The Phenomenology of Fodor or the Modularity of Merleau-Ponty :: Psychology Psychological Papers

The Phenomenology of Fodor or the Modularity of Merleau-PontyABSTRACT In 1983, Fodors Modularity of Mind popularized cogency psychology. His possible action employs a trichotomous functional architecture to explain cognitive processes, which is very similar to Merleau-Pontys phenomenology of perception. Each theory postulates that perception is a mid-level procedure that operates on transduced learning and that perception is freelance of our cognitive experience. The deuce theories differ on whether perception is informationally impenetrable. This difference is fundamentally an empirical matter. However, I suggest that Merleau-Pontys allowance of cross-modal colloquy within perception explains our ability to identify features in noisy backgrounds meliorate because his theory offers a more definitive ontology that matches human substantive behavior. Likewise, certainty within cognitive science suggests that Merleau-Pontys phenomenology is a more hi-fi depiction of human cogni tive processes. Introduction (1)Fodors modularity thesis popularized faculty approaches to cognitive psychology. This theory bears a striking resemblance to the phenomenological theory that Merleau-Ponty proposed two decades earlier. Both theories employ a trichotomous functional architecture to explain apprehension and view perception as a mid-level processing of information that lies in the midst of the world and intellect. The key feature that differentiates the views is whether that middle level of processing is completely impenetrable by consciousness. If Fodor was to relax his strong position of the impenetrability of information in modules, modules could both be somewhat encapsulated and maintain a common independence from consciousness. Then only the degree of perceptions independance from consciousness would distinguish his theory from Merleau-Pontys. Currently, both theories can account for the substantive, outward, behavior of humans. lone(prenominal) the procedural behavior, the internal process, differentiates the theories. The conundrum of deciding between the theories is resolvable by an empirical critical experiment. While this will require more companionship of cognitive psychology, current evidence suggests that Merleau-Ponty was correct and the mind is less encapsulated than Fodors archetype claim.The Two Theories and Their Resemblance Merleau-Ponty distinguishes three aspects of the psychological process basic sensations, perception, and the associations of holding (Merleau-Ponty, 1994). Basic sensations receive raw information from the world and transduce them for our perceptual processes. Perception unifies the infinite amount of information about our environment, from our environment, into a substantive structure. Perception is interpretive, but its presentation of the world is as distal and objective. there are three central features of perception for Merleau-Ponty. First, perception is synthesized independently by the body a nd not by the mind (consciousness).