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Philos Stud (2009) 145:273295
DOI 10.1007/s11098-008-9231-3
Peter Godfrey-Smith
Published online: 26 April 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008
Abstract Triviality arguments against functionalism in the philosophy of mind hold that the claim that some complex physical system exhibits a given functional organization is either trivial or has much less content than is usually supposed. I survey several earlier arguments of this kind, and present a new one that overcomes some limitations in the earlier arguments. Resisting triviality arguments is possible, but requires functionalists to revise popular views about the autonomy of functional description.
Keywords Functionalism Mind Computation Realization Causal role
1 Introduction
Functionalism in the philosophy of mind holds that systems with mental properties have them in virtue of the systems functional organization, and particular mental states such as pains and hopes are functionally individuated internal states. Triviality arguments against functionalism, as I will call them, hold that the claim that some complex physical system exhibits a given functional organization, or is in a particular functional state, is either trivial or has much less content than is usually supposed.
I group in this category a family of arguments with different ambitions. An early version is attributed to Ian Hinckfuss, in discussion in the 1970s.1 The Hinckfuss
1 According to Cleland (2002), Hinckfuss argument was presented in a 1978 discussion of computation at the Australasian Association of Philosophy. Lycan (personal communication) says the discussion was during presentation of an early version of Lycan (1981) at the conference, a paper which then appeared with a presentation of the Hinckfuss argument. Lycan treats the argument as something different from a triviality argument in my sense, however; Lycan says the bucket of water might, by chance, come to realize a humans functional organization over some interval.
P. Godfrey-Smith (&)
Department of Philosophy, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA e-mail: [email protected]
Triviality arguments against functionalism
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pail argument is often described by saying that a bucket of water sitting in the sun has so much causal complexity that, via a suitable categorization of states, it can be taken to realize the functional organization of a human agent. Searle (1990) gave a triviality argument against computationalism about the mind, asserting that there would be some legitimate way...