Position
Functionalism
A mental state is what it is because of its causal role — its typical causes, its effects on other mental states, and its effects on behaviour — not because of what it is made of.
Classification
- Position level
- specific
- Domains
- Philosophy of Mind
Overview
Functionalism identifies a mental state by what it does rather than by what it is made of. Pain, on this view, is whatever state is typically caused by bodily damage, produces distress and the wish to be rid of it, and leads to wincing and guarding the injury. Hilary Putnam gave the view its classic argument in 1967, against Type Identity Theory, which identifies pain with one kind of brain state: humans, octopuses, and perhaps machines feel pain while being built in very different ways, so pain is the role, and not any one physical thing that fills it.
Functionalism is officially neutral between materialism and dualism, because in principle a non-physical state could play the role, but it has been most attractive to materialists, for whom brain states fill the roles in us. Its standard difficulty is experience. It seems possible for a state to play exactly the role of seeing red while feeling like seeing green, and if so, the role leaves out what the experience is like.
Position on
Rival positions
- Type Identity Theory
Question scope: What Are Mental States?
References
- Hilary Putnam, 'Psychological Predicates', in W. H. Capitan and D. D. Merrill (eds.), Art, Mind, and Religion (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1967), pp. 37–48; reprinted as 'The Nature of Mental States'
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Functionalism, §1 (functionalism is officially neutral between materialism and dualism but has been particularly attractive to materialists) and §5.5.1 (the inverted qualia objection)
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Functionalism, opening paragraph and §1 (what makes something a mental state of a particular type does not depend on its internal constitution, but on the role it plays in the system of which it is a part)
- Hilary Putnam, 'Psychological Predicates' (1967), reprinted as 'The Nature of Mental States', which proposes pain as a functional state against the hypothesis that it is a brain state
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Multiple Realizability, §1.2 (Putnam (1967) challenges the brain-state theorists, who held that every mental kind is identical to some neural kind, with the variety of creatures that seem able to feel pain)