Functional Realization

This paper integrates type functionalism with the Kairetic account to develop context-specific models for explaining mental states, particularly pain, across different species and systems. By employing context-dependent mapping f_c, we ensure cohesive causal explanations while accommodating multiple realizations of mental states. The framework identifies context subsets C_i and maps them to similarity subspaces S_i, capturing the unique physiological, biochemical, and computational mechanisms underlying pain in different entities such as humans, octopi, and AI systems. This approach highlights the importance of causal (...) relations in defining mental states and preserves their functional roles across diverse contexts. Furthermore, the paper incorporates elements of token functionalism by recognizing species-specific realizations of mental states. By acknowledging the unique representations of mental states within different species and systems, the framework provides a nuanced understanding of how similar functional roles can be fulfilled by diverse physical substrates. This synthesis of type and token functionalism enhances our explanatory power and coherence in addressing the complex nature of mental states. The resulting framework offers a robust tool for analyzing and understanding mental phenomena, with significant implications for cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and artificial intelligence. By maintaining the functional roles of mental states while accommodating their multiple realizations, this approach not only advances theoretical understanding but also opens new avenues for practical applications in cross-species empathy, AI ethics, and the development of context-aware cognitive models. (shrink)

Are acids natural kinds? Or are they merely relevant kinds? Although acidity has been one of the oldest and most important concepts in chemistry, surprisingly little ink has been spilled on the natural kind question. I approach the question from the perspective of microstructural essentialism. After explaining why both Brønsted acids and Lewis acids are considered functional kinds, I address the challenges of multiple realization and multiple determination. Contra Manafu and Hendry, I argue that the stereotypical properties of acids are (...) not multiply realized. Instead, given the equivalence between the proton-donating and electron-accepting mechanisms of Brønsted and Lewis, respectively, I show that acidity as a property type can be identified with a unique microstructural property, namely the presence of a LUMO or other low energy empty orbital. In doing so, I defend the view that the Lewis theory encompasses Brønsted--Lowry, and that all Brønsted acids are also Lewis acids. Contra Hacking and Chang, I thus maintain that the different concepts of acidity do not crosscut, and that the hierarchy requirement is met. Finally, by characterizing natural kinds as powerful objects and by adopting a dispositional view of functions, I illustrate how the microessentialist can make sense of the latent and relational character of most acids. In sum, I contend that acids are genuine natural kinds, even for the microstructural essentialist. (shrink)

This is a chapter of the planned monograph "Out of Nowhere: The Emergence of Spacetime in Quantum Theories of Gravity", co-authored by Nick Huggett and Christian Wüthrich and under contract with Oxford University Press. (More information at www<dot>beyondspacetime<dot>net.) This chapter introduces the problem of emergence of spacetime in quantum gravity. It introduces the main philosophical challenge to spacetime emergence and sketches our preferred solution to it.

Functionalist theories of consciousness attribute consciousness to a system when it displays specific patterns of behaviors and state changes in response to perceptual events and its prior state. These patterns can be disrupted in ways that would intuitively not preclude consciousness. The challenge for functionalists is to explain why pattern-disrupting influences do not remove consciousness. This paper explores this issue in connection with a simple case. Bombs may make it unlikely that nearby brains will manifest typical behaviors. Non-exploding bombs do (...) not preclude consciousness within systems in their vicinity no matter how likely they are to go off. The challenge is trickier than it may first appear: this paper surveys possible responses and raises issues for each. (shrink)

This paper aims to improve on Michael Lynch’s functionalist account of truth-grounding. According to Lynch, truth is grounded in another (non-generic) alethic property when the latter has all the conceptually essential features of truth. However, this view faces a problem raised by Marian David (“Lynch’s Functionalist Theory of Truth”) and Crispin Wright (“A Plurality of Pluralisms”), which is that some conceptually essential features of truth are not possessed by the properties usually taken to ground it (such as correspondence and superwarrant), (...) so that Lynch’s account cannot allow truth to be grounded in these properties. In response to this objection, I propose to modify Lynch’s account by restricting the range of truth’s essential features that a truth-grounding property must have to the class of what I call the “bearer-centered” features of truth. They are those features whose possession by truth amounts to certain facts about how propositions bearing truth behave. The resultant account then is that truth is grounded in a property when the latter has all the essential and bearer-centered features of truth. This account is immune to the David–Wright objection because the features they mention do not belong to the class of bearer-centered features. Also, this account is well-motivated by some principled reasons. The account thus serves as a viable functionalist account of truth-grounding. (shrink)

Functionalism in biology is the view that with respect to organic form, structure is explained in terms of function, and structuralism is the view that structure is explained independently of function. Recent work on the topic has focused on ‘meta-level’ question such as, how should functionalism and structuralism be understood? What sort of positions are they? How if at all can they be justified? And what role to they play in biology? I have argued (Boucher 2015) that they should be (...) understood as philosophical stances sensu van Fraassen (2002): clusters of attitudes, values, goals and commitments, rather than factual beliefs. In making this case I adapt van Fraassen’s argument for treating materialism as a stance in this sense. In both cases, I suggest, only the stance interpretation can do justice to the manifest historical continuity of these views, and the fact that they have persisted through revolutionary changes in theory. In her recent book (2023), Rose Novick offers a critique of my view, and suggests that functionalism and structuralism should be construed rather as explanatory strategies. This can, she claims, capture the historical continuity of the views, while also having the virtue of showing how function-structure disputes can be empirically decided, something the stance account struggles with. In this paper I defend my view against Novick’s critique, while extending and developing it. I argue that Novick’s conception of explanatory strategies is too minimalist to capture the forms of functionalist and structuralist reasoning in question, and propose an expanded, richer and, I claim, more adequate explanatory schema for functionalism and structuralism that builds in value judgments characteristic of stances. And I respond to Novick’s normative claim that even if functionalism and structuralism have in fact taken the form of stances, it would be better for biology if such stances did not exist. (shrink)

What is the relation between the token powers of higher-level occurrences and the token powers of more basic physical occurrences? In related but somewhat different ways, Sydney Shoemaker and Jessica Wilson argue that the former are a proper subset of the latter, and that this can provide a viable account of higher-level causation within a nonreductive physicalist metaphysic. Contra Wilson, I argue that various accounts of how higher-level properties metaphysically depend on physical properties do not support, and do not comport (...) well with, the view that the token powers of the former are a proper subset of the token powers of latter. I address an argument for thinking that lower-level occurrences have all the token powers of the higher-level occurrences that depend on them, and argue that it is not compelling. Finally, I consider Wilson’s distinction between “weak” and “strong” emergence, and it might be reformulated, given the previous results. (shrink)

Ned Block posed his thought experiment of the homunculi-headed robot in his paper ‘Troubles with Functionalism’ to try to defeat functionalism, a leading theory within the philosophy of mind, which concerns the nature of mental states. The robot was meant to defeat functionalism by showing how functionalism attributes mental states inappropriately, as beings such as the robot would have had mental states under functionalism, despite possessing no qualia. Block’s argument rests upon two incorrect assumptions of qualia that this paper exposes (...) as being incorrect. Firstly, Block presupposes that due to qualia being an innate part of human beings, it cannot be accounted for under functionalism. Secondly, Block applies too narrow a perspective onto what qualia can be, and where and how it can subsist, to be considered valid. I attack these two incorrect presuppositions to exhibit how Block’s robot cannot be considered to have defeated functionalism. (shrink)

This chapter will consider three types of functionalism: Malinowski’s absolute functionalism, Parsons’s structural functionalism, and Merton’s relative functionalism. The text delivers a comprehensive and insightful exploration of these three influential thinkers by dedicating ample space to each of them, their concepts, and fundamental theories.The last section is devoted to Luhmann’s system theory and the explanation of twelve of his fundamental concepts: “self-reference,” “contingency,” “system/environment,” “code,” “complexity,” “selection,” “risk,” “autopoiesis,” “differentiation,” “double contingency,” and “communication.” Luhmann’s most difficult concepts will be clarified (...) through some easy-to-understand examples. (shrink)

It has been argued that nonreductive physicalism’s problems with mental causation disappear if we abandon the intuitive but naïve production-based conception of causation in favor of one based on counterfactual dependence and difference-making. In recent years, this response has been thoroughly developed and defended by James Woodward, who contends that Kim’s causal exclusion argument, widely thought to be the most serious threat to nonreductive mental causation, cannot even be given a coherent formulation within Woodward’s preferred interventionist framework. But Woodward has, (...) even more recently, defended a pair of necessary conditions on mental causation and higher-order causation more generally, and it is here that the interventionist framework proves less friendly to nonreductive mental causation. Functionalism is arguably the most important species of nonreductive physicalism concerning specifically mental properties, but, as I argue, functional properties fail both of Woodward’s tests of causal relevance, one of them in two different ways. The problem, moreover, seems unique to functionalism, for other types of higher-order properties appear to pass Woodward’s tests. If functionalism faces defeat even in such friendly territory, its problems with mental causation are not an artifact of naïve metaphysics. They run deep. (shrink)

The concept of the mind in philosophy encompasses a diverse range of theories and perspectives, examining its immaterial nature, unitary function, self-activity, self-consciousness, and persistence despite bodily changes. This paper explores the attributes of the mind, addressing classical materialism, dualism, and behaviorism, along with contemporary theories like functionalism and computational functionalism. Key philosophical debates include the mind-body problem, the subjectivity of mental states, and the epistemological and conceptual challenges in understanding other minds. Contrasting views from Aristotle, Descartes, Wittgenstein, and modern (...) philosophers like U.T. Place, Gilbert Ryle, and Hilary Putnam are analyzed. The paper also discusses the implications of these theories on our understanding of mental phenomena, consciousness, and the nature of human experience. (shrink)

The prospect of consciousness in artificial systems is closely tied to the viability of functionalism about consciousness. Even if consciousness arises from the abstract functional relationships between the parts of a system, it does not follow that any digital system that implements the right functional organization would be conscious. Functionalism requires constraints on what it takes to properly implement an organization. Existing proposals for constraints on implementation relate to the integrity of the parts and states of the realizers of roles (...) in a functional organization. This paper presents and motivates three novel integrity constraints on proper implementation not satisfied by current neural network models. It is proposed that for a system to be conscious, there must be a straightforward relationship between the material entities that compose the system and the realizers of functional roles, that the realizers of the functional roles must play their roles due to internal causal powers, and that they must continue to exist over time. (shrink)

Are acids natural kinds? Or are they merely relevant kinds? Although acidity has been one of the oldest and most important concepts in chemistry, surprisingly little ink has been spilled on the natural kind question. I approach the question from the perspective of microstructural essentialism. After explaining why both Brønsted acids and Lewis acids are considered functional kinds, I address the challenges of multiple realization and multiple determination. Contra Manafu and Hendry, I argue that the stereotypical properties of acids are (...) not multiply realized. Instead, given the equivalence between the proton-donating and electron-accepting mechanisms of Brønsted and Lewis, respectively, I show that acidity as a property type can be identified with a unique microstructural property, namely the presence of a LUMO or other low energy empty orbital. In doing so, I defend the view that the Lewis theory encompasses Brønsted–Lowry, and that all Brønsted acids are also Lewis acids. Contra Hacking and Chang, I thus maintain that the different concepts of acidity do not crosscut, and that the hierarchy requirement is met. Finally, by characterizing natural kinds as powerful objects and by adopting a dispositional view of functions, I illustrate how the microessentialist can make sense of the latent and relational character of most acids. In sum, I contend that acids are genuine natural kinds, even for the microstructural essentialist. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that absences pose a challenge to our understanding of physicalism that has not been properly appreciated. I do this by setting out a thought experiment involving a being in whom absence properties occupy the causal roles that functionalists take to define mental properties, in which case these absence properties realize the being’s mental properties. Such a being should be compatible with the truth of physicalism, I argue, even though its mental properties are neither themselves physical (...) properties nor are they realized/grounded in physical properties—instead, they are realized/grounded in (nonphysical) absence properties. I argue that the case serves as a counterexample to leading formulations of physicalism that appeal to realization or grounding, but not to standard supervenience-based formulations of physicalism, because the latter typically include negative truths in their supervenience base in addition to physical truths. I show how realization- and grounding-based formulations of physicalism might be revised to handle the problem, but also recommend that we rethink how we understand physicalism and the role that negative entities can play for physicalists. (shrink)

Artifacts remain nebulous entities, notwithstanding their relevance to various domains such as engineering, art and archeology. In this paper we investigate the interconnection between artifacts and realizable entities, as illustrated by dispositions, functions, and roles within the framework of the upper ontology Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). More concretely, we propose the notions of canonical artifact (something that is intentionally produced for some purpose) and usefact (something that is intended to be used for some non-original purpose) which can correspond to various (...) usages of the term “artifact”. We also characterize them in terms of intentional realizable entities and novel realizable entities: material canonical artifacts and material usefacts can be analyzed in terms of novel intentional realizable entities and a special kind of non-novel intentional realizable entities, respectively. (shrink)

The concept of the mind in philosophy encompasses a diverse range of theories and perspectives, examining its immaterial nature, unitary function, self-activity, self-consciousness, and persistence despite bodily changes. This paper explores the attributes of the mind, addressing classical materialism, dualism, and behaviorism, along with contemporary theories like functionalism and computational functionalism. Key philosophical debates include the mind-body problem, the subjectivity of mental states, and the epistemological and conceptual challenges in understanding other minds. Contrasting views from Aristotle, Descartes, Wittgenstein, and modern (...) philosophers like U.T. Place, Gilbert Ryle, and Hilary Putnam are analyzed. The paper also discusses the implications of these theories on our understanding of mental phenomena, consciousness, and the nature of human experience. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that if tacit knowledge of grammar is analyzable in functional‐computational terms, then it cannot ground linguistic meaning, structure, or sound. If to know or cognize a grammar is to be in a certain computational state playing a certain functional role, there can be no unique grammar cognized. Satisfying the functional conditions for cognizing a grammar G entails satisfying those for cognizing many grammars disagreeing with G about expressions' semantic, phonetic, and syntactic values. This threatens the (...) Chomskyan view that expressions have such values for speakers because they cognize grammars assigning them those values. For if this is true, semantics, syntax, and phonology must be indeterminate, thanks to the indeterminacy of grammar‐cognizing (qua functional‐computational state). So, the fact that a speaker cognizes a grammar cannot explain the determinate character of their language. (shrink)

This is the first of four papers prompted by a recent literature about a doctrine dubbed spacetime functionalism. This paper gives our general framework for discussing functionalism. Following Lewis, we take it as a species of reduction. We start by expounding reduction in a broadly Nagelian sense. Then we argue that Lewis’ functionalism is an improvement on Nagelian reduction.This paper sets the scene for the other papers, which will apply our framework to theories of space and time. (So those papers (...) address the space and time literature: both recent and older, and physical as well as philosophical literature. But the four papers can be read independently.)Overall, we come to praise spacetime functionalism, not to bury it. But we criticize the recent philosophical literature for failing to stress: functionalism’s being a species of reduction (in particular: reduction of chrono-geometry to the physics of matter and radiation);functionalism’s idea, not just of specifying a concept by its functional role, but of specifying several concepts simultaneously by their roles;functionalism’s providing bridge laws that are mandatory, not optional: they are statements of identity (or co-extension) that are conclusions of a deductive argument, rather than contingent guesses or verbal stipulations; and once we infer them, we have a reduction in a Nagelian sense.On the other hand, some of the older philosophical literature, and the mathematical physics literature, is faithful to these ideas (i) to (iii)—as are Torretti’s writings. (But of course, the word ‘functionalism’ is not used; and themes like simultaneous unique definition are not articulated.) Thus in various papers, falling under various research programmes, the unique definability of a chrono-geometric concept (or concepts) in terms of matter and radiation, and a corresponding bridge law and reduction, is secured by a precise theorem. Hence our desire to celebrate these results as rigorous renditions of spacetime functionalism. (shrink)

I consider a problem for functional reductionism, based on the following tension. Say that b is functionally reduced to a. On the one hand, a and b turn out to be identical, and identity is a symmetric relation. On the other hand, functional reductionism implies that a and b are asymmetrically related: if b is functionally reduced to a, then a is not functionally reduced to b. Thus, we ask: how can a and b be asymmetrically related if they are (...) the same thing? I propose a solution to this tension, by distinguishing between ontological levels and levels of description. (shrink)

According to the multiple realization argument, mental states or processes can be realized in diverse and heterogeneous physical systems; and that fact implies that mental state or process kinds cannot be identified with particular kinds of physical states or processes. More specifically, mental processes cannot be identified with brain processes. Moreover, the argument provides a general model for the autonomy of the special sciences. The multiple realization argument is widely influential, but over the last thirty years it has also faced (...) serious objections. Despite those objections, most philosophers regard the fact of multiple realization and the cogency of the multiple realization argument as plainly correct. Why is that? What is it about the multiple realization argument that makes it so resilient? One reason is that the multiple realization argument is deeply intertwined with a view that minds are, in some sense, computational. But we argue that the sense in which minds are computational does not support the conclusion that they are ipso facto multiply realized. We argue that the sense in which brains compute does not imply that brains implement multiply realizable computational processes, and it does not provide a general model for the autonomy of the special sciences. (shrink)

In this essay, I propose a functionalist theory of grounding (functionalist-grounding). Specifically, I argue that grounding is a second-order phenomenon that is realized by relations that play the noncausal explanatoriness role. I also show that functionalist-grounding can deal with a powerful challenge. Appeals to explanatory unificationism have been made to argue that the success of noncausal explanations does not depend on the existence of grounding relations. Against this, I argue that a systematization involving functionalist-grounding is superior to its anti-relational counterpart.

The standard event-causal theory of action says that an intentional action is caused in the right way by the right mental states. This view requires reductionism about agency. The causal role of the agent must be nothing over and above the causal contribution of the relevant mental event-causal processes. But commonsense finds this reductive solution to the “agent-mind problem”, the problem of explaining the relationship between agents and the mind, incredible. Where did the agent go? This paper suggests that this (...) challenge against event-causal reductionism is importantly related to debates about fundamentality. It also suggests that extant event-causal answers to the agent-mind problem, ones that suggest that part of an agent’s mind can stand proxy for the agent herself, fail against the challenge. It sketches an alternative reductive view that appeals to entity grounding. This view resolves the commonsense challenge and promises to be theoretically fruitful with respect to other longstanding problems with the event-casual view. The paper concludes with a burden-shifting argument against emergentist agent-causal theories and non-reductive event-causal theories of agency. (shrink)

Multiple realizability says that the same kind of mental states may be manifested by systems with very different physical constitutions. Putnam ( 1967 ) supposed it to be “overwhelmingly probable” that there exist psychological properties with different physical realizations in different creatures. But because function constrains possible physical realizers, this empirical bet is far less favorable than it might initially have seemed, especially when we take on board the richer picture of neural and brain function that neuroscience has been uncovering (...) over the past forty years, in which all sorts of brain activities play crucial roles beyond all-or-nothing electrical signaling. Because of its evolutionary history, the brain’s metabolic and informational processes are inextricably intertwined. The resulting complex integrated functions impose more constraints on possible realizers than the clean, single-purpose functions usually cited as examples in discussions of multiple realizability—with ramifications for the functionalist and computationalist foundations of cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

We present a novel reductive theory of type-identity physicalism, which is inspired by the foundations of statistical mechanics as a general theory of natural kinds. We show that all the claims mounted against type-identity physicalism in the literature don’t apply to Flat Physicalism, and moreover that this reductive theory solves many of the problems faced by the various non-reductive approaches including functionalism. In particular, we show that Flat Physicalism can account for the appearance of multiple realizability in the special sciences, (...) and that it gives a novel account of the genuine autonomy of the kinds and laws in the special sciences. We further show that the thesis of genuine multiple realization, which is compatible with all forms of non-reductive approaches including functionalism, implies what we call token-dualism; namely the idea that in every token there are non-physical facts, which may either be non-physical properties or some non-physical substance. In other words, we prove that non-reductive kinds necessarily assume non-reductive tokens, i.e., token dualism. Finally, we show that all forms of non-reductive approaches including functionalism imply a literally multi-leveled structure of reality. (shrink)

The paper replies to Matthew Rellihan’s recent criticism of Thomas Kroedel’s simple argument for downward causation. Rellihan argues that the simple argument equivocates between two notions of realizers of mental properties, namely total realizers and core realizers. According to Rellihan, one premise of the argument is false on each disambiguation. In response, this paper argues that the version of the argument in terms of total realizers is sound after all if we evaluate counterfactual conditionals about the non-occurrence of total realizers (...) correctly. (shrink)

Functionalism has become one of the predominant theories in the philosophy of mind, with its many merits supposedly including its capacity for precise formulation. The most common method to express this precise formulation is by means of the modified Ramsey sentence. In this article, I will apply work from the field of the philosophy of science to functionalism for the first time, examining how Newman’s objection undermines the Ramsey sentence as a means of formalising functionalism. I will also present a (...) formal variation on Newman’s objection through mathematical induction. Together, these proofs suggest that functionalism formalised by the Ramsey sentence trivially reduces to a kind of behaviourism plus a cardinality constraint on the number of relations holding between mental-relevant behaviours. As most functionalists see functionalism as a distinct theory of mind from behaviourism, this suggests that the modified Ramsey sentence cannot form a satisfactory formalism for functionalism. (shrink)

The functionalist theory of mind proposes to analyze mental states in terms of internal states of Turing machine, and states of the machine’s tape and head. In the paper, I perform a formal analysis of this approach. I define the concepts of behavioral equivalence of Turing machines, and of behavioral individuation of internal states. I prove a theorem saying that for every Turing machine T there exists a Turing machine T’ which is behaviorally equivalent to T, and all of whose (...) internal states of T’ can be behaviorally individuated. Finally, I discuss some applications of this theorem to computational theories of mind. (shrink)

Critical examination will be made firstly of the exclusion argument, famously developed by Jaegwon Kim, against nonreductive physicalism, and secondly of the identity solution as suggested by Kim himself for the exclusion problem allegedly prompted by his argument. I will argue that the argument is not so much of a trouble for nonreductive physicalism as Kim claims it to be, and that his purported solution is hardly convincing. For one thing, the principles, of which use are made in the argument, (...) concern events, not properties. That is why the argument does not have a direct force to exclude properties. Second, the identification of mental and physical properties involves the idea that a functional property is to be at the same time a structural property, and, on the other hand, it amounts to a reflexive relation such that one and the same property is to realize itself, both of which ideas make little sense. Plus, a brief consideration will be made of the exclusion problem of how it is possible for mental properties to be causally relevant along with physical properties that always suffice for the effect. It will be suggested that mental properties can be causally relevant only if they are dependent upon physical properties, a suggestion which is based on the property-exclusion principle extracted from the principle of explanatory exclusion formulated by Kim himself. (shrink)

In recent work, Sarah Robins, Gerardo Viera and Steven James have provided some insightful objections to the ideas offered in my book, Memory: A Self-Referential Account. In this paper, I put forward some responses to those objections. Robins challenges the idea that being a memory could be a matter of having a particular functional role within the subject’s cognitive economy. Viera challenges the idea that the content of a memory could explain some of its phenomenological properties. And James challenges the (...) idea that our memories could be immune to error through misidentification. All three commentators are targeting, not tangential aspects of, but fundamental assumptions in the account of memory proposed in the book. For that reason, modifying some of those assumptions would amount to proposing a whole different account of memory. I hope to show, however, that such a radical move is not necessary. For there are possible responses to the objections from all three commentators which are available within the constraints of the account proposed in the book. (shrink)

Multiple realisation prompts the question: how is it that multiple systems all exhibit the same phenomena despite their different underlying properties? In this paper I develop a framework for addressing that question and argue that multiple realisation can be reductively explained. I illustrate this position by applying the framework to a simple example – the multiple realisation of electrical conductivity. I defend my account by addressing potential objections:contra Polger and Shapiro, Batterman, and Sober, I claim that multiple realisation is commonplace, (...) that it can be reductively explained, but that it requires asui generisreductive explanatory strategy. (shrink)

This paper describes a version of type identity physicalism, which we call Flat Physicalism, and shows how it meets several objections often raised against identity theories. This identity theory is informed by recent results in the conceptual foundations of physics, and in particular clar- ifies the notion of ‘physical kinds’ in light of a conceptual analysis of the paradigmatic case of reducing thermody- namics to statistical mechanics. We show how Flat Physi- calism is compatible with the appearance of multiple realisation (...) in the special sciences, and how and in what sense the special sciences laws are autonomous from the laws of physics, despite the full reductive picture of Flat Physicalism. We compare our view with a recent proposal by William Bechtel that accounts for the appearance of levels in mechanistic explanations. (shrink)

Riassunto: Lo statuto della psicologia come scienza speciale è l’oggetto del dibattito pluridecennale intercorso tra Jerry Fodor e Jaegwon Kim. La questione epistemologica delle leggi delle scienze cognitive si intreccia inestricabilmente con riflessioni di tipo metafisico sul dilemma mente-corpo: se Fodor ammette la validità delle leggi psicologiche, considerate irriducibili alle leggi della fisica, il fisicalismo riduzionista di Kim esclude invece tale possibilità. Così, il dialogo tra i due paradigmi funzionalisti delinea una serie di snodi problematici relativi sia allo status delle (...) proprietà mentali, come alla possibilità di una scienza che possa aprirsi alla inter-specificità, o alla trasversalità delle strutture di implementazione. Centrale, nel dibattito, è la nozione di realizzabilità multipla: tale argomento, che viene addotto a sostegno di un certo grado di autonomia del mentale, viene da Kim giudicato, invece, essenzialmente aporetico. Parole chiave: Filosofia della mente; Scienze cognitive; Realizzabilità multipla; Funzionalismo; Fisicalismo riduzionista Fodor, Kim and the autonomy of cognitive sciences: The status of psychology as a special science is the main topic of the debate between two of the most important philosophers of mind in our times: Jerry Fodor and Jaegwon Kim. The epistemology of psychological laws is inextricably intertwined with the metaphysical quarrel over the mind-body problem. Fodor argues for the validity of psychological laws and their irreducibility to physical ones, whereas Kim’s reductive physicalism rules out their validity. Therefore, the dialogue between these two functionalist paradigms covers a range of open questions concerning the status of mental properties within a physicalist framework, as well as questions concerning the possibility of cross-species cognitive sciences. The notion of multiple realization is a pivotal point in this debate: it should indicate that the mind enjoys a certain degree of autonomy, yet Kim judges it to be aporetic in nature. Keywords: Philosophy of Mind; Cognitive Sciences; Multiple Realization; Functionalism; Reductive Physicalism. (shrink)

Functionalism as a philosophical position has been recently applied to the case of emotion research. However, a number of objections have been raised against applying such a view to scientific theorizing on emotions. In this article, I argue that functionalism is still a viable strategy for emotion research. To do this, I present functionalism in philosophy of mind and offer a sketch of its application to emotions. I then discuss three recent objections raised against it and respond to each of (...) them. These objections claim that functionalism is intractable because (i) it does not support a scientifically interesting taxonomy of emotions for experimental settings, (ii) it is inherently teleological, and (iii) it cannot be falsified. I argue that these objections either rely on a simplified version of functionalism as a philosophical position or they pose challenges that functionalists can readily address. Lastly, I conclude by drawing some lessons these objections suggest for a tractable functionalist account of emotions. (shrink)

In Memory: A Self-Referential Account, Fernández offers a functionalist account of the metaphysics of memory, which is portrayed as presenting significant advantages over causal and narrative theories of memory. In this paper, I present a series of challenges for Fernández’s functionalism. There are issues with both the particulars of the account and the use of functionalism more generally. First, in characterizing the mnemonic role of episodic remembering, Fernández fails to make clear how the mental image type that plays this role (...) should be identified. Second, I argue that a functionalist approach, which appeals to the overall structure of the memory system and tendencies of mental state types, is ill-suited to the metaphysical question about episodic remembering that is of interest to the causal and narrative theorists with which Fernandez engages. Fernández’s self-referential account of memory has many other virtues, but functionalism is a poor fit for episodic remembering. (shrink)

Aestheticians generally agree that the aesthetic features of an object depend upon the non-aesthetic features of an object, and that this dependence can be captured by some formulation of the supervenience relation. I argue that the aesthetic depends upon the non-aesthetic in various and importantly different ways; that these dependence relations cannot be explained by supervenience; that appeals to supervenience create puzzles that aestheticians have neither fully appreciated nor resolved; and that appealing to various realization relations avoids these puzzles and (...) allows for a richer description of how the aesthetic depends upon the non-aesthetic. (shrink)

Polger and Shapiro (2016) claim that unlike human-made artifacts cases of multiple realization in naturally occurring systems are uncommon. Drawing on cases from systems biology, I argue that multiple realization in naturally occurring systems is not as uncommon as Polger and Shapiro initially thought. The relevant cases, which I draw from systems biology, involve generalizable design principles called network motifs which recur in different organisms and species and perform specific functions. I show that network motifs with entirely different underlying causal (...) structures can perform the same function of interest. The article also considers the scope problem of multiple realization. (shrink)

Besides having potential medical and biosafety applications, as well as challenging the foundations of biological engineering, xenobiology can also shed light on the epistemological and metaphysical questions that puzzle philosophers of science. This paper reviews this philosophical aspect of xenobiology, focusing on the possible multiple realizability of life. According to this hypothesis, what ultimately matters in understanding life is its function, not its particular building blocks. This is because there should, in theory, be many different ways to build the same (...) function. The possibility of multiple realizability was originally raised in the context of AI’s hypothesized capacity to realize mental functions. Because we still do not have any incontrovertible examples of digital minds, not to mention alien life of foreign biochemistry, the best way to test this philosophical idea is to examine the recent results and practices of synthetic biology and xenobiology. (shrink)

It has often been thought that compositional variation across systems that are similar from the point of view of the special sciences provides a key point in favor of the multiple realization of special science kinds and in turn the broadly nonreductive consequences often thought to follow from multiple realization. Yet in a series of articles, and culminating in The Multiple Realization Book, Tom Polger and Larry Shapiro argue that an account of multiple realization demanding enough to yield such nonreductive (...) consequences implies that compositional variation is far less significant for the multiple realization of special science kinds than many have supposed. I argue, in contrast, that even on this demanding account, lower-level compositional variation may frequently support the multiple realization of special science kinds across the systems of interest, and that there is a good explanation for where Polger and Shapiro go wrong in drawing the contrary conclusion. I consider but reject Carl Gillett’s claim that different views about the significance of compositional variation for multiple realization phenomena should be traced to implicit disagreement about the metaphysics of realization. (shrink)

Mario Villalobos and Pablo Razeto-Barry argue that enactivists should understand living beings not as autopoietic systems, but as autopoietic bodies. In doing so, they surrender the principle of multiple realizability of the spatial location of living beings. By way of counterexample, I argue that more motivation is required before this principle is surrendered.

I argue for the epiphenomenality of functional properties by means of thought experiments and general principles. General principles suggest that an object’s causal powers nomologically supervene on its intrinsic properties and that its functional role does not. This implies that it is possible for an object to lose its functional role without undergoing any change to its intrinsic properties or causal powers. Nor is it difficult to conceive of such scenarios. Various thought experiments are introduced for just this purpose. But (...) properties that can vary independently of an object’s causal powers in this way are epiphenomenal, for their instantiation by an object at a time makes no difference to the causal processes the object is involved in at that time. The same processes would have occurred even if such properties hadn’t been instantiated. The intrinsicness thesis is controversial, but it is not controversial that it is true of productive causation, and many believe that productive causation is the only form of mental causation worth having. Nevertheless, in the paper’s final section I consider dependence-based accounts of causation, which do not presuppose the intrinsicness of causal powers, and show that they too have difficulties accounting for the efficacy of functional properties. (shrink)

Philosophers look to the realization relation as a way to make sense of the possibility that special science kinds are physical, yet not reducible to kinds in physics. A realized property fails to reduce because it can be realized in multiple ways, thus blocking its identification with lower-level properties. One prominent analysis of realization, subset realization, distinguishes multiple realizers on the basis their “left-over powers,” that is, those that don’t contribute to the individuative powers of the realizer. However, I argue, (...) the subset analysis of realization fails to mark an important distinction between different ways that a property might be realized, and also makes questions about the reducibility of kinds—presumably an empirical issue—tractable from the armchair. I offer as an alternative mechanistic multiple realization, which avoids both these problems. (shrink)

Despite the remarkable advances in behavioral and brain sciences over the last decades, the mind/body (brain) problem is still an open debate and one of the most intriguing questions for both cognitive neuroscience and philosophy of mind. Traditional approaches have conceived this problem in terms of a contrast between physicalist monism and Cartesian dualism. However, since the late sixties, the landscape of philosophical views on the problem has become more varied and complex. The Multiple Realization Thesis (MRT) claims that mental (...) properties can be (or are) realized, and mental processes can be (or are) implemented by neural correlates of different kinds. Thus, MRT challenges the psychoneural type-identity theory and the corresponding reductionism. Many philosophers have acknowledged the a priori plausibility of MRT. However, the existence of empirical evidence in favor of intraspecific, human multiple realizations of mental processes and properties is still controversial. Here we illustrate some cases that provide empirical evidence in support of MRT. Recently, it has been proposed that foveal agnosic vision, like peripheral vision, can be restored by increasing object parts’ spacing (Strappini et al., 2017a; Crutch and Warrington, 2007). Agnosic fovea and normal periphery are both limited by crowding, that impairs object recognition, and provides the signature of visual integration. Here we define a psychological property of restored object identification and we cross-reference the data of visually-impaired patients with different etiologies. In particular, we compare the data of two stroke patients, two patients with posterior cortical atrophy (PCA), six cases of strabismic amblyopia, and one case with restored sight. We also compare these patients with unimpaired subjects tested in the periphery. We show that integration (i.e. restored recognition) seems to describe quite accurately the visual performance in all these cases. While the patients have different etiologies and different neural correlates, the unimpaired subjects have no neural damage. Thus similarity in the psychological property given the differences in the neural substrate can be interpreted in relation to MRT and provide evidence in its support. Finally, we will frame our contribution within the current debate concerning MRT providing new and compelling empirical evidence. (shrink)

Modern computing is generally taken to consist primarily of symbol manipulation. But symbols are abstract, and computers are physical. How can a physical device manipulate abstract symbols? Neither Church nor Turing considered this question. My answer is that the bit, as a hardware-implemented abstract data type, serves as a bridge between materiality and abstraction. Computing also relies on three other primitive—but more straightforward—abstractions: Sequentiality, State, and Transition. These physically-implemented abstractions define the borderline between hardware and software and between physicality and (...) abstraction. At a deeper level, asking how a physical device can interact with abstract symbols is the wrong question. The relationship between symbols and physical devices begins with the realization that human beings already know what it means to manipulate symbols. We build and program computers to do what we understand to be symbol manipulation. To understand what that means, consider a light switch. A light switch doesn’t turn a light on or off. Those are abstractions. Light switches don’t operate with abstractions. We build light switches, so that when flipped, the world is changed in such a way that we understand the light to be on or off. Similarly, we build computers to perform operations that we understand as manipulating symbols. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that functional and dispositional properties are not identical to their physical base, but that there is some kind of asymmetrical ontological dependence between them. In this regard, a popular idea is that the former are realized by the latter, which, under the non-identity assumption, is generally understood to be a non-causal, constitutive relation. In this paper we examine two of the most widely accepted approaches to realization, the so-called ‘flat view’ and the ‘dimensioned view’, and we (...) analyze their explanatory relevance in the light of a number of examples from the life sciences, paying special attention to developmental phenomena. Our conclusion is that the emphasis placed by modern-day biology on such properties as variability, evolvability, and a whole collection of phenomena like modularity, robustness, and developmental constraint or developmental bias requires the adoption of a much more dynamic perspective than traditional realization frameworks are able to capture. (shrink)

Recent work on quantum gravity suggests that neither spacetime nor spatiotemporally located entites exist at a fundamental level. The loss of both brings with it the threat of empirical incoherence. A theory is empirically incoherent when the truth of that theory undermines the empirical justification for believing it. If neither spacetime nor spatiotemporally located entities exist as a part of a fundamental theory of QG, then such a theory seems to imply that there are no observables and so no way (...) that the theory can be confirmed. The threat of empirical incoherence can be addressed by treating spacetime and spatiotemporally located entities as emergent. The question then arises as to what the metaphysical nature of this emergence might be. In this paper, I explore a functionalist approach to this kind of emergence in the context of loop quantum gravity. I begin by rehearsing the spacetime functionalist’s account of emergence, clarifying the view along the way. I proceed to sketch out a functionalist treatment of spatiotemporally located entities and combine the two forms of functionalism into a double functionalism, according to which both spacetime and matter have the same functional realisers. (shrink)

As a reaction to Putnam’s multiple-realization argument, several philosophers have attempted to develop non-reductive physicalist theories in which the mental supervenes on its physical basis. Putnam himself presents a functionalist interpretation of the mind analogous to the functions of the software in a computer. The problem with functionalism in this version is that it presupposes that it is possible to simulate the mind regardless of whether it is a biological or non-biological matter upon which the functional “software” [or algorithm] is (...) implemented. Another non-reductive theory regards the mental to emerge from the mechanisms operating in the brain. Seeing the mental as “emergent” from the physical not only implies different levels of reality, just like functionalism, but also allows the possibility of “downwards” causation in which events on the mental level may actively cause what happens on the physical level. Alternatively, to deny such a possibility makes the mental become a causally impotent epiphenomenon. The chapter concludes by rejecting the vertical perspective on the relation between the mental and the physical, which this debate presupposes. (shrink)

Making Things Up, by Karen Bennett. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xi + 260.

In 1956 U. T. Place proposed that consciousness is a brain process. More attention should be paid to his word ‘process’. There is near-universal agreement that experiences are processive—as witnessed in the platitude that experiences are occurrent states. The abandonment of talk of brain processes has benefited functionalism, because a functional state, as it is usually conceived, cannot be a process. This point is dimly recognized in a well-known but little-discussed argument that conscious experiences cannot be functional states because the (...) former are occurrent, while the latter are dispositional. That argument fails, but it can be made sound if we reformulate it with the premise that occurrent states are processive. The only way for functionalists to meet the resulting challenge is to abandon the standard individuation of functional states in terms of purely abstract causal roles. (shrink)