ABSTRACT

Philosophy.—Functionalism is the name of a popular philosophical strategy with regard to the proper analysis (or definition) of mental phenomena (mental terms, concepts, properties) (→CAUSALITY AND MENTAL CAUSATION, CONCEPT, MIND). It is based upon a simple idea: many things in the world are what they are, not particularly by virtue of what they are made of, but by virtue of what function, or role, they serve in a system (→FUNCTION). For example, something is money by virtue of its being the kind of thing that serves in a certain way to exchange commodities. Since Hilary Putnam’s pioneering work, many philosophers of mind have argued that mental phenomena ought to be understood in this way. For example, a defining condition for something’s being a belief might be that it issues in a certain way from perception and reasoning and, in combination with desires, forms the basis for decisions (→BELIEF, DESIRE, PERCEPTION, REASONING AND RATIONALITY). A leading example of a functionalist theory, defended in particular by Jerry Fodor, is the language of thought hypothesis, according to which prepositional attitudes are taken to consist of computational relations to representations encoded in the brain (→COGNITIVISM, LANGUAGE OF THOUGHT, PROPOSITIONAL ATTITUDE, REPRESENTATION); however, many connectionist theories would count as well (→CONNECTIONISM).