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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: A rock implements every FSA
Message-ID: <1992Mar30.065122.9820@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
References: <92Mar25.053818est.14337@neat.cs.toronto.edu> <1992Mar26.073417.14604@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Mar26.204239.1806@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 92 06:51:22 GMT
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In article <1992Mar26.204239.1806@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:

>I agree that the view you present above is problematic, and should be
>rejected, but I have no inkling at what a functionalist does then, i.e.,
>how one would pick out the relevant level of functional analysis.  This seems
>to me to be a rather important problem - do you have any suggested methods
>of attack?

Is that a vulture I see? :-)  First I should note that this problem
isn't threatening to functionalism, construed as the thesis that there
exists some functional organization on which mental states supervene.
At most it poses an epistemological problem -- i.e. given that this
supervenience base exists, how will we be able to determine which it
is?  I'm not too deeply concerned with such problems; it seems to
me that in all but very contrived cases, the criterion I mentioned
will do the job (because in all but very contrived cases, a mental
difference can make a behavioural difference).  For a suggestion
about how to handle the recalcitrant cases, see Calvin Ostrum's
article.

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."


