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In the philosophy of mind, functionalism is the thesis that each and every mental state (for example, the state of having a belief, of having a desire, or of being in pain) is constituted solely by its functional role, which means its causal relation to other mental states, sensory inputs, and behavioral outputs. [1]
In philosophy of mind, Putnam argued against the type-identity of mental and physical states based on his hypothesis of the multiple realizability of the mental, and for the concept of functionalism, an influential theory regarding the mind–body problem. [5] [10] Putnam also originated the computational theory of mind. [11]
Functionalism, which attempts to identify mental kinds with functional kinds that are characterized exclusively in terms of causes and effects, abstracts from particle physics and hence seems to be a more suitable explanation of the relation between mind and body.
The philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of the mind and its relation to the body and the external world.. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are addressed, such as the hard problem of consciousness and the nature of particular mental states.
The problem of mental causation is a conceptual issue in the philosophy of mind. That problem, in short, is how to account for the common sense idea that intentional thoughts or intentional mental states are causes of intentional actions. The problem divides into several distinct sub-problems, including the problem of causal exclusion, the ...
In the philosophy of mind, Leibniz's gap is the problem that thoughts cannot be observed or perceived solely by examining brain properties, events, and processes. Here the word "gap" is a metaphor of a subquestion regarding the mind–body problem that allegedly must be answered in order to reach a more profound understanding of qualia, consciousness and emergence.
The zombie thought experiment is intended to challenge the functionalist view of the mind by highlighting the role of subjective experience in mental states. This experiment requires us to imagine a being that is functionally identical to a human being, in the sense that it behaves in exactly the same way as a human being and has the same mental states.
The mind-body problem is more general than the hard problem of consciousness, since it is the problem of discovering how the mind and body relate in general, thereby implicating any theoretical framework that broaches the topic. The hard problem, in contrast, is often construed as a problem uniquely faced by physicalist or materialist theories ...