Wikipedia: Society of Mind theory

Marvin Minsky's theory of the Society of Mind asserts that the mind is not a single object, but the [emergent behaviour]? of the interaction of a large number of smaller simpler entities.

This is similar to the theory of connectionism?, which effectively is the same idea at a lower level of abstraction.

Minksy's ideas have been developed further by other cognitive scientists, including Daniel Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter.