Category Archive

I’ve been hearing a lot about functionalism recently. It’s in Frank Jackson’s fascinating From Metaphysics to Ethics. It was mentioned in an M Litt seminar on the Philosophy of Film given by Hans Vodder today. Of course it crops up in the Philosophy of Mind now and again. I’ve had a few thoughts about these occurrences. Here they are, in no particular order.

It seems to me that ‘functionalism’ can be used to gesture towards several sorts of idea. Of course it gets turned into specific well-worked theories as well, but I’m not so much interested in the details. The first thing that it’s used to gesture to is the identification of the elements of some system by the role they play in that system. Whatever it is that plays the role of a X is a X, or has the property that allows it to realise Xs role. I think that this is the main thought that goes on in the cases I’ve recently come across. It certainly seems to be what supports the ‘multiple realisability’ claims that are taken to be the main selling point of functionalism. At least they were in Hans’ talk.

There is another thought that often seems to be operating, and that is functionalism applied not to parts of systems but to whole systems. That is the thought that if a system behaves like a X, then it’s an X. This is what is being got at if functionalism is associated with the Turing test for intelligence.

Both of the above are just applications of the term to slightly different things. They’re not likely to be confused and so there’s no problem.

Finally there is the thought that functionalism implies a level of mutual interconnectedness. This is part of what is going on in Jackson. I think this is the furthest from the classical usage. These cases might be better understood in terms of ‘reflective equilibrium’ or ‘accommodation and negotiation’. At least I think so.