what is the modularity hypothesis

The modularity theorem (formerly called the Taniyama–Shimura conjecture, Taniyama-Weil conjecture or modularity conjecture for elliptic curves) states that elliptic curves over the field of rational numbers are related to modular forms.

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What is the modest modularity hypothesis?

The positive part of the modest modularity hypothesis is that input systems are modular. By ‘input system’ Fodor (1983) means a computational mechanism that “presents the world to thought” (p. 40) by processing the outputs of sensory transducers.

What is modularity According to Fodor?

In original order of presentation, they are: A cognitive system counts as modular in Fodor’s sense if it is modular “to some interesting extent,” meaning that it has most of these features to an appreciable degree (Fodor, 1983, p. 37). This is a weighted most, since some marks of modularity are more important than others.

What is the modularity theorem?

Modularity theorem. The modularity theorem is a special case of more general conjectures due to Robert Langlands. The Langlands program seeks to attach an automorphic form or automorphic representation (a suitable generalization of a modular form) to more general objects of arithmetic algebraic geometry, such as to every elliptic curve...

What is the difference between the strong and weak modularity hypothesis?

This is the gist of strong version of modularity hypothesis, which is a direct hypothesis on mind and comprehension. The weak version is concerned with the descriptive aspects of discourse organization.

What is the massive modularity hypothesis?

The massive modularity hypothesis proposes to eliminate isotropic processing from cognition, spawning modern discussions about how modules should be defined, and about what kinds of processing are modular or not (Barrett & Kurzban, 2006; Bennett, 1990; Fodor, 2000; Samuels, 1998).

What is modularity in cognitive psychology?

n. a theory of the human mind in which the various components of cognition are characterized as independent modules, each with its own specific domain and particular properties.

What is Fodor's modularity theory and how can it be applied?

Fodor argues that certain psychological processes are self contained--or modular. This is in contrast to "New look" or Modern Cognitivist positions which hold that nearly all psychological processes are interconnected, and freely exchange information. Fodor proposes a three tiered cognitive system.

What is the meaning of modularity?

Meaning of modularity in English the quality of consisting of separate parts that, when combined, form a complete whole: A system lacks modularity when a tweak to one of its components affects the functioning of others.

What is modularity example?

Modules can be removed, replaced, or upgraded without affecting other components. For example, most desktop computers are modular because they have easily removable and upgradeable parts. However, laptops are less modular because most of their components are not easy to access, remove, replace, or upgrade.

What is modularity and why is it important?

The concept of modularity is used primarily to reduce complexity by breaking a system into varying degrees of interdependence and independence across and "hide the complexity of each part behind an abstraction and interface".

What is the characteristics of modularity?

The basic principle of Modularity is that “Systems should be built from cohesive, loosely coupled components (modules)” which means s system should be made up of different components that are united and work together in an efficient way and such components have a well-defined function.

What does the modularity hypothesis say about cortical organization?

The massive modularity hypothesis proposes that the human mind consists of many innate, domain-specific modules. These modules have putatively evolved due to natural selection and are functionally distinct.

What is modularity in perception?

A cognitive or perceptual process is said to be modular to the extent that it is an independent sub-process of the overall cognitive architecture.

What is another word for modularity?

In this page you can discover 3 synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, and related words for modularity, like: extensibility, reusability and modularization.

Which statement is correct about modularity?

Right Answer is: Modularity refers to dividing a program into subsequent small modules or independent parts.

How do you say modularity?

0:051:01How To Say Modularity - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipModular lavezzi lavezzi modular moi y lavezzi lavezzi.MoreModular lavezzi lavezzi modular moi y lavezzi lavezzi.

What is modularity of the brain and its function to language?

In today's terminology, 'modularity' refers to specialisation: language processing is specialised in the brain to the extent that it occurs partially in different areas than other types of information processing such as visual input.

What is the characteristics of modularity?

The basic principle of Modularity is that “Systems should be built from cohesive, loosely coupled components (modules)” which means s system should be made up of different components that are united and work together in an efficient way and such components have a well-defined function.

Which theory of intelligence emphasizes modularity?

Which theory of Intelligence emphasizes modularity? Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences is based on the assumption that human intelligence can be conceived of as eight different modules, each representing a particular type of intelligence. He therefore proposes that intelligence involves different modules.

What are modules in psychology?

n. 1. in cognitive theory, a hypothetical center of information processing that is presumed to be relatively independent and highly specialized in its operations, such as a language module or face-processing module.

What is the modest modularity hypothesis?

The positive part of the modest modularity hypothesis is that input systems are modular. By ‘input system’ Fodor (1983) means a computational mechanism that “presents the world to thought” (p. 40) by processing the outputs of sensory transducers. A sensory transducer is a device that converts the energy impinging on the body’s sensory surfaces, such as the retina and cochlea, into a computationally usable form, without adding or subtracting information. Roughly speaking, the product of sensory transduction is raw sensory data. Input processing involves non-demonstrative inferences from this raw data to hypotheses about the layout of objects in the world. These hypotheses are then passed on to central systems for the purpose of belief fixation, and those systems in turn pass their outputs to systems responsible for the production of behavior.

What is modularity in psychology?

The concept of modularity has loomed large in philosophy of psychology since the early 1980s, following the publication of Fodor’s landmark book The Modularity of Mind (1983). In the decades since the term ‘module’ and its cognates first entered the lexicon of cognitive science, the conceptual and theoretical landscape in this area has changed dramatically. Especially noteworthy in this respect has been the development of evolutionary psychology, whose proponents adopt a less stringent conception of modularity than the one advanced by Fodor, and who argue that the architecture of the mind is more pervasively modular than Fodor claimed. Where Fodor (1983, 2000) draws the line of modularity at the relatively low-level systems underlying perception and language, post-Fodorian theorists such as Sperber (2002) and Carruthers (2006) contend that the mind is modular through and through, up to and including the high-level systems responsible for reasoning, planning, decision making, and the like. The concept of modularity has also figured in recent debates in philosophy of science, epistemology, ethics, and philosophy of language—further evidence of its utility as a tool for theorizing about mental architecture.

What is Fodor's claim about modularity?

Fodor’s claim about the modularity of input systems has been disputed by a number of philosophers and psychologists (Churchland, 1988; Arbib, 1987; Marslen-Wilson & Tyler, 1987; McCauley & Henrich, 2006). The most wide-ranging philosophical critique is due to Prinz (2006), who argues that perceptual and linguistic systems rarely exhibit the features characteristic of modularity. In particular, he argues that such systems are not informationally encapsulated. To this end, Prinz adduces two types of evidence. First, there appear to be cross-modal effects in perception, which would tell against encapsulation at the level of input systems. The classic example of this, also from the speech perception literature, is the McGurk effect (McGurk & MacDonald, 1976). Here, subjects watching a video of one phoneme being spoken (e.g., /ga/) dubbed with a sound recording of a different phoneme (/ba/) hear a third, altogether different phoneme (/da/). Second, he points to what look to be top-down effects on visual and linguistic processing, the existence of which would tell against cognitive impenetrability, i.e., encapsulation relative to central systems. Some of the most striking examples of such effects come from research on speech perception. Probably the best-known is the phoneme restoration effect, as in the case where listeners ‘fill in’ a missing phoneme in a spoken sentence ( The state governors met with their respective legi*latures convening in the capital city) from which the missing phoneme (the /s/ sound in legislatures) has been deleted and replaced with the sound of a cough (Warren, 1970). By hypothesis, this filling-in is driven by listeners’ understanding of the linguistic context.

What does modularity mean in cognitive science?

A cognitive system counts as modular in Fodor’s sense if it is modular “to some interesting extent,” meaning that it has most of these features to an appreciable degree (Fodor, 1983, p. 37). This is a weighted most, since some marks of modularity are more important than others. Information encapsulation, for example, is more or less essential for modularity, as well as explanatorily prior to several of the other features on the list (Fodor, 1983, 2000).

What is diachronic modularity?

Diachronic modules are systems that exhibit parametric variation over the course of their development. For example, in the case of language, different individuals learn to speak different languages depending on the linguistic environment in which they grew up, but they nonetheless share the same underlying linguistic competence in virtue of their (plausibly innate) knowledge of Universal Grammar. Given the observed variation in how people see the Müller-Lyer illusion, it may be that the visual system is modular in much the same way, with its development is constrained by features of the visual environment. Such a possibility seems consistent with the claim that input systems are modular in Fodor’s sense.

What is the first strand of the hypothesis of modest modularity?

The hypothesis of modest modularity, as we shall call it, has two strands. The first strand of the hypothesis is positive. It says that input systems, such as systems involved in perception and language, are modular. The second strand is negative. It says that central systems, such as systems involved in belief fixation and practical reasoning, are not modular.

Is the human mind modular?

Human minds are incremental extensions of animal minds. Therefore, the human mind is (probably) massively modular. Unfortunately for friends of massive modularity, this argument, like the argument from design, is vulnerable to a number of objections (Wilson, 2008). We’ll mention two of them here.

What is modularity in biology?

Modularity is a product of regulation by a particular off–on decision mechanism that marks the beginning of a developmental ( e.g., neuromuscular response) pathway leading to a ‘modular’ trait. From: Encyclopedia of Ecology, 2008. Download as PDF.

What is phenotypic modularity?

Phenotypic integration and phenotypic modularity explain how quantitative traits are inter-related among individuals in a population (Magwene, 2001; Pigliucci, 2003 ). Highly integrated organisms could be those in which their traits (both genetically and functionally) are strongly correlated to each other across individuals. The opposite would be to say that a highly integrated organism is an organism with low modularity, in which all traits are uncorrelated across individuals. For instance, if animals that are genetically aggressive also have high growth rates, we will say that animals are phenotypically integrated for the aggressive and growth rate traits. However, if these two traits show no correlation across individuals, the animals will have low integration of these traits. A module can be defined as a set of intercorrelated traits (across individuals) which is independent of another set of intercorrelated traits, being the latter a different module. The above 13 traits were initially (i.e. before evolution at time t0) included in 5 modules, 4 modules with 3 traits each and a 5th module with a single trait ( Emet ). Each of the four three-trait modules included either all positive genetic correlations or two negative and one positive correlation among traits, reflecting genetic trade-offs. However, we would like to stress that trait correlations are implemented as an example to introduce our eco-evolutionary framework, but that such modules do not necessarily need to be arranged in this way in nature. In the future, we need to measure trait modularity and its genetic basis in animals embedded in food webs (e.g. Santos and Cannatella, 2011 ), and we hope that our approach encourages pursuing this line of research. Through the chapter, three-trait modules will be represented by trait names and two signs, one referring to the direction of correlation with the first trait (as read from left to right) and the other referring to the correlation with the second trait. For instance, in module 1, we have: tank_ini (−,−), growth (−,+) and pheno (−,+), which means that animals which are born with more reserves invest less in growing; that is, they grow to a smaller size and increase their growth rate, and also are born earlier (or develop faster); and thus, animals that have a higher growth ratio do develop later. We stress that the latter pattern is also an ecological constraint, as everything else being equal, growing larger takes more time. Therefore, here, the genetic constraint (negative correlation) parallels the ecological constraint. The other three three-trait modules were arranged as follows: Module 2, speed (+,+), met_rate (+,+), search_area (+,+); Module 3, size_ini (−,−), assim (−,+), voracity (−,+); Module 4, vorQ10 (−,−), spdQ10 (−,+), srchQ10 (−,+). Therefore, a negative relationship between propagule size and voracity means that larger animals tend to be proportionally more voracious beyond body size constraints, as smaller voracity coefficients mean higher voracity. Similarly, higher assimilation efficiencies positively correlated with voracity coefficients mean that the more voracious animals are the least efficient at assimilating food, reflecting a potential trade-off between voracity and assimilation efficiencies. Finally, module 4 reflects trade-offs on thermal adaptation for mobility, as plastically responding to an increase in temperature by increasing voracity trades-off with increasing other mobility traits (either sprint speed or search area), therefore reflecting genetic constraints in plasticity. This allows us to first approach adaptive evolution of quantitative traits in the context of biotic interactions and climate change. However, despite previous believe, it has been recently shown that the sign and magnitude of genetic correlations can change depending on the environment, which suggests that they may constraint adaptive evolution in a lesser degree than previously thought ( Sgró and Hoffmann, 2004 ). Once the underlying mechanisms are well understood ( McKinnon and Pierotti, 2010; Roff and Fairbairn, 2007 ), this unconstrained form of plasticity integration will be easily incorporated in the present framework. However, for now, we adapt the more classic view of genetic correlations and G-matrices, which have been found to be stable under climate change in at least one study ( Garant et al., 2008 ).

Why is ammonium a problem?

Ammonium is a somewhat problematic parameter due to its ability to permeate in larger amounts through the membrane under neutral or alkaline conditions. Acidic pH values change the equilibrium of ammonium ion between gas and liquid phases, enabling NH 4 + to form ammonium salts with anions ( Li et al., 2009; Şchiopu et al., 2012 ). Nevertheless, pretreatment by means of stripping or biological nitrification–denitrification has been proposed as more suitable than a two-stage RO plant ( Ehrig, 1989b ). Indeed, apart from the operational problem of pH control (i.e., NH 3 –N removal efficiency is a function of pH), the presence of ammonia in concentrate flux complicates concentrate treatment, particularly when evaporation treatment is applied.

Is modularity good?

Although modularity has many benefits, perfect modularity is difficult to achieve, particularly when changes are made to facility-wide systems, such as utilities. For example, a pump driver may be changed from a steam turbine to an electric motor.

Is modularity an attribute of resilience?

As an important attribute of resilience, modularity has been the subject of increasing research in ecological research. Recent empirical work conducted on food-webs have confirmed that food-webs are more compartmentalized than a null model where species interact with equal probability with other species.

Does modularity affect cascading extinctions?

As for species richness, the modularity of the mainland food web does not really affect the frequency or the size of cascading extinctions on islands (Figs 15 and S8 ). Contrary to what we expected, frequencies and sizes of secondary extinctions even show a slight increase with modularity. Thus, in our framework, food web compartmentalization does not assure against cascading extinctions.

What is modularity of mind?

This modularity proposal also can help us understand how cognition evolved in organisms—the more ancient the “module”, the earlier the abilities associated with it.

Who wrote the essay The Modularity of Mind?

Fodor, J. A. (1983).  The Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology.  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

What are the problems with a rigidly modular brain?

Another problem with a too rigidly modular brain is that there would be less crosstalk between regions and would challenge the integration of information from different processing areas in the brain (e.g., those responsible for processing sound and visual information)—contrary to the conscious experience that we have.

Is the brain modular?

Another problem with a too rigidly modular brain is that there would be less crosstalk between regions and would challenge the integration of information from different processing areas in the brain (e.g., those responsible for processing sound and visual information)—contrary to the conscious experience that we have. But then if the brain is too disorganized, it would be difficult to maintain systematic cognitive operations (e.g., think about how our internal organs are organized). There should be some “belief-independent” systems, for example, responsible for processing sound and some for processing vision, since these inputs have different physical properties. Clearly the brain cannot be completely modular or completely lacking organization. How can we identify the balance?

What is the idea of modularity?

Altenberg's and Wagner's work suggests that modularity is both the result of evolution, and facilitates evolution—an idea that shares a marked resemblance to work on modularity in technological and organizational domains.

What is modularity in network theory?

In the study of complex networks, modularity is a benefit function that measures the quality of a division of a network into groups or communities.

What is modular design?

In manufacturing, modularity typically refers to modular design, either as the use of exchangeable parts or options in the fabrication of an object or the design and manufacture of modular components.

What is modularity in American studies?

In John Blair's Modular America, he argues that as Americans began to replace social structures inherited from Europe (predominantly England and France), they evolved a uniquely American tendency towards modularity in fields as diverse as education, music, and architecture.

How does modularity affect organizational systems?

Organizational systems are said to become increasingly modular when they begin to substitute loosely coupled forms for tightly integrated, hierarchical structures. For instance, when the firm utilizes contract manufacturing rather than in-house manufacturing, it is using an organizational component that is more independent than building such capabilities in-house: the firm can switch between contract manufacturers that perform different functions, and the contract manufacturer can similarly work for different firms. As firms in a given industry begin to substitute loose coupling with organizational components that lie outside of firm boundaries for activities that were once conducted in-house, the entire production system (which may encompass many firms) becomes increasingly modular. The firms themselves become more specialized components. Using loosely coupled structures enables firms to achieve greater flexibility in both scope and scale. This is in line with modularity in the processes of production, which relates to the way that technological artifacts are produced. This consists of the artifact's entire value chain, from the designing of the artifact to the manufacturing and distribution stages. In production, modularity is often due to increased design modularity. The firm can switch easily between different providers of these activities (e.g., between different contract manufacturers or alliance partners) compared to building the capabilities for all activities in house, thus responding to different market needs more quickly. However, these flexibility gains come with a price. Therefore, the organization must assess the flexibility gains achievable, and any accompanying loss of performance, with each of these forms.

What is modularity in production?

This is in line with modularity in the processes of production, which relates to the way that technological artifacts are produced. This consists of the artifact's entire value chain, from the designing of the artifact to the manufacturing and distribution stages. In production, modularity is often due to increased design modularity.

What is modularity in management?

Modularity in technology and management. The term modularity is widely used in studies of technological and organizational systems. Product systems are deemed "modular", for example, when they can be decomposed into a number of components that may be mixed and matched in a variety of configurations.

Statement

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History

Yutaka Taniyama stated a preliminary (slightly incorrect) version of the conjecture at the 1955 international symposium on algebraic number theory in Tokyo and Nikkō. Goro Shimura and Taniyama worked on improving its rigor until 1957.

Generalizations

The modularity theorem is a special case of more general conjectures due to Robert Langlands. The Langlands program seeks to attach an automorphic form or automorphic representation (a suitable generalization of a modular form) to more general objects of arithmetic algebraic geometry, such as to every elliptic curve over a number field.

What Is A Mental Module?

Modularity, Fodor-Style: A Modest Proposal

• The hypothesis of modest modularity, as we shall call it, has twostrands. The first strand of the hypothesis is positive. It says thatinput systems, such as systems involved in perception and language,are modular. The second strand is negative. It says that centralsystems, such as systems involved in belief fixation and practicalreasoning, are not ...

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Post-Fodorian Modularity

Modularity and Philosophy