The Massive Modularity Theory - Essay Example

The Massive Modularity Theory Introduction The human mind is powerful, able to process and perceive many things all at once. Its functions also include reasoning, imagining, memorizing, reacting, concentrating, and even the capacity for communicating. A lot of theories and explanations have been done in order to properly decode and understand how the human mind works, but are researchers close enough to discovering its wonders or are the known facts at present is just the tip of the iceberg? Evolutionary psychology examines psychological traits such as perception, memory, and language from a modern evolutionary thought. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations which pertain to products of natural or sexual selection. The main concept of evolutionary psychology is that the human mind consists of information-processing mechanisms which have evolved through natural selection. These mechanisms are called adaptations that are functionally specialized to deal with problems in certain circumstances and environments, and therefore it must have specific and richly structured contents.1 This type of psychology has also been proposed as a metatheory not just of psychology but also of the fields in social sciences. Evolutionary psychology has also been said to be a predominant theory that has principles which are functional to all of the disciplines of social science. There have been studies that propose evolutionary psychology as the uniting elements present in different fields. The evolutionary psychology’s metatheory is consisted of chain of command in the level of analysis.2 What programs the human mind? Why do thoughts and ideas differ from one individual to another? Is there a specific portion of the mind allocated for a particular action? The Massive Modularity Theory presents the argument that biological systems are designed and constructed in a way that a person would need to have massively modular organization of the mind. In addition to this, it was also said that the human mind is a biological system and is complex so the human mind must be massively modular in its organization.3 This theory is further studied in this paper. Evolutionary Psychology In the past, the branches of social sciences and biology have different opinions towards the subject of how the mind works. With evolutionary psychology in place, connecting biological and social science ideas and theories is now possible by providing conceptual analyses of specific questions: analyses that move step by step and integrating evolutionary biology with psychology, and psychology with social and cultural phenomena.4 Evolutionary psychology is a method of psychology that studies the inherited architecture of the human mind as a product of the evolutionary process. It is a conceptually integrated approach in which the theories of “natural selection” are used to produce hypotheses about the design features of the human mind.5 There are 3 levels of explanation in evolutionary psychology. In between levels, extrapolations can be made in between each level. These manipulations are made in order to get the appropriate results for various types of populations. The 3 levels are noted to be 1) adaptive problem, 2) cognitive program, and 3) neurophysiological basis. With these levels being laid down, the primary principle in the evolutionary psychology still remains to be the human brain being the corporal structure. In the modern times, the brain is being compared to the computer where there is a designated chip or program for various functions and one would not over manoeuvre other programs for it to malfunction.6 It has been believed by evolutionary psychologists that there is a certain connection between adaptive problems and evolving structured mechanisms in solving the evolutionary process. During the time of Charles Darwin, people believed that humans are social animals and they learn from experiences and behaviours. If humans have evolved physically in so many ways in order to survive and adapt to the changes in their environment, then probably their minds also evolved as well.7 Understanding the Massive Modularity Theory As previously discussed, the behavioural and social sciences are different branches of studies however with what is known to be the conceptual integration; these branches coexist to explain certain phenomena. Conceptual integration refers to the principle wherein different disciplines within the behavioural and social sciences became mutually consistent with what is known as the natural sciences. A conceptually integrated theory is a concept that is compatible with data and notions from other relevant fields.8 Past evolutionary psychologists who established the Massive Modularity theory stated that the mind is a collection of distinct elements that were designed to explain specific adaptive problems like mate-recognition or the administration of female sexual loyalty. Evolutionary psychologists said that the theories of evolution would favour the presence of multiple sections in the brain over domain general cognitive mechanisms because each segment can be used for a specific adaptive problem.9 It was believed that certain modules present in the human mind accounts for the behaviours that we demonstrate, which usually is adapted. Moreover, these different modules would be assigned for developing behaviours for each problem that the human mind faces over periods of time. Are all the areas of the brain modular in nature or is there a non-modular part in it? Jerry Fodor was the first to person to mount a sustained evolutionary defence of modularity as a theory of cognitive architecture. Fodor argued that the integrated ideas by the systems of the human brain are modular like the components of visual and speech detection system. All the parts of the mind are considered as independent information processors in which the architecture of one part is inaccessible to the other areas. The modular detection systems feed output to a central system which Fodor described as non-modular.10 There are many examples of evolutionary arguments that explain the modularity of the human mind. These include the cheat detection module and the waist/hip ratio detection module which were believed to be one of the “modules” of the mind. With regards to the waist/hip ratio detection, this is one of the modules that underlie mate selection in humans. This illustrates how males detect differences in waist/hip ratio in females. It was perceived that the detection and preference suite are adaptations for choosing fertile mates. Thus, mate selection behaviour is explained partly through the underlying psychological mechanism via the waist/hip ratio preference module as selected, especially in earlier human environments.11 Downes explained the source of cognitive architecture via the published theory paper on Massive Modularity. The massively modular architecture is said to be the result of natural selection that is acting to produce the different modules. This architecture is composed of devices that are distinctive and are believed to be adaptations that account for human’s sophisticated behaviour that makes man different from other animals. Humans successfully navigated the world around them and as a result from their actions are one or more of the modules that has been presented. These modules act together to produce certain behaviours adaptive to the changes that happen. This explanation states that the human mind is able to successfully evolve and adapt to continuous changes in the world using certain modules that will correspond to a particular adaptive behaviour which is learned overtime through rules of natural selection. Several versions of this theory have been established from the time it was published.12 An example of a mental module is the Language Acquisition Device. This is believed to be the mechanism that allows infants to develop and learn languages in a way that were deemed to be not possible by just using any general purpose learning rules. An additional concept was developed to further explain the human mind through the modularity theory. One of these concepts would is the presence of the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness (EEA). This a concept added to the massive modularity theory in order to enhance its evolutionary argument. This is a statistical composite of the adaptation-relevant properties of the ancestral environments encountered by members of the ancestral populations, weighted by their frequency and their fitness-consequences.13 The present concept of the EEA was introduced in the studies presented by John Bowlby on attachment and loss in human infants and children. Bowlby defined EEA as the environment in which a certain specie lived while its existing characteristics, such as behavioural systems were evolved, and the only environment in which there can be an assurance that activation of a system will be likely to result in the achievement of its biological function.14 This therefore refers to the environment in which a particular mechanism or skill is adapted. Furthermore, the EEA is defined to be the set of selection pressures that formed a given adaptation as well as aspects of the environment that were needed for the development and functioning of the adaptations which are found in the different modules of the mind. An assumption of the EEA was believed to be one of the evolutionary arguments of massive modularity theory was that the evolved structure of the human mind wherein the early humans hunter-gatherers is adapted to the way of life during the Pleistocene era and not necessarily to the modern environment. Moreover, it was further explained that the hominids with advanced tool technologies have existed for more than a million years due to an adaptation tuned in on one of the mind modules for hunting and gathering. For the majority of this period, humans lived in small nomadic groups without domesticated plants or animals. This hunting and gathering way of life is the only persistent adaptation that humans have ever achieved since the invention of agriculture approximately 10,000 years ago according to the massive modular theory. Humans therefore are said to be genetically adapted to a hunting and gathering way of life developed in one of the modules of the mind as time passes since the Pleistocene era.15 However, it was not considered that evolution also happened during this era. Different lines of hominids surfaced during the Pleistocene Era and the way these hominids lived also showed adaptation changes exemplified in the differences on their ways of hunting and gathering. A group of psychologists headed by Leda Cosmides further contested in their research that the hominid ancestors needed to solve a larger number of complex adaptive problems. This has been done so with efficiency by combining data from palaeontology and hunter-gathering studies along with the principles drawn from evolutionary biology. One can develop an analysis that can define the nature of adaptive information-processing problem to be solved.16 Critics have assessed that the evolutionary psychology cannot be tested because the hypotheses about the EEA cannot be tested and that the evolutionary psychology is adaptationist to a specific fault. It has also been contested that the commitment to the existence of a human nature is inconsistent with regards to evolutionary theory. Apart from the EEA, researchers have also discovered the existence of the Adaptively Relevant Environment (ARE). The concept for ARE have evolved from adaptations which consists of those environmental features that the population must interact within an order to confer a reproductive advantage. This is another type of so-called environment explains the presence the modular theory of the mind. As a rule, an adaptation needs to interact with few elements out of an organism’s environment in order to have an advantage from other humans. Adaptations interact with different features of the environment. Therefore environmental novelties have distinct effects which disrupt a number of adaptations in the mind but not all of it. When long term changes occur in the environment of a population and the population will survive in the new environment. These adaptations having changed the way of living therefore undergo evolution and these are placed in specific modules of the mind.17 Although many critics discard the idea of this theory, some of these critics do allow for the possibility of some modularity of mind. Critics of evolutionary psychology do not reject the possibility of any kind of modularity, but they do reject the massive modularity thesis. There is considerable debate about the status of the massive modularity thesis and some of this debate centres on the characterization of modules.18 Alternative Theories More recent theories and researches have been made in order to follow the studies of evolutionary psychology. In all its complexities, could it be true that these modules really exist in the human mind? With a number of human behaviours, can all these modules be accounted for? Many arguments were raised in the past against the Massive Modular Theory due to certain inconsistencies. Even though it was believed that the mind of early hominids stopped growing at some stage of modularity, the modern human development however extends beyond the phase of modularization in which the mind works in separate cognitive domains to a stage labelled as beyond modularity. In addition to this, the redefinition of the knowledge found in one modular cognitive mechanism allows the application of existing skills to new.19 This is used to explain how the human mind was able to produce and perform new skills in addition to those that were already present. Humans have no pre-existing modules for new skills instead it is being added to the skills already present. Alternative studies have been done to further explain how different behaviours work and where the tweaking is situated. This includes recent work on sexual selection and sexual differences. Most researchers who have embraced the evolutionary psychology studies have taken current concepts from theoretical biology and studies of other animals; have applied these concepts without essential modification to the study of humans. Many psychologists have researched sexual differences in polygamous inclinations, sexual jealousy, intrasexual competition, and mate choosing criteria in order to explain the mechanisms of the human mind.20 Some of these mate selection behaviours were explained in the Massive Modular Theory. Other preoccupations of evolutionary psychologists at present is to further elaborate the modularity of the mind which includes sexual selections more specifically in exploring nonhuman sexual selection research and applying it to human cases which tackles explorations of sex differences in information processing in relation to sexually selective behaviour. This is with reference to the problem of assessing whether female’s choice of mate psychologically exhibits adaptation for gaining ‘good genes’ benefits and other independent material benefits.21 Conclusion How the human mind works remained a question until now. Both the past evolutionary psychologists up to the present ones have tried to understand the mysteries of how the human mind works. How close are these psychologists in discovering the powers of the mind? The Massive Modularity theory sought to understand how the human mind evolved by stating that different modules allocated for different adaptive mechanisms that man acquires through time are considered to be the principles of evolution and natural selection. Can the presence of these modules ever be proven or are there other explanations for this? Will the workings of the human mind remain a mystery? There is still a lot of discovering to do for present evolutionary psychologists and their work is cut out for them. Many avenues of research are still coming out and new theories are being formed and as time progresses and new technologies are produced, researchers may just come close to unravelling the secrets of the human mind. Bibliography Ayala, Francisco J. 2007. Human Evolution: The Three Grand Challenges of Human Biology. The Cambridge Companion to the Philosophy of Biology. Chapter 12. Cambridge University Press. Barkow, Jerome, Leda Cosmides, & John Tooby, eds. 1992. Introduction: Evolutionary Psychology and Conceptual Integration. New York: Oxford University Press. Barkow, Jerome, Leda Cosmides, & John Tooby, eds. 1992. The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Buller, David J. 2005. Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature. The MIT Press. Buller, David J. 2007. Varieties of Evolutionary Psychology. The Cambridge Companion to the Philosophy of Biology. Chapter 12. Cambridge University Press. Buss, David M.1995. Evolutionary Psychology: A New Paradigm for Psychological Science. Psychological Inquiry, 6(1), 1-30. Cosmides, Leda and John Tooby. 1997. Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer. University of California Santa Barbara. http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html (accessed December 24, 2011). Daly, Martin. and Margo I. Wilson. 1999. Human Evolutionary Psychology and Animal Behaviour. Animal Behavior, 57, 509–519. Downes, Stephen M. 2008. Evolutionary Psychology. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evolutionary-psychology/ (accessed December 24, 2011). Griffiths, Paul E. 2000. Ethology, Sociobiology, and Evolutionary Psychology. Blackwell's Companion to Philosophy of Biology. Griffiths, Paul and Kim Sterelny. 1999. Sex and Death: An Introduction to Philosophy of Biology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Griffiths, P. and Karola Stoltz. 2000. How the Mind Grows: A Developmental Perspective On The Biology of Condition, Synthese 122, 29–51. Irons, William. 1998. Adaptively Relevant Environments versus the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness. Evolutionary Anthropology 6(6), 194-204. Ploeger, Annemie. 2010. Evolutionary Psychology as Metatheory for the Social Sciences. Integral Review, 6 (3), pp. 164-174. Read More