© Michael Lacewing

Functionalism and the Mind-Body Problem

Michael Lacewingenquiries@alevelphilosophy.c

o.uk

Metaphysics of mind

• Substance: needs no other thing to exist

• Dualism: there are two sorts of substance, mind (or soul) and matter– Mental properties are properties of a mental substance

• Materialism: there is just one sort of thing, matter– Mental properties are properties of a material substance

Mental properties

• Substances can have different sorts of properties

• Property dualism: mental properties are not physical properties

• Type identity theory: mental properties are physical properties– Thinking a thought is exactly the same thing as certain neurones firing

Hmm…

Reduction

• Ontological reduction: the things in one domain (e.g. mental things) are identical with some of the things in another domain.

• Reduction: this makes the ‘reduced’ domain more intelligible

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.

Functionalism

• The property ‘having the function x’ can be realized by many different things, e.g. being a mousetrap, being a poison

• Mental properties/states are functional properties/states - 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)

Consciousness• Can consciousness be reduced to functions? The issue of ‘qualia’– Inverted spectrum– Absent qualia: the Chinese mind– Feelings aren’t functions

• Replies– could a state play exactly the functional role of pain and not feel like pain?

– Feelings are not just functions, but depend on physiological properties as well

Consciousness

• Appealing to physiology undermines multiple realizability.

• The point is: feelings can’t be reduced to anything else - property dualism

Searle’s Chinese Room

• Functionalism can’t distinguish a real mind from a simulation

• The Chinese room: input, output, rulebook

• Reply: wrong causal-functional roles identified; understanding is nothing more that interaction, but more complex than this

Mental causation

• Causation requires things to ‘happen’.

• ‘Things happening’ are events. A cause and its effect are both events, changes at a time (or over time) in the properties of objects.

• Like picking up the remote control

Properties and causes

• Events cause their effects in virtue of certain properties and not others.

• Is it because of its physical properties or because of its mental properties that a mental event causes its effects?

• The mental (functional) property is explained in terms of the causal powers of the physical properties

Picturing the problem

  

‘Ow!’

Mental event, e.g. pain=

Physical event, e.g. in brain

But physical property explains effect