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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
In recent years, functionalism has emerged as the most appealing candidate for a materialistic theory of mind. Its central thesis - that types of mental states can be defined in terms of their causal and counterfactual relations to the sensory stimulations, other internal states, and behavior of the entities that have them - offers hope for a reasonable materialism: it promises type-identity conditions for beliefs, sensations, and emotions that are not irreducibly mental, yet would permit entities that are physically quite different to be in mental states of the same type.
1 The earliest leading proponents of functionalism were Putnam, Fodor, and David Lewis. Sellars and Lewis, early on, advanced proto-functionalist views as well. See Block, Ned, ‘Troubles With Functionalism,’ in Savage, W., ed., Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. IX (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1978) 261–326,Google Scholar for a comprehensive discussion of the doctrine.
I have presented functionalism as an attempt to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for an entity to be in a mental state of a certain type. It may also be presented as a property identity thesis, e.g., the property of being in pain is identical with the property of being in a state with a certain functional role.
2 This word is David, Lewis', in ‘Radical Interpretation,’ Synthese, 23 (1974) 335.Google Scholar
3 E.g., by Block and Fodor in ‘What Psychological States are Not’, Philosophical Review, 81 (1972), 159-81 and by Block, in ‘Troubles With Functionalism.’
4 Although I shall limit my discussion to the effect of the argument from conceivability upon a functionalist account of sensation, it can be extended to similar objections to related views, such as Searle's attack on computational theories of understanding in ‘Minds, Brains, and Programs,’ reprinted in Haugeland, J., ed., Mind Design (Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books 1981) 282–306.Google Scholar
5 As, for example, Block's case of the population of China which duplicates his functional organization for an hour, in ‘Troubles With Functionalism,’ in Savage, 279.
6 An account of this phenomenon is given in Melzack, R., The Puzzle of Pain (New York: Basic Books 1973) 15–16.Google Scholar
7 In Davidson, D. and Harman, G., eds., Semantics of Natural Language (Boston, MA: D. Reidel 1972) 253–355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 In what follows, I shall be speaking indifferently of imaginability and conceivability, and will not attempt to distinguish the two. Some interesting remarks on this subject are made by Hart, W.D. in ‘Imagination, Necessity, and Abstract Objects,’ in Schirn, M., ed., Studies on Frege, Vol. 1 (Stuttgart, Germany: Frommann-Holzboog 1976) 161–92,Google Scholar in which he denies that we can imagine relations among abstract entities. But I shall not comment upon them here.
9 In what follows, I shall assume without discussion that Kripke's account of the semantics of natural kind terms is correct.
10 As reported in Block's ‘Troubles With Functionalism.’ in Savage, 287. See also Boyd's ‘Materialism Without Reduction.’ 84, in Block, N., ed., Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard 1981).Google Scholar
11 In ‘Troubles With Functionalism,’ Savage, 287.
12 This view about conceivability owes much to conversations with Tamara Horowitz.
13 As stated in Nagel, T., ‘What is it Like to be a Bat?’, Philosophical Review 83 (October 1974) 435–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14 E.g., Lycan, W.G., in ‘Form, Function, and Feel,’ Journal of Philosophy 78 (January 1981) 24–50,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Dennett, in conversation.
15 I am indebted to Hartry Field for extensive discussions of these issues and comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I also thank Ned Block, Barbara Herman, Brian Loar, Thomas Ricketts, and Stephen Schiffer for extremely helpful comments on various earlier drafts.
