Functionalism and the Problem of Occurrent States

Bibliographic Data

ID4351806
AuthorsGary Bartlett (0000-0003-0155-1843, Central Washington University, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume68
Issue270
Pages1-20
Publication date2018-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Philosophical Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-8094 • E-ISSN: 1467-9213
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/pq/pqx043
OpenAlexW2746031553
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited11

In 1956 U. T. Place proposed that consciousness is a brain process. More attention should be paid to his word ‘process’. There is near-universal agreement that experiences are processive—as witnessed in the platitude that experiences are occurrent states. The abandonment of talk of brain processes has benefited functionalism, because a functional state, as it is usually conceived, cannot be a process. This point is dimly recognized in a well-known but little-discussed argument that conscious experiences cannot be functional states because the former are occurrent, while the latter are dispositional. That argument fails, but it can be made sound if we reformulate it with the premise that occurrent states are processive. The only way for functionalists to meet the resulting challenge is to abandon the standard individuation of functional states in terms of purely abstract causal roles.

Argument (complex analysis) · Consciousness · Epistemology · Functionalism (philosophy of mind) · Individuation · Premise · Psychotherapist · Computer Science · Embodied and Extended Cognition · Medicine · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Psychology

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