CGSC 1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Software Agent, Chinese Room, Folk Psychology
23 Jan 2017
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Mental states are defined in terms of their relationships to sensory inputs, other mental states, and behavioural outputs. These relationships compromise the state"s functional role. On this view, mental state concepts are funcitonal concepts. These = defined independently of their physical makeup. Ex: functional concept = sound waves into ear = noise. Relation to sensory inputs: tends to be caused by bodily damage/trauma. Relation to behavioural outputs: tends to cause wincing, nursing or affected area, swearing (pain) According to functionalism, any state that plays this functional role is pain. Relation to other mental states: tends to cause feeling of distress, desire for pain to stop. If there"s a difference how could we tell?) Lets say you have two functionally (mentally) identical, Relational property = a property related to other things like being siblings, that"s a relational property. Idea = functionalism has nothing to say about intrinsic properties (because the definition of a functional concept is that its relational)
