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PPE Notes Philosophy of Mind Notes

Functionalism The Identity Theory Notes

Updated Functionalism The Identity Theory Notes

Philosophy of Mind Notes

Philosophy of Mind

Approximately 83 pages

These notes provide both a comprehensive introduction to the philosophy of mind as well as more advanced topics and literature surveys.
They are clear, logically organised and easy to read but do not compromise on detail or accuracy. They include summaries of arguments from both well-known and more obscure texts and authors, as well as the most important direct quotes from the text, along with critical analysis.
I also compare and contrast different authors' approaches and arguments wherever p...

The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Philosophy of Mind Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:

The Identity Theory & Functionalism

‘The Causal Theory of the Mind’ – David Armstrong

  • “The present state of scientific knowledge makes it probable that we can give a purely physico-chemical account of man’s body. It seems increasingly likely that the body and the brain of man are constituted and work according to exactly the same principles as those physical principles that govern other, non-organic, matter.”

    • “The differences between a stone and a human body appear to lie solely in the extremely complex material set-up that is to be found in the living body and which is absent in the stone.”

    • “Furthermore, there is rather strong evidence that it is the state of our brain that completely determines the state of our consciousness and our mental state generally.”

  • Armstrong thinks a natural conclusion to draw from this is that mental states are identical with brain states.

    • This is intelligible once we have the correct analysis of mental concepts:

  • “The concept of a mental state essentially involves, and is exhausted by, the concept of a state that is apt to be the cause of certain effects or apt to be the effect of certain causes.”

    • Analogous to something like the concept of poisons.

  • We need to introduce the concepts of purpose, belief, and perception together or not at all. This is not circular but shows they are interdependent.

    • Holism of the mental?

  • Instrospective awareness should be analysed as a kind of inner perception – a “mapping of the causal factors themselves.”

  • Causal analysis is also good because it helps explain intentional inexistence: can ‘point towards’ something (as a rocket can point to space) which it will only reach in the ‘normal conditions’.

    • “For the mechanism to operate successfully, some device will be required by which the developing situation is “mapped” in the mechanism.”

      • This is an elementary analogue of perception.

  • Phenomenal qualities are qualities of what is perceived, not of the perception itself. So the causal analysis doesn’t ‘leave something out’ in this sense.

    • Maybe with emotions the phenomenal qualities belong to them rather than to something external. But it isn’t clear anyway that there are such qualities associated with emotions.

  • How is it possible that secondary qualities could be purely physical properties of the objects they are qualities of?

  • Thinks although secondary qualities appear to be simple, they are not in fact simple (their simplicity is epistemological but not ontological).

Excerpt from ‘Troubles with Functionalism’ – Ned Block – reread?

  • Broad characterisation of functionalism: “each type of mental state is a state consisting of a disposition to act in certain ways and to have certain mental states, given certain sensory inputs and certain mental states.”

  • “Functionalism replaces behaviorism’s “sensory inputs” with “sensory inputs and mental states”; and functionalism replaces behaviourism’s “disposition to act” with “disposition to act and have certain mental states.”

  • Functionalists individuate mental states causally.

  • Might be worth making an explicit argument for the claim that if functionalism is true, physicalism is false:

    • Turing machines can be realized by a wide variety of physical devices.

    • So if e.g. pain is a functional state, it cannot, e.g., be identical to a brain state, because creatures without brains can in theory realize the same Turing machine as creatures with brains.

  • Functionalism identifies mental state S with S’s Ramsey functional correlate with respect to a common-sense psychological theory; Psychofunctionalism identifies S with S’s Ramsey functional correlate with respect to a scientific psychological theory.”

  • Block thinks functionalism gives too many things mentality.

    • Population of China brain simulation example.

  • “In describing an object as a Turing machine, one draws a line between the inside and the outside.”

Excerpt from ‘The ‘Mental’ and the ‘Physical’’ – Herbert Feigl

  • Wants to identify ‘raw feels’ with neural processes.

  • It would be a category mistake to attempt a neurophysiological identification of the intentionality of mind.

  • “[T]he crux of the mind-body problem consists in the interpretation of the relation between raw feels and the neural processes.”

  • “The states of direct experience which conscious human beings “live through,” and those which we confidently ascribe to some of the higher animals, are identical with certain (presumably configurational) aspects of the neural processes in those organisms.”

    • This identification is to be empirically justified.

  • “Privacy is capable of public (intersubjective) description, and the objects of intersubjective science can be evidenced by data of private experience.”

From Philosophy of Mind – John Heil

  • Identity theory might be more parsimonious than at least dualistic theories.

    • Mental properties are identified with physical properties.

  • You can have property dualism as well as substance dualism.

  • Philosophers “all too often assume without argument that every predicate capable of meaningful application to an object designates a property.”

  • Leibniz’s law: Strict identity is selfsameness. If a and b are strictly identical (a=b), then any property of a must be a property of b, and vice versa.”

  • How do we know when we have ‘found’ a property?

  • “[U]ndergoing an experience is one thing; observing the undergoing of an experience (a distinct experience) is something else again. The qualities of these will certainly be different.”

  • “The rhetorical punch of the dualist’s contention that it is just obvious that qualities of experiences differ from brain qualities relies heavily on our tacitly identifying, as Leibniz apparently does, qualities of experiences with qualities of objects experienced.”

  • Talk of ‘access’ to one’s sensory experiences is misleading. “Your awareness of the experiences is constituted, at least in part, by your having it.”

  • Now more onto functionalism:

  • “To talk of minds and mental operations is to abstract from...

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