Dualism and Functionalism

What are minds and mental states? How do they relate to the brain and the body? This series of lectures examines two influential answers to the question. The first, dualism claims that the mind is composed of a special kind of non-physical substance, quite different to the physical matter that bodies and brains are made up of. The second, functionalism, suggests that we can get a handle on the nature of the mind by focusing primarily not on what kind of stuff the mind is made of, but on the computational role of mental states and processes, that is, the ways in which they relate to other states in the system of which they form a part.

Readings are for the most part taken from the faculty reading list. You can see the whole reading list which includes various additional resources, here

Lecture 1: Introducing dualism

What is dualism? How does it contrast with physicalism? What motivates Descartes’ dualism?

Recommended reading:

Descartes, René, Meditations on First Philosophy, chs. 2 & 6. Cambridge University Press ed. available online here. The relevant bits are reprinted in D.M. Rosenthal, ed., The Nature of Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
Gertler, Brie, 'In Defense of Mind Body Dualism', in J. Feinberg and R. Schafer-Landau, eds., Reason and Responsibility (Belmont, MA: Wadsworth, 2016), pp. 285-97. available online here

Lecture notes available here as word document and here as PDF.

Lecture 2: Dualism and the problem of causation

In this lecture, we think about the problem of causation for dualism. Much of our folk psychology presupposes that the mind can causally interact with the body: for instance, your desiring a drink causes you to get up from the sofa and turn on the tap. This poses a challenge for the dualist: if mind and body are made of distinct kinds of substance, incapable of directly interacting with one another, how can mental states cause physical events or actions?

Recommended reading:

Bennett, Karen, 'Mental Causation', Philosophy Compass, 2, no. 2 (2007): 316-37. Sects. 4-6 Available here
Kim, Jaegwon, Philosophy of Mind. Chapter 7 3rd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2011). Also available online here.

Lecture notes available here as a word document and here as a PDF.

Lecture 3: Functionalism

We turn to functionalism. In this lecture we consider different forms that it can take, and what motivates them. In the course of doing so we discuss the problems of mad pain and martian pain, and how functionalism can deal with them..

Recommended reading:

Lewis, David, 'Mad Pain and Martian Pain', in N. Block, ed., Readings in Philosophy of Psychology. Vol. I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 216-22. Also available online here.

Lecture notes available here as a word document and here as a PDF.

Rough flow chart on the metaphysics of mind available here as a PDF.

Lecture 4: Functionalism and Qualia

In this final lecture we consider the problem of qualia for functionalism. In addition to what mental states do, there’s something it is like to be in them. Can the functionalist do justice to that aspect of the mind?

Recommended reading:

*Block, Ned, 'Troubles with Functionalism', in D. Chalmers, ed., Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 94-98.
Jackson, Frank, 'Epiphenomenal Qualia', Philosophical Quarterly, 32 (1982): 127-36
Schwitzgebel, E. If materialism is true, the United States is probably conscious. Philos Stud 172, 1697–1721 (2015).
Searle, John, 'Can Computers Think?' in D. Chalmers, ed., Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 669-75.

Handout available here as a word document and here as a PDF.