Functionalism is the idea that the thing that makes psychological discourse true is that there is something with the same functional organization as the mind, where the mind is understood as an abstract theory rather than a real thing. The Liberalism Objection claims that there are counterexamples to this idea. The most interesting counterexample is Ned Block's Chinese Brain thought experiment.
NOTES
- Important presuppositions:
- Psychological physicalism
- Psychological discourse is true for humans
- MRT: Psychological discourse is true for a set of non-human things, too
- Psychological discourse is false or meaningless for the compliment of that set
- Functionalism: the same functional organization
- Definitions:
- c-mind: common sense mind
- what people typically mean by mind
- not identical to the brain
- f-mind: functionalist mind
- anything that has the same functional organization as the c-mind
- c-mind: common sense mind
- (Psychological physicalism) The c-mind is fictional
- But, the fiction has a structure/functional organization to it
- The human brain has the same functional organization as the c-mind
- So, by definition, it has an f-mind
- When we use the word mind, we should mean f-mind
- So, humans have a mind
- Definitions:
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- Arguments for (5)
- A1: it's useful
- We have certain goals as humans that we don't as sacks of atoms
- O1 (Liberalism Objection): other things could realize that same functional organization that we wouldn’t say have a mind
- S1: Chinese brain
- R1: technically, it is a mind
- O1: from pragmatic definition
- The word 'mind' was defined pragmatically
- For the same word to apply, it must be useful in the same way
- But, it would not be useful to identify the Chinese brain as having a mind
- If it's not useful to claim the Chinese brain has a mind, but it has an f-mind, then having an f-mind isn't sufficient for having a mind
- O2: redefining words leads to confusion
- O1: from pragmatic definition
- O2: the headache
- A1: it's useful
- Arguments for (5)
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