Functionalism
"Functionalism" is one of the major proposals that have been offered as solutions to the mind-body problem. Solutions to the mind-body problem usually try to answer questions such as: What is the ultimate nature of the mental? At the most general level, what makes a mental state mental? Or more specifically, what do thoughts have in common in virtue of which they are thoughts? That is, what makes a thought a thought? What makes a pain a pain? Cartesian dualism said the ultimate nature of the mental was to be found in a special mental substance. Behaviorism identified mental states with behavioral dispositions; physicalism, in its most influential version, identifies mental states with brain states. Functionalism says that mental states are constituted by their causal relations to one another and to sensory inputs and behavioral outputs. Functionalism is one of the major theoretical developments of twentieth-century analytic philosophy, and provides the conceptual underpinnings of much work in cognitive science.
Functionalism has three distinct sources. First, Hilary Putnam and Jerry Fodor saw mental states in terms of an empirical computational theory of the mind. Second, John Jamieson Carswell Smart's "topic neutral" analyses led David M. Armstrong and David Lewis to a functionalist analysis of mental concepts.
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