Functionalism is widely regarded as the central doctrine in the philosophy of cognitive science, and is invoked by philosophers of cognitive science to settle disputes over methodology and other puzzles. I describe a recent dispute over extended cognition in which many commentators appeal to functionalism. I then raise an objection to functionalism as it figures in this dispute, targeting the a...

Abstract We explore the significance of physical theories set in Euclidean spacetimes (i.e., with Riemannian rather than pseudo-Riemannian metrical structure). In particular, we (a) use these contemporary physics at large, and (b) sense which there can be a notion temporal evolution theories. Having achieved tasks, proceed to reflect on lessons that one take from such for Knox’s ‘inertial frame...

In recent years, much of the hope for the basic project of materialism, that of explaining mentality in purely physical terms, has been vested in materialist varieties of functionalism (Kim 1998, 73). 1 Instead of identifying mentality with either behavior or brain states as the failed approaches of behaviorism and physicalism do, functionalism identifies mental states as “consisting of a dispo...

Though it is most often deployed in service of naturalist and empirically sensitive explanatory projects, the functionalist theory of mind is essentially a formal theory, drawing its plausibility more from a sophisticated appreciation of the logic and conceptual grammar of terms of psychological description than from any empirical consideration. In this, the functionalist theory of mind exhibit...