The Self-Consciousness Argument: Functionalism and the Corruption of Content

What exactly is the relationship between physical and mental properties?∗ On this question materialist philosophers and cognitive scientists have a very limited range of basic alternatives (short of rejecting mental properties as real properties; cf. Churchland 1981). Broadly speaking, these alternatives are: some form of behaviorism, some form of the identity theory,1 and some form of functionalism. In recent years, however, compelling criticisms have been made against the various forms of behaviorism and of the identity theory—leaving functionalism, in one or another of its many guises, as the most promising alternative upon which philosophers and cognitive scientists can pin their materialist aspirations. Today, functionalism unifies and animates much of materialist philosophy of mind and cognitive science, at least as its tacit conceptual framework. Broadly functionalist sentiments have been articulated at one time or another by a long list of notable philosophers and cognitive scientists. Here is a small sampling of the philosophers: Lewis (1966), Putnam (1970), Harman (1973), Fodor (1981), Lycan (1987), Shoemaker (1981), Jackson (2003). And a small sampling of the cognitive scientists: Pylyshyn (1984), Gardner (1985), Minsky