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Against A Posteriori Functionalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Marc A. Moffett
Marc A. Moffett*
Affiliation:
College of Arts and Sciences, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY82071, USA
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Extract

There are two constraints on any functionalist solution to the Mind-Body Problem construed as an answer to the question, ‘What is the relationship between mental properties and relations (hereafter, simply mental properties) and physical properties and relations?’ The first constraint is that it must actually address the Mind-Body Problem and not simply redefine the debate in terms of other, more tractable, properties (e.g., the species-specific property of having human-pain). Such moves can be seen to be spurious by the very multiple-realizability intuitions that motivate functionalism in the first place. For, according to those intuitions, it is possible for a being to experience pain, have beliefs, etcetera, and yet not only to be of a different species, but to have an entirely different material constitution from human beings. Such intuitions imply that our ordinary mental concepts are not species-restricted.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 83 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2010

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Footnotes

*

A previous version of this paper was presented at the University of Wyoming. Thanks to George Bealer, John Bengson, Chad Charmichael, Franz-Peter Griesmaier, Dan Korman, Sydney Shoemaker, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments.

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