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  • Murat Aydede, Syntax, Content and Functionalism: What is Wrong with the Syntactic Theory of Mind.
    I argue that Stich's Syntactic Theory of Mind (STM) and a naturalistic narrow content functionalism run on a Language of Though story have the same exact structure. I elaborate on the argument that narrow content functionalism is either irremediably holistic in a rather destructive sense, or else doesn't have the resources for individuating contents interpersonally. So I show that, contrary to his own advertisement, Stich's STM has exactly the same problems (like holism, vagueness, observer-relativity, etc.) that he claims plague content-based (...)
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  • Vadim Batitsky (1998). A Formal Rebuttal of the Central Argument for Functionalism. Erkenntnis 49 (2):201-20.
    The central argument for functionalism is the so-called argument from multiple realizations. According to this argument, because a functionally characterized system admits a potential infinity of structurally diverse physical realizations, the functional organization of such systems cannot be captured in a law-like manner at the level of physical description (and, thus, must be treated as a principally autonomous domain of inquiry). I offer a rebuttal of this argument based on formal modeling of its premises in the framework of automata theory. (...)
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  • George Bealer (2001). The Self-Consciousness Argument: Why Tooley's Criticisms Fail. Philosophical Studies 105 (3):281-307.
    Ontological functionalism's defining tenet is that mental properties canbe defined wholly in terms of the general pattern of interaction ofontologically prior realizations. Ideological (or nonreductive)functionalism's defining tenet is that mental properties can only bedefined nonreductively, in terms of the general pattern of theirinteraction with one another. My Self-consciousness Argumentestablishes: (1) ontological functionalism is mistaken because itsproposed definitions wrongly admit realizations (vs. mentalproperties) into the contents of self-consciousness; (2)ideological (nonreductive) functionalism is the only viable alternativefor functionalists. Michael Tooley's critique misses the (...)
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  • George Bealer (2000). Fregean Equivocation and Ramsification on Sparse Theories: Response to McCullagh. Mind and Language 15 (5):500-510.
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  • George Bealer (1997). Self-Consciousness. Philosophical Review 106 (1):69-117.
    Self-consciousness constitutes an insurmountable obstacle to functionalism. Either the standard functional definitions of mental relations wrongly require the contents of self-consciousness to be propositions involving.
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  • George Bealer (1978). An Inconsistency in Functionalism. Synthese 38 (July):333-372.
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  • William P. Bechtel (1984). Autonomous Psychology: What It Should and Should Not Entail. Philosophy of Science Association 1984.
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  • Hanoch Ben-Yami (1999). An Argument Against Functionalism. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 77 (3):320-324.
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  • Ned Block (1996). What is Functionalism? In Donald M. Borchert (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy Supplement. MacMillan.
    What is Functionalism? Functionalism is one of the major proposals that have been offered as solutions to the mind/body problem. Solutions to the mind/body problem usually try to answer questions such as: What is the ultimate nature of the mental? At the most general level, what makes a mental state mental? Or more specifically, What do thoughts have in common in virtue of which they are thoughts? That is, what makes a thought a thought? What makes a pain a pain? (...)
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  • Ned Block (1980). Functionalism. In Ned Block (ed.), Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology.
    What is Functionalism? Functionalism is one of the major proposals that have been offered as solutions to the mind/body problem. Solutions to the mind/body problem usually try to answer questions such as: What is the ultimate nature of the mental? At the most general level, what makes a mental state mental? Or more specifically, What do thoughts have in common in virtue of which they are thoughts? That is, what makes a thought a thought? What makes a pain a pain? (...)
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  • Ned Block (1978). Troubles with Functionalism. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 9:261-325.
    The functionalist view of the nature of the mind is now widely accepted. Like behaviorism and physicalism, functionalism seeks to answer the question "What are mental states?" I shall be concerned with identity thesis formulations of functionalism. They say, for example, that pain is a functional state, just as identity thesis formulations of physicalism say that pain is a physical state.
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  • Ned Block & Jerry A. Fodor (1972). What Psychological States Are Not. Philosophical Review 81 (April):159-81.
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  • Paul M. Churchland (2005). Functionalism at Forty: A Critical Retrospective. Journal of Philosophy 102 (1):33-50.
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  • Robert E. Cummins (1975). Functional Analysis. Journal of Philosophy 72 (November):741-64.
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  • Marian David (1997). Kim's Functionalism. Philosophical Perspectives 11:133-48.
    In some recent articles, Jaegwon Kim has argued that non-reductive physicalism is a myth: when it comes to the mind-body problem, the only serious options are reductionism, eliminativism, and dualism.[1] And when it comes to reductionism, Kim is inclined to regard a functionalist theory of the mind as the best available option—mostly because it offers the best explanation of mind-body supervenience. In this paper, I will discuss Kim’s views about functionalism. They may be contended on two general grounds. First, some (...)
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  • Michael Esfeld & Christian Sachse (2007). Theory Reduction by Means of Functional Sub-Types. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 21 (1):1 – 17.
    The paper sets out a new strategy for theory reduction by means of functional sub-types. This strategy is intended to get around the multiple realization objection. We use Kim's argument for token identity (ontological reductionism) based on the causal exclusion problem as starting point. We then extend ontological reductionism to epistemological reductionism (theory reduction). We show how one can distinguish within any functional type between functional sub-types. Each of these sub-types is coextensive with one type of realizer. By this means, (...)
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  • John Martin Fischer (1985). Functionalism and Propositions. Philosophical Studies 48 (November):295-311.
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  • Brie Gertler (2000). Functionalism's Methodological Predicament. Southern Journal of Philosophy 38 (1):77-94.
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  • Andrew Gleeson (2001). Animal Animation. Philosophia 28 (1-4):137-169.
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  • Peter Godfrey-Smith (2009). Triviality Arguments Against Functionalism. Philosophical Studies 145 (2).
    “Triviality arguments” against functionalism in the philosophy of mind hold that the claim that some complex physical system exhibits a given functional organization is either trivial or has much less content than is usually supposed. I survey several earlier arguments of this kind, and present a new one that overcomes some limitations in the earlier arguments. Resisting triviality arguments is possible, but requires functionalists to revise popular views about the “autonomy” of functional description.
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  • Ronald C. Hoy (1980). Dispositions, Logical States, and Mental Occurrents. Synthese 44 (June):207-40.
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  • Gregory Johnson (2009). Mechanisms and Functional Brain Areas. Minds and Machines 19 (2).
    Explanations of how psychological capacities are carried out often invoke functional brain areas. I argue that such explanations cannot succeed. Psychological capacities are carried out by identifiable entities and their activities in the brain, but functional brain areas are not the relevant entities. I proceed by assuming that if functional brain areas did carry out psychological capacities, then these brain areas could be included in descriptions of mechanisms. And if functional brain areas participate in mechanisms, then they must engage in (...)
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  • William Kalke (1969). What's Wrong with Fodor's and Putnam's Functionalism. Noûs 3 (February):83-93.
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  • Muhammad Ali Khalidi (2005). Against Functional Reductionism in Cognitive Science. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 19 (3):319 – 333.
    Functional reductionism concerning mental properties has recently been advocated by Jaegwon Kim in order to solve the problem of the 'causal exclusion' of the mental. Adopting a reductionist strategy first proposed by David Lewis, he regards psychological properties as being 'higher-order' properties functionally defined over 'lower-order' properties, which are causally efficacious. Though functional reductionism is compatible with the multiple realizability of psychological properties, it is blocked if psychological properties are subdivided or crosscut by neurophysiological properties. I argue that there is (...)
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  • Robert C. Koons (2003). Functionalism Without Physicalism: Outline of an Emergentist Program. Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design 2 (3-3).
    The historical association between functionalism and physicalism is not an unbreakable one. There are reasons for finding some version of a functional account of the mental attractive that are independent of the plausibility of physicalism. I develop a non-physicalist version of func- tionalism and explain how this model is able to secure genuine emergence of the mental, despite Kim’s arguments that such emergence theories are incoherent. The kind of teleological emergence of the mental required by this model is in fact (...)
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  • Paul M. Livingston (2005). Functionalism and Logical Analysis. In David Woodruff Smith & Amie L. Thomasson (eds.), Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
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  • Kirk A. Ludwig (1998). Functionalism, Causation and Causal Relevance. Psyche 4 (3).
    causal relevance, a three-place relation between event types, and circumstances, and argue for a logical independence condition on properties standing in the causal relevance relation relative to circumstances. In section 3, I apply these results to show that functionally defined states are not causally relevant to the output or state transitions in terms of which they are defined. In section 4, I extend this result to what that output in turn causes and to intervening mechanisms. In section 5, I examine (...)
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  • William G. Lycan (2003). Chomsky on the Mind - Body Problem. In Chomsky and His Critics. Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing.
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  • William G. Lycan (1981). Form, Function and Feel. Journal of Philosophy 78 (January):24-50.
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  • Pete Mandik, Fine-Grained Supervenience, Cognitive Neuroscience, and the Future of Functionalism.
    Most attempts at defining or elucidating ’weak’ or ’strong’ supervenience introduce various forms of physical indiscernibility. After glancing at some definitions, I argue that they must fail if mental events are supposed to be genuinely causally efficacious and non-epiphenomenal. Then I elucidate Davidson’s account of supervenience (’D-supervenience’), first as an abstract relation between a predicate and a set of predicates (to be illustrated by uncontroversial examples), and then as applied to the mental/physical relation. I argue that Davidson must defend that (...)
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  • Mark McCullagh (2000). Functionalism and Self-Consciousness. Mind and Language 15 (5):481-499.
    I offer a philosophically well-motivated solution to a problem that George Bealer has identified, which he claims is fatal to functionalism. The problem is that there seems to be no way to generate a satisfactory Ramsey sentence of a psychological theory in which mental-state predicates occur within the scopes of mental-state predicates. My central claim is that the functional roles in terms of which a creature capable of self-consciousness identifies her own mental states must be roles that items could play (...)
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  • Brian P. Mclaughlin (2006). Is Role-Functionalism Committed to Epiphenomenalism? Journal of Consciousness Studies 13 (1-2):39-66.
    Role-functionalism for mental events attempts to avoid epiphenomenalism without psychophysical identities. The paper addresses the question of whether it can succeed. It is argued that there is considerable reason to believe it cannot avoid epiphenomenalism, and that if it cannot, then it is untenable. It is pointed out, however, that even if role- functionalism is indeed an untenable theory of mental events, a role-functionalism account of mental dispositions has some intuitive plausibility.
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  • Derk Pereboom (1991). Why a Scientific Realist Cannot Be a Functionalist. Synthese 88 (September):341-58.
    According to functionalism, mental state types consist solely in relations to inputs, outputs, and other mental states. I argue that two central claims of a prominent and plausible type of scientific realism conflict with the functionalist position. These claims are that natural kinds in a mature science are not reducible to natural kinds in any other, and that all dispositional features of natural kinds can be explained at the type-level. These claims, when applied to psychology, have the consequence that at (...)
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  • David Pineda (2001). Functionalism and Nonreductive Physicalism. Theoria 16 (40):43-63.
    Most philosophers of mind nowadays espouse two metaphysical views: Nonreductive Physicalism and the causal efficacy of the mental. Throughout this work I will refer to the conjunction of both claims as the Causal Autonomy of the Mental. Nevertheless, this position is threatened by a number of difficulties which are far more serious than one would imagine given the broad consensus that it has generated during the last decades. This paper purports to offer a careful examination of some of these difficulties (...)
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  • Thomas W. Polger, Against the Argument From Functional Explanation.
    There is an argument for functionalism—and _ipso facto_ against identity theory—that can be sketched as follows: We are, or want to be, or should be dedicated to functional explanations in the sciences, or at least the special sciences. Therefore—according to the principle that what exists is what our ideal theories say exists—we are, or want to be, or should be committed to metaphysical functionalism. Let us call this the _argument from functional_ _explanation_. I will try to reveal the motivation for (...)
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  • Thomas W. Polger (1998). Escaping the Epiphenomenal Trap. Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology.
    I describe a feature of the debate between Functionalists and Anti-Functionalists in philosophy of mind that I call The Epiphenomenal Trap. I argue that the dialectic is a trap because neither side can resolve the central metaphysical issue as it has been put. That is because the debate typically trades in possible explanations. So long as Functionalists and Anti-Functionalists continue to debate whether functionalist explanations are possible, the central metaphysical issue cannot be resolved.
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  • Robert C. Richardson (1979). Functionalism and Reductionism. Philosophy of Science 46 (4):533-58.
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  • Elliott Sober (1990). Putting the Function Back Into Functionalism. In William G. Lycan (ed.), Mind and Cognition. Blackwell.
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  • Elliott Sober (1985). Panglossian Functionalism and the Philosophy of Mind. Synthese 64 (August):165-93.
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  • Michael Tooley (2001). Functional Concepts, Referentially Opaque Contexts, Causal Relations, and the Definition of Theoretical Terms. Philosophical Studies 105 (3):251-79.
    In his recent article, ``Self-Consciousness', George Bealer has set outa novel and interesting argument against functionalism in the philosophyof mind. I shall attempt to show, however, that Bealer's argument cannotbe sustained.In arguing for this conclusion, I shall be defending three main theses.The first is connected with the problem of defining theoreticalpredicates that occur in theories where the following two features arepresent: first, the theoretical predicate in question occurswithin both extensional and non-extensional contexts; secondly, thetheory in question asserts that the relevant (...)
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  • Alan Weir (2001). More Trouble for Functionalism. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 101 (3):267-293.
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  • Nick Zangwill (1992). Variable Realization: Not Proven. Philosophical Quarterly 42 (167):214-19.
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  • Jing Zhu (2006). In Defence of Functionalism. Philosophia 34 (1).
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