Reasoning with complementary pathways, not competing processes

The core of our argument is that the human mental architecture is composed of nine subsystems of equal status that interact as parts of a coherent overall system, and therefore one mind. Two of these subsystems represent qualitatively different types of meaning, one propositional in nature and the other a more abstract holistic representation, called implicational meaning (Barnard & Teasdale, 1991). Implicational meaning integrates over sensory, conceptual and bodily inputs and so captures affective states. Two aspects of this model relate to the claims of dual process theory. First, the two semantic subsystems stand in rather different relationships to the seven others. Implicational meanings receive direct and therefore fast inputs from visual, acoustic and body state subsystems while the construction and use of propositional meanings relies on inputs derived from longer, and therefore slower, processing routes. Interactions between these two meaning systems are argued to form the central engine of human ideation (Teasdale & Barnard, 1993). The second aspect of the model is that in these interactions processing activity can reflect properties of the two representations to differing degrees as a function of the mode in which meaning is processed. The mode of processing also directly relates to conscious experience. When implicational meanings dominate processing activity over time the same kinds of properties as are proposed for System 1 would be emphasised but when propositional meanings dominate the characteristic properties of System 2 would be more in evidence.