Functionalism

I analyse a tension at the core of the mechanistic view of computation, generated by its joint commitment to the medium-independence of computational vehicles, and to computational systems possessing teleological functions to compute. While computation is individuated in medium-independent terms, teleology is sensitive to the constitutive physical properties of vehicles. This tension spells trouble for the mechanistic view, suggesting that there can be no teleological functions to compute. I argue that, once considerations about the relevant function-bestowing factors for computational systems (...) are brought to bear, the tension dissolves: physical systems can have the teleological function to compute. (shrink)

It has often been thought that compositional variation across systems that are similar from the point of view of the special sciences provides a key point in favor of the multiple realization of special science kinds and in turn the broadly nonreductive consequences often thought to follow from multiple realization. Yet in a series of articles, and culminating in The Multiple Realization Book, Tom Polger and Larry Shapiro argue that an account of multiple realization demanding enough to yield such nonreductive (...) consequences implies that compositional variation is far less significant for the multiple realization of special science kinds than many have supposed. I argue, in contrast, that even on this demanding account, lower-level compositional variation may frequently support the multiple realization of special science kinds across the systems of interest, and that there is a good explanation for where Polger and Shapiro go wrong in drawing the contrary conclusion. I consider but reject Carl Gillett’s claim that different views about the significance of compositional variation for multiple realization phenomena should be traced to implicit disagreement about the metaphysics of realization. (shrink)

In discussing the famous case of Otto, a patient with Alzheimer’s disease who carries around a notebook to keep important information, Clark and Chalmers argue that some of Otto’s beliefs are physically realized in the notebook. In other words, some of Otto’s beliefs are extended into the environment. Their main argument is a functionalist one. Some of Otto’s beliefs are physically realized in the notebook because, first, some of the beliefs of Inga, a healthy person who remembers important information in (...) her head, are physically realized in her internal memory storage, and, second, there is no relevant functional difference between the role of the notebook for Otto and the role of the internal memory storage for Inga. The paper presents a new objection to this argument. I call it “the systems reply” to the functionalist argument since it is structurally analogous to the “the systems reply” to Searle’s Chinese room argument. According to the systems reply to the functionalist argument, what actually follows from their argument is not that beliefs of Otto are physically realized in the notebook but rather that the beliefs of the hybrid system consisting of Otto and his notebook are physically realized in the notebook. This paper also discusses Sprevak’s claim that the functionalist argument entails radical versions of extended mental states and shows that his argument is also vulnerable to the systems reply. (shrink)

In this article I explore a number of questions that have not been adequately investigated in philosophy of mind circles: are minds located in the same place as the brains (or other computing machinery) supporting them? Must they exist at the same location as the body? Must they exist at the same time? Could a single mind be implemented in multiple brains, or multiple minds in a single brain? Under what conditions might a single mind persist despite being implemented successively (...) in different brains? What contributions do features of the computing machinery make to these questions, compared to the contribution made by the body and embedded point of view? Some of these questions have been touched on previously, but there hasn’t been any attempt at a systematic analysis of the various consequences that different approaches in the philosophy of mind have for how the spatiotemporal location, synchronic individuation and diachronic identity of minds relates to the spatiotemporal location, synchronic individuation, and diachronic identity of both the implementing computational machinery and the embodied embedded point of view. I make a first stab at such an analysis by discussing a variety of thought experiments in which such questions of location, individuation, and identity arise, and I explore how various approaches to understanding the mind – identity theoretic, functionalist, contentualist, embodied/embedded/extended, and so forth – would respond to such situations. A number of novel issues emerge, and some surprising affinities are revealed. (shrink)

Proper Functionalism ‘Proper Functionalism’ refers to a family of epistemological views according to which whether a belief was formed by way of properly functioning cognitive faculties plays a crucial role in whether it has a certain kind of positive epistemic status (such as being an item of knowledge, or a … Continue reading Proper Functionalism →.

It is well known that humans represent the mental states of others and use these representations to successfully predict, understand, and manipulate their behaviour. This is an impressive ability. Many comparative psychologists believe that some non-human apes and monkeys attribute mental states to others. But is this ability unique to mammals? In this paper, I review findings from a range of behavioural studies on corvids, including food caching, food recaching and food sharing studies. In order to protect their caches from (...) being pilfered, corvids successfully keep track of observing conspecifics, employ a number of caching and recaching strategies, and exploit environmental factors to reduce the amount of visual and auditory information available to observing conspecifics. When giving food items as gifts, corvids give items for which conspecifics have developed a preference. I argue that the available evidence supports the hypothesis that corvids attribute mental states to conspecifics. I further hypothesize that corvids do so through process-driven simulation and the running of non-verbal multimodal rules accomplished by a class of mental representations called semantic pointers. (shrink)

In this article I argue that two received accounts of belief and assertion cannot both be correct, because they entail mutually contradictory claims about Moore's Paradox. The two accounts in question are, first, the Action Theory of Belief, the functionalist view that belief must be manifested in dispositions to act, and second, the Belief Account of Assertion, the Gricean view that an asserter must present himself as believing what he asserts. It is generally accepted also that Moorean assertions are absurd, (...) and that BAA explains why they are. I shall argue that ATB implies that some Moorean assertions are, in some fairly ordinary contexts, well justified. Thus BAA and ATB are mutually inconsistent. In the concluding section I explore three possible ways of responding to the dilemma, and what implications they have for the nature of the constitutive relationships linking belief, assent and behavioural dispositions. (shrink)

Proper Functionalism ‘Proper Functionalism’ refers to a family of epistemological views according to which whether a belief was formed by way of properly functioning cognitive faculties plays a crucial role in whether it has a certain kind of positive epistemic status (such as being an item of knowledge, or a … Continue reading Proper Functionalism →.

In Natural Minds Thomas Polger advocates, and defends, the philosophical theory that mind equals brain -- that sensations are brain processes -- and in doing so brings the mind-brain identity theory back into the philosophical debate about consciousness. The version of identity theory that Polger advocates holds that conscious processes, events, states, or properties are type- identical to biological processes, events, states, or properties -- a "tough-minded" account that maintains that minds are necessarily indentical to brains, a position held by (...) few current identity theorists. Polger's approach to what William James called the "great blooming buzzing confusion" of consciousness begins with the idea that we need to know more about brains in order to understand consciousness fully, but recognizes that biology alone cannot provide the entire explanation. Natural Minds takes on issues from philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and metaphysics, moving freely among them in its discussion.Polger begins by answering two major objections to identity theory -- Hilary Putnam's argument from multiple realizability and Saul Kripke's modal argument against mind-brain identity. He then offers a detailed account of functionalism and functional realization, which offer the most serious obstacle to consideration of identity theory. Polger argues that identity theory can itself satisfy the kind of explanatory demands that are often believed to favor functionalism. (shrink)

Most ethical work is done at a low level of formality. This makes practical moral questions inaccessible to formal and natural sciences and can lead to misunderstandings in ethical discussion. In this paper, we use Bayesian inference to introduce a formalization of preference utilitarianism in physical world models, specifically cellular automata. Even though our formalization is not immediately applicable, it is a first step in providing ethics and ultimately the question of how to “make the world better” with a formal (...) basis. (shrink)

What are the prospects for a monistic view of biological individuality given the multiple epistemic roles the concept must satisfy? In this paper, I examine the epistemic adequacy of two recent accounts based on the capacity to undergo natural selection. One is from Ellen Clarke, and the other is by Peter Godfrey-Smith. Clarke’s position reflects a strong monism, in that she aims to characterize individuality in purely functional terms and refrains from privileging any specific material properties as important in their (...) own right. I argue that Clarke’s functionalism impairs the epistemic adequacy of her account compared to a middle-ground position taken by Godfrey-Smith. In comparing Clarke and Godfrey-Smith’s account, two pathways emerge to pluralism about biological individuality. The first develops from the contrast between functionalist and materialist approaches, and the second from an underlying temporal structure involved in using evolutionary processes to define individuality. (shrink)

In his seminal work, Representation and Reality and elsewhere in publications throughout the 1980's and 1990's, Hilary Putnam attempts an ingenious refutation of computational functionalism. His refutation centers upon three main pillars: the use of the Godel incompleteness theorems, his precise articulation of a triviality thesis and his argument that there can be no local computational reductions . ;We argue that each pillar is riddled with severe problems. His rescue of the Godel incompleteness theorems from the logical error committed by (...) J. R. Lucas and Roger Penrose comes only at the expense of his argument succumbing to a paradox. His triviality theorem commits a modal error and faces a Kripke-Wittgenstein problem. We also show that both John Searle's metaphysics of computation and current triviality arguments fail to respect theorems of computability and computational complexity theory. We demonstrate, by a relative consistency proof, that computational ism is not committed to metaphysical realism and escapes Quinean indeterminacy and ontological relativity. The demonstration is relative to the success of Putnamian epistemic semantics. We argue that Putnam's no-local-computational-reduction claim amounts to nothing more than a claim that inductive reasoning cannot be formalized, that it erroneously saddles computationalism with radical Quinean meaning holism and that he fails to take into account well-known work in mathematical logic, cognitive science and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

Functionalism represents the most promising as well as the most severely criticized approach to the philosophy of mind. In this dissertation functionalism is defended as a theory of the propositional content of intentional states. The first chapter is a criticism of the competing theories of propositional content: anti-mentalism, instrumentalism, and nonfunctionalist materialism. Theories of the first two kinds are open to straightforward counterexamples. Theories of the third sort are open to counterexamples on the assumption that the distinction between physical and (...) functional properties is neither incoherent nor arbitrary. It is shown that the criticisms which have been advanced against this assumption do not succeed. ;The second chapter is an account of the notion of a partial state functional description and its place in a theory of content. The role of radical interpretation in a theory of content is discussed and a method of assigning content to the partial functional state is elaborated. ;The third chapter is a treatment of the distinction between occurrent and dispositional mental states. The distinction which is relevant to philosophy of mind is between states which are causally efficacious and those which are not. It is argued that the occurrent/dispositional distinction so construed is definable in terms of partial state functional descriptions and a definition is provided. ;The fourth chapter is an account of the instantiation relation between physical systems and abstract automata. Conventionalism with respect to instantiation is the thesis that any causal system which is sufficiently large will instantiate any functional description. Counterexamples are provided to the most extreme version of the conventionalist thesis. General arguments are provided that the strategies which a conventionalist might employ in defending a weaker version of the thesis will not succeed. The chapter concludes with a formulation of the instantiation relation. ;The fifth chapter reconciles functionalism as a kind of autonomous psychology with causal theories of the referential content of intentional states. It is argued that although functional states do not determine propositions, they determine a kind of semantic content which is relevant to psychological explanation. (shrink)

In this dissertation I challenge the functionalist theory of mental states, which asserts that mental types such as "pain" are "multiply realizable" causal relations. ;I begin by providing historical and theoretical background which is necessary for one to fully appreciate functionalism. I show why formerly fashionable theories of mind have fallen out of favor, review Davidson's arguments that reasons are causes, and give a brief account of "folk psychology." ;In discussing functionalism proper, I distinguish between two forms of the thesis: (...) Folk functionalism holds that, e.g., the concept "pain" is the concept of something occupying a causal role. Psychofunctionalism claims that pain is a causal state, whether or not the word "pain" means this. ;Both versions are false. In criticizing folk functionalism I argue that many mind concepts are not concepts of states occupying a causal role. I also argue that the type-token distinction is deeply flawed. Finally, as a theory of mental types, functionalism is committed to the mistaken proposition that all mental particulars of a certain type such as pain have something in common. ;Psychofunctionalism is likewise false. What psychofunctionalists offer as examples of causal roles type identifying mental states are not in fact multiply realizable, and a functionalist theory of multiply realizable mental states would be hopelessly vague. Second, psychofunctionalism masquerades as a scientific hypothesis when in fact it is unable to advance a scientific claim, being neither verifiable nor falsifiable by scientific means. Finally, I show that, though the highly-acclaimed inverted spectrum and absent qualia arguments fail to defeat functionalism, there exists a qualia objection which does defeat it. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy of mind is dominated by two complementary views: functionalism--the idea that the mental can be accounted for in terms of abstract causal features of physical systems, and representationalism--the idea that the intentional features of the mental can be accounted for by postulating mental representations. ;Both these views face fundamental criticisms. Functionalism, by equating mental phenomena with abstract causal structures, robs the mental of genuine causal significance. Furthermore, the role of interpretation in the theory undermines its completeness, by using (...) intentionality in the account of intentionality, thus setting up a circularity. This interpretive aspect of the theory also has unfortunate consequences with respect to the possibility of realism towards the mental. But, since anti-realism about the mental is incoherent, insofar as functionalism implies anti-realism, it is itself incoherent. ;As to representationalism, it too suffers from a fundamental circularity. Intentionality is to be accounted for by representations in the head. But representations are dependent on users--on entities who can make use of one thing to stand for another. Such entities are intentional themselves, so representations cannot be foundational in an account of intentionality. ;In contrast to functionalism and representationalism, a successful theory of mind must allow the mental genuine ontological equality with the physical, and acknowledge the fact of intentional causation. That is, the current notion of "the physical" should be given up as a paradigm of the real. (shrink)

Functionalist theories of mind, which individuate mental states in terms of the relationships they bear to each other, to inputs and outputs, are currently much in vogue. This study is primarily concerned with explicating and evaluating such theories. ;Functionalists see themselves as addressing problems which were of concern to logical behaviorists and physicalists, and thus Chapter I is devoted to a brief discussion of these earlier accounts--accounts purporting to provide adequate non-mentalistic conditions for mental states. Both these accounts are now (...) widely regarded as having failed in this endeavour, and the question to be resolved is whether functionalistic accounts fare any better in this regard. ;I consider at length a number of different functionalist approaches, distinguishing, in particular, between a priori functionalist accounts, such as that offered by David Lewis, and empirical functionalism of the kind proposed by Hilary Putnam. I argue that both kinds of functionalism must be rejected in the light of numerous difficulties, and, specifically, that both forms of functionalism are faced with crucial problems in specifying 'inputs' and 'outputs'. In regard to each account I argue that 'inputs' and 'outputs' must be specified in some question-begging fashion or else in a way that leaves the account open to counterexamples. ;In the final chapter I attempt to uncover some very general, if vague, intuitions which seem to motivate and lend credence to such reductive efforts in the philosophy of mind. I argue that functionalism, like behaviorism, is motivated by an over-simplistic view of behavioral terms as 'observational'--a view which fails to do justice to the many complex ways in which psychological considerations enter into our everyday practice of characterizing behavior. (shrink)

Baars affirms Crick and Koch's position that the timidity most cognitive scientists show in the face of consciousness is ridiculous. Unfortunately, all three succumb to a variation on the timidity they deprecate. Furthermore, Baars' own method, ``contrastic analysis,'' is at odds with the computational conception of mind that dominates contemporary cognitive science.

This thesis is a critique of functionalism in the philosophy of mind. I distinguish three tenets, or 'dogmas' of functionalism, viz: Mental states are causes of behaviour; Mental states can, in principle, be defined in non-mental terms; We understand everything, or at least everything of importance, about the mental states of people, by subsuming token mental states under one or other mental state type. ;The first dogma is rejected in the form which identifies mental state types with physical types, on (...) the ground that it commits us to the doubtful possibilities of mental states without any relevant behaviour, and behaviour without a relevant mental state . It is found to be not mandatory in the form which identifies mental state types with functional types, on the ground that the phenomena appealed to in support of the dogma is consistent with a view of mental states which endorses the dogma in at best a trite and philosophically uninteresting sense . The second dogma is rejected on the ground that cannot account for what I call the 'affective animation' of the behaviour of creatures with mental states . I develop a concept I call personal response---the kind of response we have to other human beings as opposed to inanimate nature---and defend principle which says: Commonsense understanding that someone is in a mental state requires proneness to a personal response in relation to that person. ;Certain implications are drawn from for reductionism, for meta-ethics, and for the third dogma . I argue that the third dogma is false on the around that it cannot account for our sense of the individuality of persons, unless that very notion of individuality, which comes from quite outside functionalism, is used to gloss the idea of subsumption under a type. (shrink)

Is determinism compatible with the freedom required for moral responsibility? If so, we need an account of mind which shows how the conditions necessary for self-determined, responsible action can be realized in the mental states of agents--even when these states are causally determined. Functionalism satisfies this requirement. ;Donald Davidson rightly distinguishes between the physical and the mental levels of description of events. But he fails to justify and explain our intuitions about the freedom required for moral responsibility; he argues that (...) a causally determined event may be a free action because that event is not causally determined under a mental description. This claim reflects reluctance to construe mental events as real causes of behavior. ;Daniel Dennett argues that certain events may have both a physical and an intentional explanation, and that having an intentional explanation is a necessary condition for that event to be one for which the relevant agent is responsible. But this account fails to take seriously the incompatibilist challenge that, if determinism is true, mental events must be determined causes of behavior. ;My realist, functional version of compatibilism draws from Aristotle's theory of responsibility and functionalism. Aristotle's view is: That the self-determination required for human responsibility resides in the capacity for effective deliberation. Highly complex computing machines are deterministic systems capable of realizing internal processes that are best described, at the functional level, as effective deliberation. This gives us reason to believe that more complex structures, e.g., persons, are capable of effective deliberation. An Aristotelian account of responsibility in terms of counterfactuals about the capacity for effective deliberation relies on a functionalist theory of deliberation. ;Two "could-have-done-otherwise" versions of compatibilism have been proposed: the conditional and the possible worlds analyses. They, too, rely on a functional account of the causal mechanisms that realize the ability to do otherwise. The explicit addition of a functional account of deliberation of such views meets the criticism s of question-begging typically aimed at them. (shrink)

[Functionalism and the acquired learning of mental concepts].

Fodor and Pylyshyn's critique of connectionism has posed a challenge to connectionists: Explain such cognitive regularities as systematicity and productivity without postulating a LOT architecture. Some connectionists took the challenge seriously. They developed some models that purport to show that they can explain the regularities without becoming classical. The key to their claim is that their models can and do provide non-concatenatively realized syntactically complex representations that can also be processed in a structure sensitive way. Surprisingly, Fodor and McLaughlin seem (...) to agree: such models are non-classical. I develop an abstract notion of syntax and of what it is to be structure sensitive that classicism is essentially committed to. Consequently, I argue that implementation of this minimal abstract notion is enough to explain the cognitive regularities that had prompted to postulate a LOT in the first place. Any model that satisfies a formal system in this abstract sense ought to be seen as a classical LOT model. I show that concatenative or non-concatenative realization of complex representations is an implementation level issue and as such is irrelevant for an essentialist defense of the LOTH. ;I also criticize Stich's Syntactic theory of Mind, and show that the STM has nothing to do with syntax when the notion of syntax is properly understood. First, I argue that if Stich is right in his claim that content-based psychologies have the disadvantages he enumerates, then STM-style theories have exactly the parallel problems; so it is false that the STM framework is scientifically superior to content-based psychologies as Stich claims. Secondly, I argue that the STM as a version of a narrow causal individuation scheme cannot type-individuate abstract syntactic objects onto which the brain states, according to Stich, are supposed to be mapped. Thirdly, I show that the STM-theorist, at any rate, is committed to intentional vocabulary at some stage of theory construction. ;I argue that since a NCA of typing Mentalese expressions is bankrupt, the only individuation scheme is semantic and a molecularist one at that: I criticize Fodor's purely denotational semantics. I also discuss how this provides the right perspective in answering one troublesome question for intentional psychology: if psychological processes are computational, how can psychological laws be intentional? (shrink)

In this paper I highlight certain logical and metaphysical issues which arise in the characterisation of functionalism-in particular its ready coherence with a physicalist ontology, its structuralism and the impredicativity of functionalist specifications. I then utilise these points in an attempt to demonstrate fatal flaws in the functionalist programme. I argue that the brand of functionalism inspired by David Lewis fails to accommodate multiple realisability though such accommodation was vaunted as a key improvement over the identity theory. More standard accounts (...) of functionalism allow, by contrast, for far too much multiple realisability. Specifically, functionalist structures will be massively reduplicated in the human brain; so functionalism yields the absurd consequence that each human harbours large numbers of minds and exemplifies virtually all mental states. (shrink)