This book is a comprehensive development and defence of one of the guiding assumptions of evolutionary psychology: that the human mind is composed of a large number of semi-independent modules. One goal is to argue for massive cognitive modularity. Another is to show that the approach has the resources to explain the distinctive powers of the human mind. A third goal is to show how the various components of the mind are likely to be linked and interact with one another. The book outlines and defends the basic framework of a perception/belief/desire/planning/motor-control architecture (which is ... More

This book is a comprehensive development and defence of one of the guiding assumptions of evolutionary psychology: that the human mind is composed of a large number of semi-independent modules. One goal is to argue for massive cognitive modularity. Another is to show that the approach has the resources to explain the distinctive powers of the human mind. A third goal is to show how the various components of the mind are likely to be linked and interact with one another. The book outlines and defends the basic framework of a perception/belief/desire/planning/motor-control architecture (which is common to all animal cognition), embedded within which is a distinctively human language faculty. The flexibility and creativity of the human mind (together with its characteristic capacities for science and sophisticated forms of planning) are then explained as utilizing mental rehearsal of actions (including inner speech), with the results being globally broadcast to the full range of central modules.