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JUST HOW MODULAR

IS THE MIND?
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C HAPTE R
O N E

The Case for Massively

Modular Models of Mind
Peter Carruthers

My charge in this chapter is to set out the positive case supporting massively modular
models of the human mind.1 Unfortunately, there is no generally accepted under-
standing of what a massively modular model of the mind is. So at least some of our
discussion will have to be terminological. I shall begin by laying out the range of
things that can be meant by “modularity.” I shall then adopt a pair of strategies. One
will be to distinguish some things that “modularity” definitely can’t mean, if the
thesis of massive modularity is to be even remotely plausible. The other will be to look
at some of the arguments that have been offered in support of massive modularity,
discussing what notion of “module” they might warrant. It will turn out that there
is, indeed, a strong case in support of massively modular models of the mind on one
reasonably natural understanding of “module.” But what really matters in the end,
of course, is the substantive question of what sorts of structure are adequate to account
for the organization and operations of the human mind, not whether or not the com-
ponents appealed to in that account get described as “modules.” So the more inter-
esting question before us is what the arguments that have been offered in support
of massive modularity can succeed in showing us about those structures, whatever
they get called.

1 Introduction: On Modularity

In the weakest sense, a module can just be something like a dissociable functional
component. This is pretty much the everyday sense in which one can speak of buy-
ing a hi-fi system on a modular basis, for example. The hi-fi is modular if one can
purchase the speakers independently of the tape-deck, say, or substitute one set of
speakers for another for use with the same tape-deck. Moreover, it counts towards
the modularity of the system if one doesn’t have to buy a tape-deck at all – just
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purchasing a CD player along with the rest – or if the tape-deck can be broken while
the remainder of the system continues to operate normally.
Understood in this weak way, the thesis of massive mental modularity would claim
that the mind consists entirely of distinct components, each of which has some specific
job to do in the functioning of the whole. It would predict that the properties of
many of these components could vary independently of the properties of the others.
(This would be consistent with the hypothesis of “special intelligences” – see
Gardner, 1983.) And the theory would predict that it is possible for some of these
components to be damaged or absent altogether, while leaving the functioning of
the remainder at least partially intact.
Would a thesis of massive mental modularity of this sort be either interesting or
controversial? That would depend upon whether the thesis in question were just that
the mind consists entirely (or almost entirely) of modular components, on the one
hand; or whether it is that the mind consists of a great many modular components,
on the other. Read in the first way, then nearly everyone is a massive modularist,
given the weak sense of “module” that is in play. For everyone will allow that the
mind does consist of distinct components; and everyone will allow that at least some
of these components can be damaged without destroying the functionality of the whole.
The simple facts of blindness and deafness are enough to establish these weak claims.
Read in the second way, however, the thesis of massive modularity would be by
no means anodyne – although obviously it would admit of a range of different strengths,
depending upon how many components the mind is thought to contain. Certainly it
isn’t the case that everyone believes that the mind is composed of a great many dis-
tinct functional components. For example, those who (like Fodor, 1983) picture the
mind as a big general-purpose computer with a limited number of distinct input and
output links to the world (vision, audition, etc.) don’t believe this.
It is clear, then, that a thesis of massive (in the sense of “multiple”) modularity is
a controversial one, even when the term “module” is taken in its weakest sense. So
those evolutionary psychologists who have defended the claim that the mind con-
sists of a great many modular components (Tooby and Cosmides, 1992; Sperber, 1996;
Pinker, 1997) are defending a thesis of considerable interest, even if “module” just
means “component.”
At the other end of the spectrum of notions of modularity, and in the strongest
sense, a module would have all of the properties of what is sometimes called a “Fodor-
module” (Fodor, 1983). That is, it would be a domain-specific innately-specified
processing system, with its own proprietary transducers, and delivering “shallow”
(nonconceptual) outputs (e.g., in the case of the visual system, delivering a 21/2-D sketch;
Marr, 1983). In addition, a module in this sense would be mandatory in its opera-
tions, swift in its processing, isolated from and inaccessible to the rest of cognition,
associated with particular neural structures, liable to specific and characteristic pat-
terns of breakdown, and would develop according to a paced and distinctively-arranged
sequence of growth.
Let me comment briefly on the various different elements of this account. Accord-
ing to Fodor (1983) modules are domain-specific processing systems of the mind.
Like most others who have written about modularity since, he understands this to
mean that a module will be restricted in the kinds of content that it can take as

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input.2 It is restricted to those contents that constitute its domain, indeed. So the
visual system is restricted to visual inputs; the auditory system is restricted to
auditory inputs; and so on. Furthermore, Fodor claims that each module should
have its own transducers: the rods and cones of the retina for the visual system; the
eardrum for the auditory system; and so forth.
According to Fodor, moreover, the outputs of a module are shallow in the sense
of being nonconceptual. So modules generate information of various sorts, but they
don’t issue in thoughts or beliefs. On the contrary, belief-fixation is argued by Fodor
to be the very archetype of a nonmodular (or holistic) process. Hence the visual
module might deliver a representation of surfaces and edges in the perceived scene,
say, but it wouldn’t as such issue in recognition of the object as a chair, nor in
the belief that a chair is present. This would require the cooperation of some other
(nonmodular) system or systems.
Fodor-modules are supposed to be innate, in some sense of that term, and to
be localized to specific structures in the brain (although these structures might not,
themselves, be local ones, but could rather be distributed across a set of dispersed
neural systems). Their growth and development would be under significant genetic
control, therefore, and might be liable to distinctive patterns of breakdown, either
genetic or developmental. And one would expect their growth to unfold according to
a genetically guided developmental timetable, buffered against the vagaries of the
environment and the individual’s learning opportunities.
Fodor-modules are also supposed to be mandatory and swift in their processing.
So their operations aren’t under voluntary control (one can’t turn them off ), and they
generate their outputs extremely quickly by comparison with other (nonmodular)
systems. When we have our eyes open we can’t help but see what is in front of us.
And nor can our better judgment (e.g. about the equal lengths of the two lines in
a Müller-Lyer illusion) override the operations of the visual system. Moreover,
compare the speed with which vision is processed with the (much slower) speed of
conscious decision making.
Finally, modules are supposed by Fodor to be both isolated from the remainder of
cognition (i.e. encapsulated) and to have internal operations that are inaccessible else-
where. These properties are often run together with each other (and also with domain
specificity), but they are really quite distinct. To say that a processing system is encap-
sulated is to say that its internal operations can’t draw on any information held out-
side of that system. (This isn’t to say that the system can’t access any stored information
at all, of course, for it might have its own dedicated database that it consults
during its operations.) In contrast, to say that a system is inaccessible is to say that
other systems can have no access to its internal processing, but only to its outputs,
or to the results of that processing.
Note that neither of these notions should be confused with that of domain
specificity. The latter is about restrictions on the input to a system. To say that a
system is domain specific is to say that it can only process inputs of a particular
sort, concerning a certain kind subject-matter. Whereas to say that the processing of
a system is encapsulated, on the one hand, or inaccessible, on the other, is to say
something about the access-relations that obtain between the internal operations of
that system and others. Hence one can easily envisage systems that might lack domain

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specificity, for example (being capable of receiving any sort of content as input), but
whose internal operations are nevertheless encapsulated and inaccessible (Carruthers,
2002a; Sperber, 2002).

2 What Massive Modularity Could Not Be

It is obvious that by “module” we can’t possibly mean “Fodor-module,” if a thesis

of massive mental modularity is to be even remotely plausible. In particular, some
of the items in Fodor’s list will need to get struck out as soon as we move to endorse
any sort of central-systems modularity, let alone entertain the idea of massive modu-
larity.3 If there are to be conceptual modules – modules dealing with commonsense
physics, say, or commonsense biology, or with cheater-detection, to name but a few
examples that have been proposed by cognitive scientists in recent decades – then
it is obvious that modules cannot have their own proprietary transducers. Nor can
they have shallow outputs. On the contrary, their outputs will be fully-conceptual
thoughts or beliefs.
Domain specificity also needs to go, or to be reconceptualized in terms of func-
tional rather than content domains, in the context of a thesis of massive modularity.
Although it may well be the case that many modules are domain specific, it can’t
be the case that all are, if the thesis that the mind is built exclusively or almost
exclusively out of modules is to be at all believable.4 Consider practical reasoning,
for example. This is plausibly a distinct system of the mind, with a significant innate
component, whose internal operations might be encapsulated from and inaccessible
to the remainder of cognition (Carruthers, 2004a). And it is a system whose basic
architecture is probably very ancient indeed, being common even to insects as well
as to ourselves and other mammals (Carruthers, 2004b). But it plainly can’t be domain
specific, since in order to do its job it will have to be capable of receiving any belief,
and any desire, as input.
Swiftness of processing also needs to go, in the context of massive modularity,
except perhaps in comparison with the speed of conscious thought processes, if the
latter are realized in cycles of modular activity, as Carruthers (2002a) has maintained.
For if the mind is massively modular, then we will lack any significant comparison-
class. Fodor-modules were characterized as swift in relation to central processes; but
a massive modularist will maintain that the latter are modular too. However, it looks
as if the claim of mandatory operation can be retained. Each component system of
the mind can be such that it automatically processes any input that it receives. And
certainly it seems that some of the alleged central modules, at least, have such a
property. As Segal (1998) points out, we cannot help but see the actions of an actor
on the stage as displaying anger, or jealousy, or whatever; despite our knowledge
that he is thinking and feeling none of the things that he appears to be. So the opera-
tions of our mind-reading faculty would appear to be mandatory.
What of claims of innateness, and of neural specificity? Certainly one could
maintain that the mind consists almost exclusively of innately channeled processing
systems, realized in specific neural structures. This would be a highly controversial
claim, but it wouldn’t be immediately absurd. Whether this is the best way to develop

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and defend a thesis of massive modularity is moot. Certainly, innateness has been
emphasized by evolutionary psychologists, who have argued that natural selection has
led to the development of multiple innately channeled cognitive systems (Tooby and
Cosmides, 1992). But others have argued that modularity is the product of learning
and development (Karmiloff-Smith, 1992). Both sides in this debate agree, however,
that modules will be realized in specific neural structures (not necessarily the same
from individual to individual). And both sides are agreed, at least, that develop-
ment begins with a set of innate attention biases and a variety of different innately-
structured learning mechanisms.
My own sympathies in this debate are towards the nativist end of the spectrum.
I suspect that much of the structure, and many of the contents, of the human mind
are innate or innately channeled. But in the context of developing a thesis of
massive modularity, it seems wisest to drop the innateness-constraint from our definition
of what modules are. For one might want to allow that some aspects of the
mature language faculty are modular, for example, even though it is saturated with
acquired information about the lexicon of a specific natural language like English. And
one might want to allow that modules can be constructed by over-learning, say, in
such a way that it might be appropriate to describe someone’s reading competence
as modular.
Finally, we come to the properties of encapsulated and inaccessible processing. These
are thought by many (including Fodor, 2000) to be the core properties of modular
systems. And there seems to be no a priori reason why the mind shouldn’t be com-
posed exclusively out of such systems, and cycles of operation of such systems.
At any rate, such claims have been defended by a number of those who describe
themselves as massive modularists (Sperber, 1996, 2002, 2005; Carruthers, 2002a, 2003,
2004a). Accordingly, they will be left untouched for the moment, pending closer
examination of the arguments in support of massive modularity.
What we have so far, then, is that if a thesis of massive mental modularity is to
be remotely plausible, then by “module” we cannot mean “Fodor-module.” In par-
ticular, the properties of having proprietary transducers, shallow outputs, domain
specificity, comparatively fast processing, and significant innateness or innate chan-
neling will have to be struck out. That leaves us with the idea that modules might
be isolable function-specific processing systems, whose operations are mandatory, which
are associated with specific neural structures, and whose internal operations may
be both encapsulated from the remainder of cognition and inaccessible to it. Whether
all of these properties should be retained in the most defensible version of a thesis
of massive mental modularity will be the subject of the next two sections of this
chapter.

3 Arguments for Massively Modular Minds

In this section I shall consider three of the main arguments that have been offered
in support of a thesis of massively modular mental organization. I shall be simultan-
eously examining not only the strength of those arguments, but also the notion of
“module” that they might warrant.

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3.1 The argument from biology

The first argument derives from Simon (1962), and concerns the design of complex
functional systems quite generally, and in biology in particular. According to this
line of thought, we should expect such systems to be constructed hierarchically out
of dissociable subsystems, in such a way that the whole assembly could be built up
gradually, adding subsystem to subsystem; and in such a way that the functionality
of the whole should be buffered, to some extent, from damage to the parts.
Simon (1962) uses the famous analogy of the two watch-makers to illustrate the
point. One watch-maker assembles one watch at a time, adding micro-component to
micro-component one at a time. This makes it easy for him to forget the proper order-
ing of parts, and if he is interrupted he may have to start again from the beginning.
The second watch-maker first builds sets of subcomponents out of the given micro-
component parts, and then combines those into larger subcomponents, until even-
tually the watches are complete. This helps organize and sequence the whole process,
and makes it much less vulnerable to interruption.
Consistent with such an account, there is a very great deal of evidence from across
many different levels in biology to the effect that complex functional systems are
built up out of assemblies of subcomponents. Each of these components is constructed
out of further subcomponents and has a distinctive role to play in the functioning
of the whole, and many of them can be damaged or lost while leaving the func-
tionality of the remainder at least partially intact. This is true for the operations of
cells, of cellular assemblies, of whole organs, and of multi-organism units like a bee
colony (Seeley, 1995). And by extension, we should expect it to be true of cogni-
tion also, provided that it is appropriate to think of cognitive systems as biological
ones, which have been subject to natural selection. Accordingly, we will now spend
some time examining this question.
What sorts of properties of organisms are apt to have fitness effects? These are
many and various, ranging from gross anatomical features such as size, shape, and
color of fur or skin, through the detailed functional organization of specific physical
systems such as the eye or the liver, to behavioral tendencies such as the disposi-
tion that cuckoo chicks have to push other baby birds out of the nest. And for
anyone who is neither an epiphenomenalist nor an eliminativist about the mind, it
is manifest that the human mind is amongst those properties of the human organism
that may have fitness effects. For it will be by virtue of the mind that almost all
fitness-enhancing behaviors – such as running from a predator, taking resources from
a competitor, or wooing a mate – are caused.
On any broadly realist construal of the mind and its states, then, the mind is at
least a prime candidate to have been shaped by natural selection. How could such a
possibility fail to have been realized? How could the mind be a major cause of fitness-
enhancing behaviors without being a product of natural selection? One alternative
would be a truly radical empiricist one. It might be said that not only most of the
contents of the mind, but also its structure and organization, are acquired from the
environment. Perhaps the only direct product of natural selection is some sort of
extremely powerful learning algorithm, which could operate almost equally well in a wide
range of different environments, both actual and non-actual. The fitness-enhancing

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properties that we observe in adult minds, then, aren’t (except very indirectly) a prod-
uct of natural selection, but are rather a result of learning from the environment
within which fitness-enhancing behaviors will need to be manifested.
Such a proposal is an obvious non-starter, however. It is one thing to claim that
all the contents of the mind are acquired from the environment using general learning
principles, as empiricists have traditionally claimed. (This is implausible enough by
itself; see section 3.2 below.) And it is quite another thing to claim that the structure
and organization of the mind is similarly learned. How could the differences between,
and characteristic causal roles of, beliefs, desires, emotions, and intentions be
learned from experience?5 For there is nothing corresponding to them in the world
from which they could be learned; and in any case, any process of learning must surely
presuppose that a basic mental architecture is already in place. Moreover, how could
the differences between personal (or “episodic”) memory, factual (or “semantic”)
memory, and short-term (or “working”) memory be acquired from the environment?
The idea seems barely coherent. And indeed, no empiricist has ever been foolish
enough to suggest such things.
We have no other option, then, but to see the structure and organization of the
mind as a product of the human genotype, in exactly the same sense as, and to the
same extent that, the structure and organization of the human body is a product of
our genotypes. But someone could still try to maintain that the mind isn’t the result
of any process of natural selection. Rather, it might be said, the structure of the mind
might be the product of a single macro-mutation, which became general in the
population through sheer chance, and which has remained thereafter through mere
inertia. Or it might be the case that the organization in question was arrived at through
random genetic drift – that is to say, a random walk through a whole series of minor
genetic mutations, each of which just happened to become general in the popula-
tion, and the sequence of which just happened to produce the structure of our mind
as its end-point.
These possibilities are so immensely unlikely that they can effectively be dismissed
out of hand. Evolution by natural selection remains the only explanation of organ-
ized functional complexity that we have (Dawkins, 1986). Any complex phenotypic
structure, such as the human eye or the human mind, will require the cooperation
of many thousands of genes to build it. And the possibility that all of these thou-
sands of tiny genetic mutations might have occurred all at once by chance, or might
have become established in sequence (again by chance), is unlikely in the extreme.
The odds in favor of either thing happening are vanishingly small. (Throwing a six
with a fair dice many thousands of times in a row would be much more likely.) We
can be confident that each of the required small changes, initially occurring through
chance mutation, conferred at least some minor fitness-benefit on its possessor, sufficient
to stabilize it in the population, and thus providing a platform on which the next
small change could occur.
The strength of this argument, in respect of any given biological system, is directly
proportional to the degree of its organized functional complexity – the more complex
the organization of the system, the more implausible it is that it might have arisen
by chance macro-mutation or random genetic walk. Now, even from the perspective
of commonsense psychology the mind is an immensely complex system, which seems

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to be organized in ways that are largely adaptive.6 And the more we learn about
the mind from a scientific perspective, the more it seems that it is even more com-
plex than we might initially have been inclined to think. Systems such as vision,
for example – that are treated as “simples” from the perspective of commonsense
psychology – turn out to have a hugely complex internal structure.
The prediction of this line of reasoning, then, is that cognition will be structured
out of dissociable systems, each of which has a distinctive function, or set of func-
tions, to perform.7 This gives us a notion of a cognitive “module” that is pretty close
to the everyday sense in which one can talk about a hi-fi system as “modular” pro-
vided that the tape-deck can be purchased, and can function, independently of the
CD player, and so forth. Roughly, a module is just a dissociable component.
Consistent with the above prediction, there is now a great deal of evidence of a
neuropsychological sort that something like massive modularity (in the everyday sense
of “module”) is indeed true of the human mind. People can have their language
system damaged while leaving much of the remainder of cognition intact (aphasia);
people can lack the ability to reason about mental states while still being capable of
much else (autism); people can lose their capacity to recognize just human faces;
someone can lose the capacity to reason about cheating in a social exchange while
retaining otherwise parallel capacities to reason about risks and dangers; and so on
and so forth (Sachs, 1985; Shallice, 1988; Tager-Flusberg, 1999; Stone et al., 2002;
Varley, 2002).
But just how many components does this argument suggest that the mind consists
of? Simon’s (1962) argument makes the case for hierarchical organization. At the top
of the hierarchy will be the target system in question (a cell, a bodily organ, the
human mind). And at the base will be the smallest micro-components of the system,
bottoming out (in the case of the mind) in the detailed neural processes that realize
cognitive ones. But it might seem that it is left entirely open how high or how low
the pyramid is (i.e. how many “levels” the hierarchy consists of ); how broad its base
is; or whether the “pyramid” has concave or convex edges. If the pyramid is quite
low with concave sides, then the mind might decompose at the first level of analysis
into just a few constituents such as perception, belief, desire, and the will, much as
traditional “faculty psychologies” have always assumed; and these might then get
implemented quite rapidly in neural processes. In contrast, only if the pyramid is
high with a broad base and convex sides should we expect the mind to decompose
into many components, each of which in turn consists of many components, and so on.
There is more mileage to be derived from Simon’s argument yet, however. For the
complexity and range of functions that the overall system needs to execute will surely
give us a direct measure of the manner in which the “pyramid” will slope. (The greater
the complexity, the greater the number of subsystems into which the system will
decompose.) This is because the hierarchical organization is there in the first place
to ensure robustness of function. Evolution needs to be able to tinker with one func-
tion in response to selection pressures without necessarily impacting any of the
others.8 (So does learning, since once you have learned one skill, you need to be able
to isolate and preserve it while you acquire others. See Manoel et al., 2002.)
Roughly speaking, then, we should expect there to be one distinct subsystem for
each reliably recurring function that human minds are called upon to perform. And

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as evolutionary psychologists have often emphasized, these are myriad (Tooby and
Cosmides, 1992; Pinker, 1997). Focusing just on the social domain, for example, humans
need to: identify degrees of relatedness of kin, care for and assist kin, avoid incest,
woo and select a mate, identify and care for offspring, make friends and build coali-
tions, enter into contracts, identify and punish those who are cheating on a contract,
identify and acquire the norms of one’s surrounding culture, identify the beliefs
and goals of other agents, predict the behavior of other agents, and so on and so
forth – plainly this is just the tip of a huge iceberg, even in this one domain. In
which case the argument from biology enables us to conclude that the mind will
consist in a very great many distinct components, which is a (weak) form of massive
modularity thesis.

3.2 The argument from task specificity

A second line of reasoning supporting massive modularity derives from reflection on
the differing task demands of the very different learning challenges that people and
other animals must face, as well as the demands of generating appropriate fitness-
enhancing intrinsic desires (Gallistel, 1990, 2000; Tooby and Cosmides, 1992, 2005).
It is one sort of task to learn the sun’s azimuth (its height in the sky at any given
time of day and year) so as to provide a source of direction. It is quite another sort
of task to perform the calculations required for dead reckoning, integrating distance
traveled with the angle of each turn, so as to provide the direction and distance to
home from one’s current position. And it is quite another task again to learn the
center of rotation of the night sky from observation of the stars, extracting from it
the polar north. These are all learning problems that animals can solve. But they
require quite different learning mechanisms to succeed (Gallistel, 2000).
When we widen our focus from navigation to other sorts of learning problem, the
argument is further reinforced. Many such problems pose computational challenges –
to extract the information required from the data provided – that are distinct from any
others. From vision, to speech recognition, to mind-reading, to cheater-detection, to
complex skill acquisition, the challenges posed are plainly quite distinct. So for each
such problem, we should postulate the existence of a distinct learning mechanism,
whose internal processes are computationally specialized in the way required to solve
the task. It is very hard to believe that there could be any sort of general learning
mechanism that could perform all of these different roles.
One might think that conditioning experiments fly in the face of these claims.
But general-purpose conditioning is rare at best. Indeed, Gallistel (2000; Gallistel and
Gibbon, 2001) has forcefully argued that there is no such thing as a general learning
mechanism. Specifically, he argues that the results from conditioning experiments are
best explained in terms of the computational operations of a specialized rate-estimation
module, rather than some sort of generalized associative process. For example, it is
well established that delay of reinforcement has no effect on rate of acquisition, so
long as the intervals between trials are increased by the same proportions. And the
number of reinforcements required for acquisition of a new behavior isn’t affected
by interspersing a significant number of unreinforced trials. These facts are hard to
explain if the animals are supposed to be building associations, since the delays and

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unreinforced trials should surely weaken those associations. But they can be predicted
if what the animals are doing is estimating relative rates of return. For the rate
of reinforcement per stimulus presentation relative to the rate of reinforcement in
background conditions remains the same, whether or not significant numbers of
stimulus presentations remain unreinforced, for example.
What emerges from these considerations is a picture of the mind as containing a
whole host of specialized learning systems (as well as systems charged with generat-
ing fitness-enhancing intrinsic desires). And this looks very much like some sort
of thesis of massive modularity. Admittedly, it doesn’t yet follow from the argument
that the mind is composed exclusively of such systems. But when combined with the
previous argument, outlined in section 3.1 above, the stronger conclusion would seem
to be warranted.
There really is no reason to believe, however, that each processing system will employ
a unique processing algorithm. On the contrary, consideration of how evolution gener-
ally operates suggests that the same or similar algorithms may be replicated many
times over in the human mind/brain. (We could describe this by saying that the same
module-type is tokened more than once in the human brain, with distinct input and
output connections, and hence with a distinct functional role, in each case.) Marcus
(2004) explains how evolution often operates by splicing and copying, followed by
adaptation. First, the genes that result in a given micro-structure (a particular bank
of neurons, say, with a given set of processing properties) are copied, yielding two
or more instances of such structures. Then second, some of the copies can be adapted
to novel tasks. Sometimes this will involve tweaking the processing algorithm that
is implemented in one or more of the copies. But often it will just involve provision
of novel input and/or output connections for the new system.
Samuels (1998) challenges the above line of argument for massive processing
modularity, however, claiming that instead of a whole suite of specialized learning
systems, there might be just a single general-learning/general-inferencing mechanism,
but one operating on lots of organized bodies of innate information. (He calls this
“informational modularity”, contrasting it with the more familiar form of computa-
tional modularity.) However, this would surely create a serious processing bottleneck.
If there were really just one (or even a few) inferential systems – generating beliefs
about the likely movements of the surrounding mechanical objects; about the likely
beliefs, goals, and actions of the surrounding agents; about who owes what to whom
in a social exchange; and so on and so forth – then it looks as if there would be a
kind of tractability problem here. It would be the problem of forming novel beliefs on
all these different subject matters in real time (in seconds or fractions of a second),
using a limited set of inferential resources. Indeed (and in contrast with Samuel’s
suggestion) surely everyone now thinks that the mind/brain is massively parallel in
its organization. In which case we should expect there to be distinct systems that
can process each of the different kinds of information at the same time.
Samuels might try claiming that there could be a whole suite of distinct domain-
general processing systems, all running the same general-learning/general-inferencing
algorithms, but each of which is attached to, and draws upon the resources of, a dis-
tinct domain-specific body of innate information. This would get him the computa-
tional advantages of parallel processing, but without commitment (allegedly) to any

12 Peter Carruthers
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modular processing. But actually this is just a variant on the massive-computational-

module hypothesis. For there is nothing in the nature of modularity per se that
requires modules to be running algorithms that are distinct from those being run by
other modules, as we have just seen. What matters is just that they should be isolable
systems, performing some specific function, and that their internal operations should
be computationally feasible (as we will see in section 3.3 below). So one way in which
massive modularity could be realized is by having a whole suite of processors, each
of which performs some specific function within the overall architecture of the mind,
and each of which draws on its own distinctive body of innate information relevant
to that function, but where the algorithms being computed by those processors are
shared ones, replicated many times over in the various different processing systems.
Although possible in principle, however, this isn’t a very likely form of massive
modularity hypothesis. For it does come with severe computational costs. This is because
the difference between this “informational module” hypothesis and the classic “com-
putational module” hypothesis just concerns whether or not the innate information
is explicitly represented. The classical idea is that there will be, within the mind-
reading faculty for example, an algorithm that takes the system straight from, “x is
seeing that P” to “probably x believes that P” (say). The information that people believe
what they see is implicitly represented in the algorithm itself. Samuel’s view, in con-
trast, will be that there is an intermediate step. Domain-general inference mech-
anisms will draw on the explicitly represented belief that people believe what they
see, in order to mediate the inference from premise to conclusion. Imagine this
multiplied again and again for all the different sorts of inferential transition that
people regularly make in the domain of theory of mind, and it is plain that his
proposal would come with serious computational costs. And it is equally clear that
even if informational modules were the initial state of the ancestral mind/brain,
over evolutionary time informational modules would be replaced by computational
ones.
Combining the arguments of sections 3.1 and 3.2, then, we can predict that the
mind should be composed entirely or almost entirely of modular components (in the
everyday sense of “module”), many of which will be innate or innately channeled.
All of these component systems should run task-specific processing algorithms, with
distinct input and/or output connections to other systems, although some of them
may replicate some of the same algorithm types in the service of distinct tasks. This
looks like a thesis of massive modularity worth the name, even if there is nothing
here yet to warrant the claims that the internal processing of the modules in ques-
tion should be either encapsulated, on the one hand, or inaccessible, on the other.

3.3 The argument from computational tractability

Perhaps the best-known of the arguments for massive modularity, however – at least
amongst philosophers – is the argument from computational tractability, which derives
from Fodor (1983, 2000).9 And it is generally thought that this argument, if it were
successful, would license the claim that the mind is composed of encapsulated process-
ing systems, thus supporting a far stronger form of massive modularity hypothesis
than has been defended in this chapter so far (Carruthers, 2002a; Sperber, 2002).

The Case for Massively Modular Models of Mind 13

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The first premise of the argument is the claim that the mind is realized in pro-
cesses that are computational in character. This claim is by no means uncontrover-
sial, of course, although it is the guiding methodological assumption of much of
cognitive science. Indeed, it is a claim that is denied by certain species of distributed
connectionism. But in recent years arguments have emerged against these competi-
tors that are decisive, in my view (Gallistel, 2000; Marcus, 2001). And what remains
is that computational psychology represents easily our best – and perhaps our only
– hope for fully understanding how mental processes can be realized in physical ones
(Rey, 1997). In any case, I propose just to assume the truth of this first premise for
the purposes of the discussion that follows.
The second premise of the argument is the claim that if cognitive processes are
to be realized computationally, then those computations must be tractable ones. What
does this amount to? First of all, it means that the computations must be such that
they can in principle be carried out within finite time. But it isn’t enough that the
computations postulated to take place in the human brain should be tractable in
principle, of course. It must also be feasible that those computations could be
executed (perhaps in parallel) in a system with the properties of the human brain,
within timescales characteristic of actual human performance. By this criterion, it seems
likely that many computations that aren’t strictly speaking intractable from the
perspective of computer science, should nevertheless count as such for the purposes
of cognitive science.
There is a whole branch of computer science devoted to the study of more-or-less
intractable problems, known as “Complexity Theory.” And one doesn’t have to dig
very deep into the issues to discover results that have important implications for cog-
nitive science. For example, it has traditionally been assumed by philosophers that
any candidate new belief should be checked for consistency with existing beliefs before
being accepted. But in fact consistency-checking is demonstrably intractable, if attempted
on an exhaustive basis. Consider how one might check the consistency of a set of
beliefs via a truth-table. Even if each line could be checked in the time that it takes
a photon of light to travel the diameter of a proton, then even after 20 billion years
the truth-table for a set of just 138 beliefs (2138 lines) still wouldn’t have been com-
pleted (Cherniak, 1986).
From the first two premises together, then, we can conclude that the human mind
must be realized in a set of computational processes that are suitably tractable.
This means that those processes will have to be frugal, both in the amount of
information that they require for their normal operations, and in the complexity of
the algorithms that they deploy when processing that information.
The third premise of the argument then claims that in order to be tractable,
computations need to be encapsulated; for only encapsulated processes can be appro-
priately frugal in the informational and computational resources that they require.
As Fodor (2000) explains it, the constraint here can be expressed as one of locality.
Computationally tractable processes have to be local, in the sense of only consulting
a limited database of information relevant to those computations, and ignoring all
other information held in the mind. For if they attempted to consult all (or even a
significant subset) of the total information available, they would be subject to com-
binatorial explosion, and hence would fail to be tractable after all.

14 Peter Carruthers
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This third premise, in conjunction with the other two, would then (if it were accept-
able) license the conclusion that the mind must be realized in a set of encapsulated
computational processes. And when combined with the conclusions of the arguments
of sections 3.1 and 3.2 above, this would give us the claim that the mind consists
in a set of encapsulated computational systems whose operations are mandatory, each
of which has its own function to perform, and many of which execute processing
algorithms that aren’t to be found elsewhere in the mind (although some re-use
algorithms that are also found in other systems for novel functions). It is therefore
crucial for our purposes to know whether the third premise is really warranted; and
if not, what one might put in its stead. This will form the topic of the next section.

4 What Does Computational Frugality Really Require?

I have claimed that the first two premises in the Fodorian argument sketched in sec-
tion 3.3 are acceptable. So we should believe that cognition must be organized into
systems of computational processes that are appropriately frugal. The question is whether
frugality requires encapsulation, in the way that is stated by the third premise of the
argument. The idea has an obvious appeal. It is certainly true that one way to ensure
the frugality of a set of computational systems, at least, would be to organize them
into a network of encapsulated processors, each of which can look only at a limited
database of information in executing its tasks. And it may well be the case that
evolution has settled on this strategy in connection with many of the systems that
constitute the human mind. It is doubtful, however, whether this is the only way of
ensuring frugality.
The assumption of encapsulation (at least, as it is normally understood – see below)
may derive from an older tradition in cognitive science and Artificial Intelligence
(AI), in which information search had to be exhaustive, and in which algorithms were
designed to be optimally reliable. But this tradition is now widely rejected. Most
cognitive scientists now think that the processing rules deployed in the human mind
have been designed to be good enough, not to be optimal. Given that speed of pro-
cessing is always one constraint for organisms that may need to think and act swiftly
in order to survive, evolution will have led to compromises on the question of reli-
ability. Indeed, it will favor a satisficing strategy, rather than an optimal one. And
likewise on information search: evolution will favor a variety of search heuristics
that are good enough without being exhaustive.
These points are well illustrated by the research program pursued in recent years
by Gigerenzer and colleagues (e.g. Gigerenzer et al., 2000). They have investigated
the comparative reliability and frugality of a variety of rules for use in information
search and decision making, with startling results. It turns out that even very simple
heuristics can be remarkably successful – such as choosing the only one of two options
that you recognize, when asked which of two cities is larger, or when asked to
predict which of two companies will do best in the stock market. In some cases
these simple heuristics will even out-perform much fancier and information-hungry
algorithms, such as multiple regression. And a variety of simple heuristics for search-
ing for information within a wider database, combined with stopping-rules if the search

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is unsuccessful within a specified time-frame, can also work remarkably well – such
as accessing the information in the order in which it was last used, or accessing the
information that is partially activated (and hence made salient) by the context.10
For a different sort of example, consider the simple practical reasoning system sketched
in Carruthers (2002a). It takes as initial input whatever is currently the strongest desire,
for P.11 It then queries the various belief-generating modules, while also conducting
a targeted search of long-term memory, looking for beliefs of the form Q ⊃ P. If it
receives one as input, or if it finds one from its own search of memory, it consults
a database of action schemata, to see if Q is something doable here and now. If it
is, it goes ahead and does it. If it isn’t, it initiates a further search for beliefs of the
form R ⊃ Q, and so on. If it has gone more than n conditionals deep without suc-
cess, or if it has searched for the right sort of conditional belief without finding one
for more than some specified time t, then it stops and moves on to the next strongest
desire.
Such a system would be frugal, both in the information that it uses, and in the
complexity of its algorithms. But does it count as encapsulated? This isn’t encapsula-
tion as that notion would generally be understood, which requires there to be a
limited module-specific database that gets consulted by the computational process in
question. For here, on the contrary, the practical reasoning system can search within
the total set of the organism’s beliefs, using structure-sensitive search rules. But for
all that, there is a sense in which the system is encapsulated that is worth noticing.
Put as neutrally as possible, we can say that the idea of an encapsulated system
is the notion of a system whose internal operations can’t be affected by most or all
of the information held elsewhere in the mind. But there is a scope ambiguity here.12
We can have the modal operator take narrow scope with respect to the quantifier, or
we can have it take wide scope. In its narrow-scope form, an encapsulated system
would be this: concerning most of the information held in the mind, the system
in question can’t be affected by that information in the course of its processing.
Call this “narrow-scope encapsulation.” In its wide-scope form, on the other hand, an
encapsulated system would be this: the system is such that it can’t be affected by
most of the information held in the mind in the course of its processing. Call this
“wide-scope encapsulation.”
Narrow-scope encapsulation is the one that is taken for granted in the philo-
sophical literature on modularity. We tend to think of encapsulation as requiring
some determinate (and large) body of information, such that that information can’t
penetrate the module. However, it can be true that the operations of a module can’t
be affected by most of the information in a mind, without there being some deter-
minate subdivision between the information that can affect the system and the
information that can’t. For as we have just seen, it can be the case that the system’s
algorithms are so set up that only a limited amount of information is ever consulted
before the task is completed or aborted. Put it this way: a module can be a system
that must only consider a small subset of the information available. Whether it does
this via encapsulation as traditionally understood (the narrow-scope variety), or via
frugal search heuristics and stopping rules (wide-scope encapsulation), is inessential.
The important thing is that the system should be frugal, both in the information that
it uses and in the resources that it requires for processing that information.

16 Peter Carruthers
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The argument from computational tractability, then, does warrant the claim that
the mind should be constructed entirely out of systems that are frugal; but it doesn’t
warrant a claim of encapsulation, as traditionally understood (the narrow-scope
variety). It does, however, warrant a non-standard encapsulation claim (the wide-
scope version). In addition, it supports the claim that the processing systems in ques-
tion should have internal operations that are inaccessible elsewhere. Or so I shall
now briefly argue by reductio, and by induction across current practices in AI.
Consider what it would be like if the internal operations of each system were access-
ible to all other systems. (This would be complete accessibility. Of course the notions
of accessibility and inaccessibility, just like the notions of encapsulation and lack of
encapsulation, admit of degrees.) In order to make use of that information, those other
systems would need to contain a model of those operations, or they would need to
be capable of simulating or replicating them. In order to use the information that a
given processing system is currently undertaking such-and-such computations, the
other systems would need to contain a representation of the algorithms in question.
This would defeat the purpose of dividing up processing into distinct subsystems
running different algorithms for different purposes, and would likely result in some
sort of combinatorial explosion. At the very least, we should expect that most of those
processing systems should have internal operations that are inaccessible to all others;
and that all of the processing systems that make up the mind should have internal
operations that are inaccessible to most others.13
Such a conclusion is also supported inductively by current practices in AI, where
researchers routinely assume that processing needs to be divided up amongst distinct
systems running algorithms specialized for the particular tasks in question. These sys-
tems can talk to one another and query one another, but not access one another’s
internal operations. And yet they may be conducting guided searches over the same
memory database. (Personal communication: Mike Anderson, John Horty, Aaron
Sloman.) That researchers attempting to build working cognitive systems have con-
verged on some such architecture is evidence of its inevitability, and hence evidence
that the human mind will be similarly organized.
This last point is worth emphasizing further, since it suggests a distinct line of
argument supporting the thesis of massive modularity in the sense that we are cur-
rently considering. Researchers charged with trying to build intelligent systems have
increasingly converged on architectures in which the processing within the total sys-
tem is divided up amongst a much wider set of task-specific processing mechanisms,
which can query one another, and provide input to each other, and many of which
can access shared databases. But many of these systems will deploy processing algo-
rithms that aren’t shared by the others. And most of them won’t know or care about
what is going on within the others.
Indeed, the convergence here is actually wider still, embracing computer science
more generally and not just AI. Although the language of modularity isn’t so often
used by computer scientists, the same concept arguably gets deployed under the
heading of “object-oriented programs.” Many programming languages now enable a
total processing system to treat some of its parts as “objects” which can be queried
or informed, but where the processing that takes place within those objects isn’t
accessible elsewhere. This enables the code within the “objects” to be altered without

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having to make alterations in code elsewhere, with all the attendant risks that this
would bring. And the resulting architecture is regarded as well nigh inevitable once
a certain threshold in the overall degree of complexity of the system gets passed.
(Note the parallel here with Simon’s argument from complexity, discussed in sec-
tion 3.1 above.)

5 Conclusion

What emerges, then, is that there is a strong case for saying that the mind is very
likely to consist of a great many different processing systems, which exist and oper-
ate to some degree independently of one another. Each of these systems will have a
distinctive function or set of functions; each will have a distinct neural realization;
and many will be significantly innate, or genetically channeled. Many of them will
deploy processing algorithms that are unique to them. And all of these systems will
need to be frugal in their operations, hence being encapsulated in either the narrow-
scope or the wide-scope sense. Moreover, the processing that takes place within each
of these systems will generally be inaccessible elsewhere.14 Only the results, or out-
puts, of that processing will be made available for use by other systems.
Does such a thesis deserve the title of “massive modularity”? It is certainly a form
of massive modularity in the everyday sense that we distinguished at the outset. And
it retains many of the important features of Fodor-modularity. Moreover, it does seem
that this is the notion of “module” that is used pretty commonly in AI, if not so
much in philosophy or psychology (McDermott, 2001). But however it is described,
we have here a substantive and controversial claim about the basic architecture of
the human mind; and it is one that is supported by powerful arguments.
In any complete defense of massively modular models of mind, so conceived, we
would of course have to consider all the various arguments against such models,
particularly those deriving from the holistic and creative character of much of
human thinking. This is a task that I cannot undertake here, but that I have attempted
elsewhere (Carruthers, 2002a,b; 2003; 2004a). If those attempted rebuttals should
prove to be successful, then we can conclude that the human mind will, indeed, be
massively modular (in one good sense of the term “module”).

Acknowledgments
Thanks to Mike Anderson, Clark Barrett, John Horty, Edouard Machery, Richard Samuels, Aaron
Sloman, Robert Stainton, Stephen Stich, and Peter Todd for discussion and/or critical com-
ments that helped me to get clearer about the topics covered by this chapter. Stich and Samuels,
in particular, induced at least one substantial change of mind from my previously published
views, in which I had defended the idea that modules must be encapsulated (as traditionally
understood). See Carruthers, 2002a, 2003.

18 Peter Carruthers
CDIC01 11/25/05 2:37 PM Page 19

Notes
1 For the negative case, defending such models against the attacks of opponents, see Carruthers,
2002a, 2002b, 2003, 2004a.
2 Evolutionary psychologists may well understand domain specificity differently. They tend
to understand the domain of a module to be its function. The domain of a module is
what it is supposed to do, on this account, rather than the class of contents that it can
receive as input. I shall follow the more common content reading of “domain” in the
present chapter. See Carruthers (forthcoming) for further discussion.
3 This is no accident, since Fodor’s analysis was explicitly designed to apply to modular
input and output systems like color perception or face recognition. Fodor has consistently
maintained that there is nothing modular about central cognitive processes of believing
and reasoning. See Fodor 1983, 2000.
4 Is this way of proceeding question-begging? Can one insist, on the contrary, that since
modules are domain-specific systems, we can therefore see at a glance that the mind can’t
be massively modular in its organization? This would be fine if there were already a pre-
existing agreed understanding of what modules are supposed to be. But there isn’t. As
stressed above, there are a range of different meanings of “module” available. So prin-
ciples of charity of interpretation dictate that we should select the meaning that makes
the best sense of the claims of massive modularists.
5 Note that we aren’t asking how one could learn from experience of beliefs, desires and
the other mental states. Rather, we are asking how the differences between these states
themselves could be learned. The point concerns our acquisition of the mind itself, not
the acquisition of a theory of mind.
6 As evidence of the latter point, witness the success of our species as a whole, which has
burgeoned in numbers and spread across the whole planet in the course of a mere 100,000
years.
7 We should expect many cognitive systems to have a set of functions, rather than a unique
function, since multi-functionality is rife in the biological world. Once a component has
been selected, it can be co-opted, and partly maintained and shaped, in the service of
other tasks.
8 Human software engineers and artificial intelligence researchers have hit upon the same
problem, and the same solution, which sometimes goes under the name “object-oriented
programming.” In order that one part of a program can be improved and updated with-
out any danger of introducing errors elsewhere, engineers now routinely modularize their
programs. See the discussion towards the end of section 4.
9 Fodor himself doesn’t argue for massive modularity, of course. Rather, since he claims
that we know that central processes of belief fixation and decision making can’t be
modular, he transforms what would otherwise be an argument for massive modularity
into an argument for pessimism about the prospects for computational psychology.
See Carruthers 2002a, 2002b, 2003, 2004a for arguments that the knowledge-claim under-
lying such pessimism isn’t warranted.
10 See Carruthers (forthcoming) for an extended discussion of the relationship between the
massive modularity hypothesis and the simple heuristics movement, and for elaboration
and defense of a number of the points made in the present section.
11 Note that competition for resources is another of the heuristics that may be widely used
within our cognitive systems; see Sperber 2005. In the present instance one might think of
all activated desires as competing with one another for entry into the practical reason-
ing system.

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12 Modal terms like “can” and “can’t” have wide scope if they govern the whole sentence
in which they occur; they have narrow scope if they govern only a part. Compare:
“I can’t kill everyone” (wide scope; equivalent to, “It is impossible that I kill everyone”)
with, “Everyone is such that I can’t kill them” (narrow scope). The latter is equivalent to,
“I can’t kill anyone.”
13 One important exception to this generalization is as follows. We should expect that many
modules will be composed out of other modules as parts. Some of these component parts
may feed their outputs directly to other systems. (Hence such components might be shared
between two or more larger modules.) Or it might be the case that they can be queried
independently by other systems. These would then be instances where some of the
intermediate stages in the processing of the larger module would be available elsewhere,
without the intermediate processing itself being so available.
14 As we already noted above, the notions of “encapsulation” and “inaccessibility” admit of
degrees. The processing within a given system may be more or less encapsulated from
and inaccessible to other systems.

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