Not Another Essay on Modularity of Mind: On the Possibility of Modular Central Systems

According to the massive modularity thesis, the so-called central cognitive capacities such as reasoning and belief formation, which are typically thought of as paradigmatic examples of unencapsulated and nonmodular cognition, are held to be subserved by a number of functionally distinct modules. But there is little consensus on what modularity amounts to. In this paper I raise the issue of whether modules are informationally encapsulated with an aim to show that central systems modularity ceases to be meaningful or interesting if modules aren’t conceived to be so