Re: RT list: question to D Wilson

Dear Alessandro,

Thanks for your question - and to Billy, Chris and Stavros for the
interesting replies. I'm just about to leave for a conference, so please
everyone join in and I'll reply as soon as I get back.

All the best,
Deirdre

At 01:24 03/06/2009, Stavros Assimakopoulos wrote:
>Dear Alessandro,
>
>I am pretty sure that my knowledge of modularity issues is far too
>limited to respond to your specific question, but as far as I
>understand the massive modularity thesis, I see a paradox with what
>you are saying.
>
>My understanding of the thesis (which has been 'officially' taken up
>in RT since Sperber & Wilson 2002), is that if you have a massively
>modular mind you do not need to have central inferential systems (at
>least for the purpose of comprehending ostensive stimuli). Now,
>regarding the comments you received with respect to the issue of
>innateness, I again believe that the official RT line is that this
>ostension-driven submodule of our mindreading ability is an
>adaptation, a mental structure with which we are genetically endowed
>and which adopts an all the more efficient strategy for interpretation
>at specific points during our cognitive development (Sperber 2000 and
>the Wilson paper you refer to) - and if it were not genetically
>prespecified these stages of sophistication would vary from individual
>to individual. This, to my mind, means that we do not have any
>developmental stage at which central inferential processing is taken
>over by modular inferential processing, but rather that the module
>exists right from the beginning and its operation gets refined/ more
>sophisticated with time. The whole point of having a massively modular
>mind, at least to me, is that in this way we manage to overcome the
>otherwise slow e' (along with the mysticism that surrounds any attempt
>to spell out the exact workings of central inferential processes that
>operate across several domains - a point that Fodor himself underlined
>ever since 1983)... In this sense, e' is redundant if you have e'',
>otherwise what's the point of having two mental structures doing the
>same thing?
>
>So, and this is only mere stipulation on my behalf, when it comes to a
>module for written symbols, the answer I assume you would get would be
>that there is a dedicated module for this purpose, since modules in
>the Sperberian sense come in all sizes and formats, even the size of a
>single concept. This, however, does not mean that there is no
>intricate organisation of submodules that belong to a more general
>module that operates over writing and reading or whatever have you.
>Neither does it mean that there are no mental structures (call them
>modules in Carruthers' sense) whose domain of operation is to link
>symbols together and feed them to the comprehension processor... Maybe
>then, your friends condition might not mean that she has some
>cognitive deficiency with processing inference as such, but that her
>damage has caused her to not recognise written language (which perhaps
>is a whole other domain on its own). This might help explain why her
>communicative competence in spoken language has not been otherwise
>compromised.
>
>Again, these are only semi-educated guesses over a whole lot of
>literature that I am not sufficiently aware of. I only hope they bring
>about some stimulating discussion that will also help me clarify
>things a bit better.
>
>Best,
>Stavros
>
>
>Quoting Alessandro Capone <alessandro.capone@istruzione.it>:
>
>>I have been reading
>>
>>New directions for research on pragmatics and modularity.
>>
>>
>>A propos of dedicated modules, a friend of mine has had a stroke and
>>received damage in the brain:
>>
>>as a result (among other things), she can no longer read or write written
>>texts - yet we can speak fluently and understand as any other normal human
>>being (with the difference that she gets tired ).
>>
>>
>>So, should we deduce there is a module or submodule for written symbols?
>>
>>
>>Now a question to D Wilson:
>>
>>suppose that interrpetation e of utterance U in context C can be obtained
>>through two different strategies:
>>
>>Inference through central systems: we call e'
>>
>>Inference through a dedicated inferential module : we call e''
>>
>>
>>In order to avoid having two different processes for the same inference,
>>we need to say that e' is slower than e'' and that once e'' is ready, the
>>mechanims resulting in e' is blocked.
>>
>>Presumably cognitive effort is involved in this.
>>
>>But can we exclude cases when the two processes converge and one process
>>checks what the other has done?
>>
>>
>>Also we need to specify when the central system processes prevail - that
>>is when conscious inferential mechanisms are activated.
>>
>>alessandro
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>
>--
>Stavros Assimakopoulos
>Visiting researcher, University of Edinburgh
>http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~stavros
>
>--
>The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
>Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
>
>
>
>

-----------------------------
Deirdre Wilson

UCL Linguistics
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-----------------------------
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Received on Wed Jun 3 06:46:28 2009