dedicated science module, which operates non-consciously in ordinary
individuals to generate at least some of the sorts of inferences which are
conducted consciously and collectively by professional scientists.
5.3 Folk versus modular psychologyWe have been urging the merits of modularism, not just in respect of
input (and output) systems, but also in respect of central – conceptual –
systems. Our view is that there are probably a good many modules of the
latter sort, which take conceptual inputs and generate conceptualised
outputs – including modules for mind-reading, for cheater-detection, for
naive physics, naive biology, and others. But to what extent is modular-
ism consistent with folk psychology? What becomes, in particular, of folk
psychology’s commitment to realistic construals of belief, desire, and
various forms of reasoning (including practical reasoning), which we
defended at length in chapter 2? Does central-process modularism entail
eliminativismabout the most important posits of folk psychology, in fact?
We believe that there need be no inconsistency here. One way to see this
is to recall a point noted in chapter 2 (section 3.3), while discussing the
causal nature of memory. We remarked that no particular problem is
posed for folk psychology by the fact that scientiWc psychology posits (at
least) three distinct kinds of memory – semantic memory, procedural
memory, and episodic memory. For although folk psychology may not,
itself, draw these distinctions, it is not inconsistent with them either – this is
becausefailure to drawa distinction is not at all the same thing asdenying
that there isa distinction. Something similar may well be true in connection
with such central-process posits asbelief,desire, andpractical reasoning.
That is, it might be perfectly consistent with folk psychology that each
of these should in fact subdivide into a number of distinct (modular)
sub-systems. We shall consider one such possibility towards the end of
chapter 5.
Another proposal for rendering central-process modularism consistent
withfolk psychology,would be to position the conceptual modulesbetween
the input (perceptual) modules, on the one hand, and systems of belief and
desire on the other, as depicted inWgure 3.3. In this diagram belief, desire,
and practical reasoning remain untouched as folk-psychological posits on
the right; and the various perceptual systems have been grouped together
for simplicity into a single percept-box on the left (and included amongst
these should be the natural-language comprehension-system, which counts
as a distinct input module for these purposes). In between these are the
various conceptual modules, some of which generate beliefs from the
Input systems versus central systems 73