Functionalism, Computationalism, & Mental States
Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 35 (4):811-833 (2004)
| Abstract | Some philosophers have conflated functionalism and computationalism. I reconstruct how this came about and uncover two assumptions that made the conflation possible. They are the assumptions that (i) psychological functional analyses are computational descriptions and (ii) everything may be described as performing computations. I argue that, if we want to improve our understanding of both the metaphysics of mental states and the functional relations between them, we should reject these assumptions. | |||||||||
| Keywords | functionalsim computationalism computational functionalism mental states computational theory of mind functional analysis | |||||||||
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