Causal Functionalism

From the SL4 Lexicon:

Causal Functionalism:

From http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/causalfunctionalism.html: "One of the key ideas behind Causal Functionalism is that a physical system realizes a mental state not in virtue of the particular stuff it is made of but instead in virtue of the causal relations that parts of that system bear to each other". Causal functionalists argue that there is nothing particularly special about human minds, and that minds can be built using different materials than proteins and neurons. In fact, a mind can theoretically be created using any sort of Turing Machine at all, including pebbles clicking into one another in an orderly manner, the population of China acting out a complex, interconnected dance, and so on. See also uploading.