Functionalism

Physicalism denies that the universe includes both mental and material substances

Every substance is a material substance, every property a material property

Physicals is reductive - just as water can be reduced to H2O , the mind can be reduced to the brain

Evidence to support this view might be examples of how damage to the brain causes changes in personality

To talk about a things function is to talk about what it does - its job. To talk about the function of the mind is to talk about what it does

The mind is an information-processing system - its function is to process information. Information is inputted through the senses which it processes to generate an appropriate outcome

Whilst the scale and speed of these computational devices differs, when you consider the computations themselves they are on par.

They all carry out the same kind of computation (computation = the manipulation of symbols according to formal rules)

Each of these devices computes - they all realise computational processes

Computational processes are ‘realised’ by material systems- the computer (the material system) realises the computational process

The material process that realises the computation operation in Babbage's Analytical Engine (a material system composed of brass gears...) is different from the material process that realises the computation in a modern transistor-based computing system or an antique device with vacuum tubes

Functionalists would describe computational processes as “multiple realisable” - they can be realised by different material systems

Mindish things happen in different systems

In humans it’s the brain. In the alien (from the video) it was the goo

Computing devices can be made of any number of materials and organised in any number of ways- as long as it realises a computational process it is a computing machine

When you consider a machine as a computational device and disregard its material composition you ‘abstract’ - you only pay attention to the computational function not its physical qualities

Abstracting

Means to omit or leave out of consideration - not to be concerned with certain features

In his book “the philosophy of the mind”, John Heil gives that following example to illustrate abstracting (or what it means to abstract)

Imagine you are watching Lilian run through a proof of the Pythagorean theorem. Lilian draws a right triangle on a sheet of paper with a red crayon. You attend to the lines and not their wiggliness. In doing so you ‘abstract’ from the drawing's colour, size and spatial orientation

(It is to pay selective attention)

When you think of a device as performing computations you are abstracting

You are considering the device as a symbol professor not as something made of metal or plastic

To abstract is to engage in partial consideration. An abstract description leaves out features of the object described.

It is to describe something without reference to its material characteristics

Imagine the mind is like the computing machine. The mind, like the computing device, is capable of performing certain operations. States of mind resemble computational states - they could in principle occur in many different kinds of material (multiply realisable)

To talk of minds and mental operations is to abstract from whatever ‘realises’ them; to talk at a higher level. Your mind is a program running in your brain - it is the programme that performs computations operations

John Heil

“You might suppose that every mind has a material embodiment, although could be embodied in very different kinds of material. In the case of human beings, our brains constitute the hardware on which our mental software runs”

Does Functionalism show that Cartesian Dualism is false?

• if mental substances are completely different from physical substance, seems to be no way for them to interact

• Physicalists theories do make the point that mind is fundamentally linked to matter, believers of ghosts may disagree but there is no verifiable case on record of a public intelligent discussion between a human and a ghost

• No doubt that drugs, for example, affect the way that the mind thinks