Greetings, Friendlies!
Though enormously enthusiastic about the idea of an Interpreter Module, there are plenty of unanswered questions. I present these as-is, as placeholders and acknowledgment of the current state of my understanding:
- The biggest objection is personal: having read one chapter of one book (and glanced at a few pieces in the literature), I swallowed the concept whole as Gazzaniga presented it. I have not investigated other voices, either of support or dissent. My position is propped on only a single leg and thereby precarious; I need to explore other understandings to round out my own. Through all this I must hold as a possibility that the entire proposal is a mistake.
- It’s not clear to me how invoking an interpreter module expands upon the more general claim that humans have meaning-making minds. Perhaps there is usefulness, in that by proposing a module, we can then hypothesize about and look for said module. But in the current state of my understanding (see #1), it’s not clear that saying there is a module gives us more information than we already had.
- From what I have so far read, there has not been a case of a person’s presenting in such a way that one would say, “Ah! It is clear that the Interpreter Module functioning has been degraded.” I’m not even sure how damage to the interpreter module would present. (See #1.)
- Can the interpreter module help explain other conditions? Schizophrenia, for example? (See #1, I suppose.)
And there we are. Your thoughts? Other questions/concerns?
Dharma PhD 