Kengo Miyazono, in his work Delusions and Beliefs, defends a teleo-functional account of delusions. In my contribution to this symposium, I question one Miyazono’s motivations for appealing teleo-functionalism over its main rival, dry-functionalism. Miyazono suggests that teleo-functionalism, unlike dry-functionalism, can the compatibility theses (i) delusions are genuine doxastic states (doxas...

Functionalism is the view that a system (or system component) grasps the meaning of its inputs to the extent that it produces the right outputs. If a system retrieves all and only relevant documents in response to a query, we say it understands the query. If a robot avoids bumping into walls, we say it understands its sensors and its environment. If a chess program beats the world champion, we ...

The credential phenomena in the labor market have been given competing theoretical interpretations in the sociological literature, notably structural-functionalism and the conflict theories. Education as an institutionalized form of socialization allocates people with differential talents into appropriate positions, motivating achievement in meritocratic selection. Yet the functions of educatio...

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...