[ExI] after upload, what?

[BillK]

On Sun, 24 Mar 2024 at 22:12, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> Oh, this is very interesting.
>
> Claud seems to be realizing what I've finally realized.  That
functionalism isn't necessarily different from substance dualism, since
according to functionalists, subjective experience is something separate
and independent from any particular physical substrate.  The same as
predicted by substance dualism.
>
> One of these days I'll have to have a discussion with Claud, and teach
him about computational binding, which I predict would improve his
reasoning about all these kinds of implications.
> _______________________________________________


I asked Claude -
Is functionalism similar to substance dualism?

Claude -
Functionalism and substance dualism are two distinct philosophical theories
of mind, but they do share some similarities in how they approach the
mind-body problem. Let's briefly examine each and then compare and contrast
them:

Substance dualism, advocated by philosophers like Descartes, holds that the
mind is a non-physical substance distinct from the physical body. Under
this view, the mind is not reducible to the brain and can exist
independently of it. The main argument for dualism is that the subjective,
qualitative nature of consciousness seems very different from objective,
quantifiable physical processes.

Functionalism, on the other hand, defines mental states not by what they
are made of, but by the functional role they play in a cognitive system. A
mental state like a belief or desire is defined by its causal relationships
to sensory inputs, behavioral outputs, and other mental states. The key
idea is that the mind is more like software running on the hardware of the
brain.

So while dualism says the mind is a separate non-physical substance,
functionalism is open to the mind being physically realized in the brain.
Where they are similar is in not identifying the mind with any particular
physical implementation. For the dualist, this is because the mind is
non-physical. But for the functionalist, even if the mind is physical, what
makes a mental state the type of state it is (e.g. a belief) is not its
specific physical basis, but the functional role it plays.

Some questions to ponder: Can functionalism better explain how the mind
causally interacts with the physical body and world? Is there an
unbridgeable "explanatory gap" between objective brain processes and
subjective experience that only dualism acknowledges? Or is the idea of a
non-physical mind incoherent and unscientific?

These are deep metaphysical issues at the heart of the mind-body problem in
philosophy of mind. While dualism and functionalism differ in key ways,
their similarities highlight how slippery and difficult to explain the
nature of the mind is. Both try to "carve off" the mental from the physical
in some way, with dualism making a stronger metaphysical distinction.
Examining their relative merits and flaws can sharpen our thinking about
the relationship between mind and matter.
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