© Michael Lacewing

Functionalism and consciousness

Michael Lacewingenquiries@alevelphilosophy.c

o.uk

Functionalism

• Mental states are ‘functional’ states. We can analyse them in terms of inputs and outputs.

• Inputs include perceptual stimuli and other mental states; outputs include behaviour and other mental states.

• Functional states are not identical to physical states. The property ‘having the function x’ can be realized by many different things, e.g. being a mousetrap, being a poison.

Multiple realizability

• Mental properties cannot be identical to physical properties because the same mental property can be ‘realized by’ different physical properties, e.g. the brain states that relate to pain are different in different species, but pain is the same mental state.

Token identity

• Mental properties/states are functional properties/states - Functionalism is compatible with physicalism or dualism - it doesn’t say what type of thing engages in functional relations

• If a physical state plays a certain causal-functional role, then it is a mental state

• Token identity: each mental state is nothing more than a physical state (playing a certain function)– The physical state has physical properties and it has

functional properties– Functional properties are not identical to any set of

physical properties

Consciousness

• Can consciousness be reduced to functions? Functions are relations between states.

• What makes a mental state conscious compared to one that isn’t?

• A mental state is conscious if the person is conscious of it.

Consciousness

• Rosenthal: a mental state, x, is conscious if you have an (unconscious) ‘higher-order thought’ about that mental state, roughly to the effect that ‘I am having state x’

• But surely the consciousness of pain is not the thought that I am in pain - if anything, you judge ‘I am in pain’, because of how the pain feels.

Qualia

• Phenomenal consciousness - ‘what it is like’

• Almost everyone agrees there are phenomenal properties - but they disagree on what they are - e.g. are they qualia?

• Qualia are intrinsic, non-representational properties– Intrinsic: not relational– Representation - involves reliable causation– Would the smell of coffee be the same smell if

it wasn’t caused by coffee?

Functionalism and qualia

• If qualia exist, then functionalism cannot be true of phenomenal consciousness– There is more to pain than just what

causes it and what it causes

• Absent qualia: the Chinese mind• Inverted qualia

Replies

• Phenomenal properties are functional: there are fine-grained functional differences in absent/inverted qualia cases

• Phenomenal properties are physical + functional

• Objection: this undermines multiple realizability– Is it metaphysically impossible for a different

physical system to realize pain? – Phenomenal properties are distinct (property

dualism)