Architecture Matters: What Soar Has to Say about Modularity

According to Zenon Pylyshyn, Allen Newell took the high road in psychology by working on a theory of the mind intended to cover a wide range of cognitive behavior. Both Newell and Pylyshyn have put forth convincing arguments about the merits of such a research path, and the central role that cognitive architecture plays in it one to develop detailed models of local phenomena while addressing global issues about the mind. One such issue that Pylyshyn has raised with respect to Soar is modularity The challenge is clear: how can a uniform theory such as Soar be right in the face of evidence that the mind is, in at least some respects, modular? As Pylyshyn points out, Newell (1990) began to answer this in his discussion of Fodor's 1983 monograph. There are two major parts to the answer. First, Soar can indeed admit additional processing modules since it is a bus-oriented system (the working 1