Against Functionalism in the Philosophy of Mind: Argument One

In my last philosophy of mind post on property dualism I posed a problem:

My problem, roughly, is that I don't understand how a physical particular (a brain, a region of a brain, a brain event, or state, or process) can instantiate one or more irreducibly mental properties. Why should there be a problem? Well, if a physical particular is exhaustively understandable in terms of physics (and the sciences based on it) then there is just nothing irreducibly mental about it, in which case it cannot instantiate an irreducibly mental property.

At the end of that post I provided an answer to that question:

Mental properties are functional properties. So when we say that x, a brain event say, has a mental property, all we mean is that it stands in certain causal relations to sensory inputs, behavioral outputs, and intervening brain events. So what makes the brain event mental is simply the relations in which it stands to inputs, outputs and other brain events. Once you grasp this, then you grasp that the brain event can be wholly physical in nature despite its having a mental property. Mental properties are not intrinsic but relational.

The answer, in short, is that mental properties are not intrinsic properties.  But then I wrote,

Unfortunately, this won't do. Felt sadness has an intrinsically mental nature that cannot be functionally characterized. A subsequent post will spell this out in detail.

This is the subsequent post.

Suppose Socrates Jones is in some such state as that of perceiving a tree. The state is classifiable as mental as opposed to a physical state like that of his lying beneath a tree. What makes a mental state
mental? That is the question.

The functionalist answer is that what makes a mental state mental is just the causal role it plays in mediating between the sensory inputs, behavioral outputs, and other internal states of the subject in question. The idea is not the banality that mental states typically (or even always) have causes and effects, but that it is causal role occupancy, nothing more and nothing less, that constitutes the
mentality of a mental state. The intrinsic nature of what plays the role is relevant only to its fitness for instantiating mental causal  roles, but not at all relevant to its being a mental state.

Consider a piston in an engine. You can't make a piston out of chewing gum, but being made of steel is no part of what makes a piston a piston. A piston is what it does within the 'economy' of the engine. Similarly, on functionalism, a mental state is what it does. This allows, but does not entail, that a mental state be a brain or CNS state. It also allows, but does not entail, that a mental state be a state of a  computing machine.

To illustrate, suppose my cat Zeno and I are startled out of our respective reveries by a loud noise at time t. Given the differences  between human and feline brains, presumably man and cat are not in type-identical brain states at t.  (One of the motivations for functionalism was the breakdown of the old type-type identity theory of Herbert Feigl, U. T. Place. J. J. C. Smart, et al.)  Yet both man and cat are startled: both are in some sense in the same mental state, even though the states they are in are neither token- nor type-identical. The   functionalist will hold that we are in functionally the same mental state in virtue of the fact that Zeno's brain state plays the same  role in him as my brain state plays in me. It does the same  mediatorial job vis-a-vis sensory inputs, other internal states, and  behavioral outputs in me as the cat's brain state does in him.

On functionalism, then, the mentality of the mental is wholly relational. And as David Armstrong points out, "If the essence of the mental is purely relational, purely a matter of what causal role is played, then the logical possibility remains that whatever in fact plays the causal role is not material." This implies that "Mental states might be states of a spiritual substance." Thus the very feature of functionalism that allows mentality to be realized in computers and nonhuman brains generally, also allows it to be realized in spiritual substances if there are any.

Whether this latitudinarianism is thought to be good or bad, functionalism is a monumentally implausible theory of mind. There are the technical objections that have spawned a pelagic literature: absent qualia, inverted qualia, the 'Chinese nation,' etc. Thrusting these aside, I go for the throat, Searle-style.

Functionalism is threatened by a fundamental incoherence. The theory states that what makes a state mental is nothing intrinsic to the state, but purely relational: a matter of its causes and effects. In us, these happen to be neural. (I am assuming physicalism for the time being.)  Now every mental state is a neural state, but not every neural state is a mental state. So the distinction between mental and nonmental neural states must be accounted for in terms of a distinction between two different sets of causes and effects, those that contribute to mentality and those that do not. But how make this distinction? How do the causes/effects of mental neural events differ from the causes/effects of nonmental neural events? Equivalently, how do psychologically salient input/output events differ from those that lack such salience?

Suppose the display on my monitor is too bright for comfort and I decide to do something about it. Why is it that photons entering my retina are psychologically salient inputs but those striking the back of my head are not? Why is it that the moving of my hand to to adjust the brightness and contrast controls is a salient output event, while unnoticed perspiration is not?

One may be tempted to say that the psychologically salient inputs are those that contribute to the production of the uncomfortable glare sensation, and the psychologically salient outputs are those that manifest the concomitant intention to make an adjustment. But then the salient input/output events are being picked out by reference to mental events taken precisely NOT as causal role occupants, but as exhibiting intrinsic features that are neither causal nor neural: the glare quale has an intrinsic nature that cannot be resolved into relations to other items, and cannot be identified with any brain state. The functionalist would then be invoking the very thing he is at pains to deny, namely, mental events as having more than neural and causal features.

Clearly, one moves in a circle of embarrassingly short diameter if one says: (i) mental events are mental because of the mental causal roles they play; and (ii) mental causal roles are those whose occupants are mental events.

The failure of functionalism is particularly evident in the case of qualia.  Examples of qualia: felt pain, a twinge of nostalgia, the smell of burnt garlic, the taste of avocado.  Is it plausible to say that such qualia can be exhaustively factored into a neural component and a causal/functional component?  It is the exact opposite of plausible.  It is not as loony as the eliminativist denial of quali, but it is close.  The intrinsic nature of qualitative mental states is essential to them. It is that intrinsic qualitative nature that dooms functionalism.

I conclude that if the only way to render property dualism coherent is by construing mental properties as functional properties, then property dualism is untenable.

Comments

[Eric Thomson]

For purposes of this post, I'll pretend I am a (causal role) functionalist. I'm quoting original post via italics.

So the distinction between mental and nonmental neural states must be accounted for in terms of a distinction between two different sets of causes and effects, those that contribute to mentality and those that do not. But how make this distinction? How do the causes/effects of mental neural events differ from the causes/effects of nonmental neural events?

In practice, functionalists tend to see mental events as essential to explaining nervous-system mediated behavior that occurs on relatively fast time-scales. This is not some a priori conceptual truth, but something we converge upon as we seek to explain behavior in neuropsychological terms, and we discover the utility of concepts like attention, sensory perception, belief, desire, etc that have antecedent use in psychology.

We can't make the division in terms of 'conscious' versus 'not conscious' events, because there are too many events people want to call mental that are not conscious (e.g., unconscious semantic processing).

Suppose the display on my monitor is too bright for comfort and I decide to do something about it. Why is it that photons entering my retina are psychologically salient inputs but those striking the back of my head are not? Why is it that the moving of my hand to to adjust the brightness and contrast controls is a salient output event, while unnoticed perspiration is not?

We know that sensory transducers and such will be relevant in the explanatory decomposition of that behavior. We could do psychophysics to show that you are unable to make such decisions based on photons hitting the back of your head, but very good at doing it based on what hits your retina.

The perspiration issue is interesting. It is a relatively slow, autonomic function, whose functional decomposition doesn’t tend to advert to things like attention, beliefs, desires, conscious access, etc... But if you were some Eastern guru who learned to gain voluntary control over perspiration, it would probably become relevant. Outputs aren’t intrinsically relevant to a mentalistic explanation: it depends on how they fit into the causal economy. This seems to cohere quite well with functionalism.

Then you bring up qualia:
But then the salient input/output events are being picked out by reference to mental events taken precisely NOT as causal role occupants, but as exhibiting intrinsic features that are neither causal nor neural: the glare quale has an intrinsic nature that cannot be resolved into relations to other items, and cannot be identified with any brain state.

Your claim that the ‘glare quale’ can’t be resolved this way is a strong conclusion in need of an argument.

To be clear, the functionalist does not need to be an analytical functionalist and say that their concept or understanding of qualia is to be analyzed as some functional role/brain state. Rather, just like we empirically found that water is H20 even though 'water' isn't to be analyzed as 'H20', we are finding that experiences are identical to this neuronal process that serves such-and-such functional role.

[Bill Vallicella]

But if you admit that the sensory quale has an intrinsic nature, then an Indiscernibility argument will show that it cannot be identical to any neuronal process.

[Eric Thomson]

I'd have to see things fleshed out. Can't the materialist just say this intrinsic property is a property of a neural process, like I suggested above? That's precisely the hypothesis at issue.

We don't have to see the quale as a brain process for it to be a brain process.

[Bill Vallicella]

I hope to post something today on Paul Churchland's response to Jackson's Knowledge Arguemnt. That may help clarify matters.