Control and Communication in Mental Computation

Frawley is correct to stress the importance of control in cognitive processing, and the essence of his proposal — that disorders of cognition can result from either within-module or between-module breakdown — is an interesting and potentially important contribution to cognitive science. However, Frawley’s commitment to an overly-literal interpretation of the computational metaphor, combined with his confusion over the possible relationship between any putative language of thought and modularity in peripheral versus central processes, distracts and detracts from his work. In particular, mental processes can employ a language of thought without that language being in any way similar to standard functional or procedural programming languages. In addition, communication between (peripheral) modules does not need to be bound by a single language. Furthermore, the absence of a plausible computational system within which to demonstrate the logic/control distinction and its consequences for the language disorders under discussion weakens the within-module/betweenmodule argument.