Functionalism

Functionalism is a view in philosophy of mind that attempts to resolve the Multiple Realizability Theorem with psychological physicalism.

NOTES

Functionalism

1. Psychological physicalism: In philosophy of mind, only physical things exist
2. Psychological discourse (terms relating to the mind like "want" or "pain") refer to whatever takes an input and assigns an output
   1. E.g., "I want to surf" refers to whatever in me takes the input "seeing good waves" and assigns the output "go surfing"
   2. E.g., "I am in pain" refers to whatever in me takes the input "gets pinched" and assigns the output "winces and says ouch"
3. 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"
4. So, the same mind state can be in very different beings
5. Psychological discourse covers a wide range of things in a way that physical discourse can't
6. 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

.