PHIL 3315 - week 5 readings

Troubles with Functionalism

Defined broadly: Each mental state is a disposition to act and feel, given certain sensory inputs and mental states.
Seen as a newer version of behaviorism, where behaviors correspond to mental states.
- Behaviorism's focus: Identifies mental states with specific behaviors in response to inputs.
- Critique: Actions linked to desires can be mistakenly identified without knowledge of outcomes (Chisholm 1957; Putnam 1963).
- Functionalism enhances behaviorism by adding mental states to the equation of inputs and outputs.

Behaviorist Approach: Inputs and outputs determine mental states without need for internal states.
Functionalist Approach: Focuses on causal relations between mental states, sensory inputs, and external behaviors.
- This can imply that some organisms may have recognized mental states under behaviorism but not be acknowledged as such under functionalism.
Functionalism introduces stronger necessary conditions for mentality compared to behaviorism.

Functionalism is criticized as being 'liberal' in attributing mental properties to systems that do not possess them.
- The distinction between functional states and their physical realizations leads to conflict with physicalism.
- Physicalism: The doctrine asserting that mental states correspond with physiological states (e.g., pain = brain state).
Example against physicalism: Different systems can fulfill functional roles (like Turing machines) without having physical equivalence.

Functionalism (A Priori): Regards functional identities as analyses of mental term meanings (e.g., Smart, Lewis).
Psychofunctionalism (Empirical): Considers functional analyses as scientific hypotheses (e.g., Fodor, Putnam).

Distinction illustrated via Ramsey sentences, where mental states correspond to functional states in psychological theories.
Ramsey Functional Correlate: Functional state corresponding to a mental state in a given psychological theory.

Examines a class of devices that suggest functionalism could label non-mental systems as mental.
- Example Description: A human-like outer structure controlled by small operators (homunculi) responding to inputs based on a set of rules (machine table).
Possibility of a network of people functioning together under a single mechanical body to simulate human thought.
- Argument against practicality: How to communicate mental processes if they are slowed down?
- Idea reflects that functional tasks can be met without true mental states being present.

The homunculus argument raises questions about how functionalism can assign mental states like qualitative or phenomenological experiences (Nagel 1974).
The Absent Qualia Argument: Challenges whether a system can truly possess mental states if it cannot exhibit qualitative experiences indicative of being a conscious subject.