PHIL 2270H Lecture 7: Lecture 7 - Functionalism (The Nature of Mental States)
7 Feb 2019
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Similar to place"s idea of the identity theory. It isn"t supposed to be true by definition, or conceptually true. Rather, its to be treated as a possible empirical reduction: water is h2o i. e. water is nothing more than h2o, light is electromagnetic radiation, temperature is mean kinetic energy. Not to be dismissed on the grounds that we can only establish correlations between conscious states and brain states: the thesis may have explanatory power, we should dismiss is because there"s a better hypothesis available. I shall, in short, argue that pain is not a brain state, in the sense of a physical- chemical state of brain (or even the whole nervous system), but another kind of sate entirely. I propose the hypothesis that pain is a functional state of a whole organism . Functionalism pains are other conscious states are functional states. Transitions from certain causes or inputs to certain effects of outputs.
