Functionalism is a view in philosophy of mind that attempts to resolve the Multiple Realizability Theorem with psychological physicalism.
NOTES
Functionalism
- Psychological physicalism: In philosophy of mind, only physical things exist
- Psychological discourse (terms relating to the mind like "want" or "pain") refer to whatever takes an input and assigns an output
- E.g., "I want to surf" refers to whatever in me takes the input "seeing good waves" and assigns the output "go surfing"
- E.g., "I am in pain" refers to whatever in me takes the input "gets pinched" and assigns the output "winces and says ouch"
- MRT: The same functional organization can be 'realized by' multiple different physical systems
- functional organization- a complete description of all the input-output assignments done by a "mind"
- So, the same mind state can be in very different beings
- Psychological discourse covers a wide range of things in a way that physical discourse can't
- So, Non-reductivism: Psychological discourse can't be done away with in favor of physical discourse, even though the things mentioned in psychological discourse aren't real
- O1: the same psychological state can be realized by different functional organizations
Further Reading
Hilary Putnam has a lot of his work on this subject collected in Philosophical Papers volume 2: Mind, Language, and Reality.
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