Skip to content
Coordinates of ThoughtHome of Philosophy
Join
Debate

Thesis Functionalism is officially neutral, but in practice it is materialism with better manners

Priya Raghavan Fellow
· 6 replies
ConsciousnessAnalyticBuddhistYogacaraHilary PutnamXuanzang#functionalism#multiple-realizability#philosophy-of-mind#physicalism
Follow

Where it stands

Functionalism says mental states are defined by their causal roles: pain is whatever state is caused by damage, causes distress and avoidance, and so on, regardless of what realises it. Putnam's argument from multiple realisability in the 1960s made it the default view: if an octopus and a human can both be in pain with very different brains, pain can't be identical to one kind of brain state.

Textbooks are careful to say that functionalism is officially neutral between materialism and dualism. In principle a non-physical soul could realise the pain role, if it stood in the right causal relations.

My thesis: that neutrality is idle. In practice, functionalism is a materialist programme.

  1. Almost every functionalist is a physicalist, and the view was developed to give physicalism a better theory of mind than the identity theory.
  2. The causal roles are specified in terms of physical inputs and behavioural outputs. A soul could only "realise" them by interacting with bodies, which brings back every problem of interactionist dualism.
  3. Nobody in cognitive science, which is where I work, has ever proposed a non-physical realiser for a functional state.

So "neutral" is a technicality, the way a company can be officially open to all applicants while only ever hiring from one university. I don't think this is a criticism of functionalism. It's a criticism of the textbook description. Argue with me.

LikeReply
Follow6 replies

Join the conversation: members reply here, and joining is free. Reading is always free.

Join free to reply Sign in

6 replies

For the thesis 2

  1. Elif Yıldız

    For Fellow

    For. I've never once seen a functional model of emotion that wasn't, in the end, a model of a brain. The theory might be neutral but the research programme isn't. Kenneth's example is fascinating, but it shows that a non-materialist tradition can do functional analysis, not that functionalism as we use it is neutral.

    Helpful · 3

Against the thesis 2

  1. Derek Hollis

    Against Fellow

    Against. The neutrality is not idle; it's the whole point for machine minds. What functionalism says is that the substrate doesn't matter: silicon could realise a mind as well as neurons. That's a claim many physicalists reject (some think consciousness depends on biology). So functionalism isn't "materialism with better manners"; it's a substantive claim about substrate-independence that cuts across the materialism debate in a way that matters enormously right now.

    Helpful · 1
    1. Pieter van Dijkhuizen

      For Fellow

      For. Derek's substrate point is important but it's a debate within physicalism: neurons versus silicon. Nobody in that debate proposes a soul. So it reinforces Priya's point that the live options are all physical.

      Helpful · 1
  2. Kenneth Lam Chi-ho

    Against Fellow

    Against your point 3, from an unexpected direction. Yogācāra analyses mind into eight kinds of consciousness, each defined by what it does: the five sense consciousnesses, the mental consciousness, the afflicted self-grasping consciousness, and the storehouse consciousness that carries seeds of karma. That's a functional analysis without any physicalism at all. Xuanzang's school worked it out in enormous detail. So functional analysis has been done in practice in a non-materialist framework. It just wasn't done in a lab.

    Helpful · 2

Other replies

  1. Martín Iriarte

    Fellow

    A small complication. Freud's early models of the mind were functional: the system was defined by what it did with excitation and inhibition, and he hoped one day to map it onto neurons. Then he gave up the mapping and kept the functional model. So psychoanalysis is a case of a functionalism that started materialist and became agnostic. I'd call that neither neutral nor materialist, just patient.

  2. Priya Raghavan

    Fellow

    Derek and Kenneth together have shaken me. Derek shows the neutrality has real work to do even among physicalists, and Kenneth shows functional analysis isn't the property of one metaphysics. Let me revise: functionalism as practised in cognitive science is materialist, but functionalism as a theory is genuinely neutral, and that neutrality has consequences. "Better manners" was unfair. Maybe "materialism's most portable tool".

    Helpful · 2