cognitive states are essentially functional states of whole systems. Functionalism characterizes psychological states essentially according to what they do, by their relations.
ever, “functionalist" theories are the products of a number of rather different projects: attempts to reformulate logical behaviorism to avoid objections, attempts to exploit mind-machine analogies, at- tempts to apply empirical psychology to philosophy of mind, and attempts to argue for—or against-mental-neurological identity.
Some philosophers have conflated functionalism and computationalism. I reconstruct how this came about and uncover two assumptions that made the conflation possible. They are the assumptions that (i) psychological functional analyses are computational descriptions and (ii) everything may be described as performing
24 Aug 2004 Though the term 'functionalism' is used to designate a variety of positions in a variety of other disciplines, including psychology, sociology, economics, and architecture, this entry focuses exclusively on functionalism as a philosophical thesis about the nature of mental states. The following sections will trace
functionalism as a model of mind, according to which, psychological states are simply computational states of the brain. Functionalism holds, according to him, “the proper way to think of the brain is as a digital computer. Our psychology is to be described as the software of this computer—its 'functional organization." 1.
It is doubtful whether doctrines known as ''functionalism'' in fields as disparate as an- thropology, literary criticism, psychology, and philosophy of psychology have any- thing in common but the name. Even in philosophy of psychology, the term is used in a number of distinct senses. The functionalisms of philosophy of
Strauss, ed., George Herbert Mead on Social Psychology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,. 1964). Among the many commentaries on Mead's thought, Herbert Blumer's "Sociological. Implications of the Thought of George Herbert Mead, American Journal of Sociology, LXXI:5. (March 1966) pp. 535–44, and Tomatsu
James' Functionalism. James' role in psychology can be compared to Darwin's role in biology. • Whereas Darwin collected biological specimens and then tried to account for them in terms of natural selection, James first collected mental phenomena, particularly experienced mental phenomena, and then tried to subject
discoveries of scientific psychology. So, for example, common-sense functionalists will hold that emotions play the causal role that common-sense psychology ascribes to emotions, while scientific psychologists will argue that scientific psychology identifies this causal role. Functionalism, of whatever subspecies, is open to a
The psychological theory T just mentioned can be either an empirical psychological theory or else a common sense "folk" theory, and the resulting functionalisms are very different. In the latter case, conceptual functionalism, the functional definitions are aimed at capturing our ordinary mental concepts. In the former.

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March 2018