# Functionalism **Entity class:** Philosophy-of-mind theory **Collections:** [[collections/Neurotech|Neurotech]] · [[collections/Consciousness Continuity|Consciousness Continuity]] ## Definition **Functionalism** identifies mental states primarily through their causal or functional roles rather than through one mandatory material implementation. ## Relationships - It supplies a philosophical basis for [[wiki/Substrate Independence|Substrate Independence]] and relates to [[wiki/Computational Theory|Computational Theory]]. - [[wiki/Implementation Independence|Implementation Independence]] is a technical analogue, while [[wiki/Technological Embodiment|Technological Embodiment]] emphasizes that every implementation still has material constraints. - [[articles/Technologies for Consciousness Mapping and Transfer|Technologies for Consciousness Mapping and Transfer]] preserves the boundary between functional equivalence and numerical identity. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > "Describing a machine as "thinking" could be a simple heuristic convenience or machine design might be explicitly biomimetic." > **— Julia Clarke**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Calling Machine Thought Human Is Only a Metaphor by Julia Clarke|Calling Machine Thought Human Is Only a Metaphor by Julia Clarke]] > "Machines can faithfully imitate the results of some human thought processes whose outcomes are fixed (remembering people's favorite movies, recognizing familiar objects) or dynamic (jet piloting, grand master chess play)." > **— Scott Atran**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Memory/Machines Can Imitate Fixed and Dynamic Human Thought by Scott Atran|Machines Can Imitate Fixed and Dynamic Human Thought by Scott Atran]] > "My experience as a clinical neurologist makes me partial to believing that we will be unable to read machines' thoughts, but also they will be incapable of reading ours." > **— Gerald Smallberg**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Consciousness/Machines May Never Read Human Thoughts by Gerald Smallberg|Machines May Never Read Human Thoughts by Gerald Smallberg]] > "I've been arguing for decades that consciousness is the way information feels when being processed in certain complex ways. This leads to a radical idea that I really like: If consciousness is the way that information feels when it’s processed in certain ways, then it must be substrate-independent; it's only the structure of the information processing that matters, not the structure of the matter doing the information processing. In other words, consciousness is substrate-independent twice over!" > **— Max Tegmark**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to Be More Widely Known?”* [[reminders/Consciousness/Consciousness May Be Substrate-Independent Twice Over by Max Tegmark|Consciousness May Be Substrate-Independent Twice Over by Max Tegmark]] > "Sorting is the sort of thing digital computers do. Now imagine sorting a bigger & bigger & bigger deck; can you see consciousness emerging at some point, when you sort a large enough batch? Nope. (And the inevitable answer to the inevitable first objection: but neurons only do simple signal transmission; can you imagine consciousness emerging out of that? An irrelevant question. The fact that lots of neurons make a mind has no bearing on the question of whether lots of anything else make a mind. I can't imagine being a neuron, but I can imagine executing machine instructions. No mind emerges no matter how many of those instructions I carry out.)" > **— David Gelernter**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Consciousness/Software Alone Cannot Make a Mind by David Gelernter|Software Alone Cannot Make a Mind by David Gelernter]] > "Virtualization has the important intellectual side-effect of leading us towards a better understanding of the relation between emergent properties & virtual machines or systems. Thus "I" am an emergent property of my body & mind; "I" (my subjective experience of the world & myself) am a virtual machine, of sorts; but "I" (or "consciousness") am just as real (despite being virtual) as the pull-down menu built of software — or the picture that emerges from the pixels. Like industrialization, virtualization is an intellectual as well as a technological & economic transition; like industrialization, it's a change in the texture of time." > **— David Gelernter**, *2010, Edge Annual Question, “How Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?”* [[reminders/Simulation/The Self May Be a Virtual Machine by David Gelernter|The Self May Be a Virtual Machine by David Gelernter]]