Modulation and the underlying assumptions of the Pythagorean ban against eating broad beans

Abstract

This paper tries to show that the theory of mental models describes deep mental processes that have to be assumed even by frameworks contrary to it. It has been argued that many explanations on certain cognitive activities different from that provided by the theory of mental models cannot ignore theses of this last approach. Those theses are related to the way the human mind interprets linguistic information and makes inferences. The main goal here is to give further evidence in this way by means of an analysis of a part of a fragment, authored by Diogenes Laërtius, about the Pythagorean ban against eating broad beans. The idea is to make it even more evident that any framework trying to account for how that part of the fragment can be understood by a reader needs to accept suppositions that characterize the theory of mental models.