non-commutativity in the brain

[Dace]

-----Original Message-----
From: Yoshie Furuhashi
>
>Evolutionary psychologists like Steven Pinker are committed to the idea of
>"modularity."  They argue that:
>
>*****   Human behavior and mental operations can be divided into a
>relatively discrete set of items, or mental organs. (In one prominent
>study, for example, authors designate a "cheater detector" as a mental
>organ, since the ability to discern infidelity and other forms of
>prevarication can be so vital to Darwinian success-the adaptationist
>rationale.) The argument for modularity flows, in part, from exciting work
>in neurobiology and cognitive science on localization of function within
>the brain-as shown, for example, in the precise mapping, to different areas
>of the cerebral cortex, of mental operations formerly regarded as only
>arbitrarily divisible by social convention (production of vowels and
>consonants, for example, or the naming of animals and tools).
>
It seems self-evident that we have a general "program" of intelligence, a
singular mode of problem-solving which we apply to every kind of situation
we come across.  Modularity characterizes mammals and higher primates, and
it's important in understanding pre-human evolution.  But whatever modules
we had in the past have long since been integrated under abstract,
linguistic intelligence.  While there are certainly differences between
higher math and gardening, for instance, it's still the same basic mix of
intuition and logic.

Ted