppf: 2599 ppct: 22 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 327KB tig: atl: Cognitive penetration and informational encapsulation: Have we been failing the module? aug: au: Clarke, Sam affil: Department of Philosophy and Centre for Vision Research, York University, 247 Lippincott Street, Toronto, ON, Canada su: Fodor, Jerry A., 1935-2017 Cognition Cognitive development Modularity (Psychology) Perceptual psychology sug: subj: Fodor, Jerry A., 1935-2017 Cognition Cognitive development Modularity (Psychology) Perceptual psychology keyword: Cognitive penetration Fodor (Jerry) Informational encapsulation Mental imagery Modularity ab: Jerry Fodor deemed informational encapsulation 'the essence' of a system's modularity and argued that human perceptual processing comprises modular systems, thus construed. Nowadays, his conclusion is widely challenged. Often, this is because experimental work is seen to somehow demonstrate the cognitive penetrability of perceptual processing, where this is assumed to conflict with the informational encapsulation of perceptual systems. Here, I deny the conflict, proposing that cognitive penetration need not have any straightforward bearing on (a) the conjecture that perceptual processing is composed of nothing but informationally encapsulated modules, (b) the conjecture that each and every perceptual computation is performed by an informationally encapsulated module, and (c) the consequences perceptual encapsulation was traditionally expected to have for a perception-cognition border, the epistemology of perception and cognitive science. With these points in view, I propose that particularly plausible cases of cognitive penetration would actually seem to evince the encapsulation of perceptual systems rather than refute/problematize this conjecture. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Philosophical Studies is a copyright of Springer, 2021. All Rights Reserved. item: Philosophical Studies holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2021 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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