IS FUNCTIONALISM STILL USEFUL?

IS FUNCTIONALISM STILL USEFUL?



IS FUNCTIONALISM STILL USEFUL?

Introduction

Functionalism is one of the major proposals that have been offered as solutions to the mind/body problem. Solutions to the mind/body problem usually try to answer questions such as: What is the ultimate nature of the mental? At the most general level, what makes a mental state mental? Or more specifically, what do thoughts have in common in virtue of which they are thoughts? That is, what makes a thought a thought? What makes a pain a pain? Cartesian Dualism said the ultimate nature of the mental was to be found in a special mental substance. Behaviorism identified mental states with behavioral dispositions (Gouldner, 1971). Functionalism holds most simply, that mental states are brain states: those mental states are constituted by their causal relations to one another and to sensory inputs and behavioral outputs.

Discussion

Functionalism is one of the major theoretical developments of Twentieth Century analytic philosophy, and provides the conceptual underpinnings of much work in cognitive science. In more detail, functionalism is the view that the physical realization of a functional component is not, in some sense, its essence. Rather, what makes a functional component the type it is is characterized in terms of its role in relating inputs to outputs and its relations to other functional components (Parsons, 1937. Functionalism says that mental states are understood by their relations to (a) their sensory stimulation or input, (b) other inner states, and (c) their behavior effects. It is not a meterialistic theory, but can be seen as compatible with the spirit of materialism.

Emergence of functionalism coinsured with the meteoric rise of interest in computation computing machines in the 1950s and 1960s. The hardware/software distinction, borrowed from computer science, is a useful metaphor to explain the difference between the bodily occupant and mental event experienced. When we consider the computational operations a computing machine performs, we abstract it from its hardware. Computational devises differ in many ways (for example speed, reliability and cost) but all carry out the same kinds of computation.

For this reason, when we take of computations (as Heil puts it, the manipulations of symbols in accordance with formal rules), we abstract from the material device performing them. And so in doing, we characterize the behavior of computing devices as a 'higher level'. In Heil's view, minds can be considered in roughly the same way. A mind is a device capable of performing particular sorts of operation. States of mind resemble computational states, to the extent that they are shareable, in principle, by any number of materials (and perhaps immaterial) systems. To talk of minds and mental operations is to abstract from whatever realizes them: it is to talk at a higher level (Heil, 2001).

Functionalism may be contrasted both to behaviorism and identity theory in its account of mental events. Behaviorism defines mental events solely in relation to sensory input and behavioral output. Unfortunately, this includes any input/output device, such as a mousetrap, to which we would ...