Functionalism versus Behaviorism
Quoting Pfhorrest
I think functionalism attempts to specifically explain the mental state by defining it as what it does, even if there may be multiple ways it could have come to be. So, for instance, if a computer responds to data in a way similar to the way a human does, then, from a functionalist standpoint, the computer and the human had similar mental states. Note the attempt to explain what the mental state is: it is what it does.
A behaviorist doesn't deny the existence of mental states, but he explicitly refuses to consider what they may be. His position is that the inner workings of the brain are unobservable and therefore not subject to measurement and are therefore scientifically irrelevant. The behaviorist would observe your pain to be caused by the pin prick and identify that as the scientific cause. That is not to say the behaviorist denies a complex mental process between the pin prick and your scream, but only that he proclaims those mental processes are unknowable and therefore scientifically irrelevant. Note the lack of attempt to explain what the mental state is: what it is is irrelevant.
Any position that outright denies mental states seems untenable. I see behaviorism as an attempt to make the field of psychology more scientific, but not an attempt to make an overriding metaphysical claim.
What then is the difference between behaviorism and functionalism? Since functionalism also looks only at behavior for data.
Maybe this conversation should be split into another thread so we don’t crowd this introduction thread.
I think functionalism attempts to specifically explain the mental state by defining it as what it does, even if there may be multiple ways it could have come to be. So, for instance, if a computer responds to data in a way similar to the way a human does, then, from a functionalist standpoint, the computer and the human had similar mental states. Note the attempt to explain what the mental state is: it is what it does.
A behaviorist doesn't deny the existence of mental states, but he explicitly refuses to consider what they may be. His position is that the inner workings of the brain are unobservable and therefore not subject to measurement and are therefore scientifically irrelevant. The behaviorist would observe your pain to be caused by the pin prick and identify that as the scientific cause. That is not to say the behaviorist denies a complex mental process between the pin prick and your scream, but only that he proclaims those mental processes are unknowable and therefore scientifically irrelevant. Note the lack of attempt to explain what the mental state is: what it is is irrelevant.
Any position that outright denies mental states seems untenable. I see behaviorism as an attempt to make the field of psychology more scientific, but not an attempt to make an overriding metaphysical claim.
Comments (4)
Functionalism = Pragmatism-esque view of psychology along the lines of form follows function? Without looking into either in any detail, seems to be a myopic philosophy of human psychology.with little effectual purpose. Kind of an anti-philosophy really. More suited for architecture or product design than something as complex as the human psyche if you ask me.
[quote=IEP]That is, what makes something a mental state is more a matter of what it does, not what it is made of. This distinguishes functionalism from traditional mind-body dualism, such as that of René Descartes, according to which minds are made of a special kind of substance, the res cogitans (the thinking substance.) It also distinguishes functionalism from contemporary monisms such as J. J. C. Smart’s mind-brain identity theory. The identity theory says that mental states are particular kinds of biological states—namely, states of brains—and so presumably have to be made of certain kinds of stuff, namely, brain stuff. Mental states, according to the identity theory, are more like diamonds than like mouse traps.
Functionalism is also distinguished from B. F. Skinner’s behaviorism because it accepts the reality of internal mental states, rather than simply attributing psychological states to the whole organism. According to behaviorism, which mental states a creature has depends just on how it behaves (or is disposed to behave) in response to stimuli. In contrast functionalists typically believe that internal and psychological states can be distinguished with a “finer grain” than behavior—that is, distinct internal or psychological states could result in the same behaviors. So functionalists think that it is what the internal states do that makes them mental states, not just what is done by the creature of which they are parts.[/quote]
https://iep.utm.edu/functism/
But aside from these differences in ontology, I see the two as different primarily in their motivations and emphases. Functionalism was the basis for a lot of work in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, because computationalism is a kind of functionalism, or is based on it.
That is a view with a lot of truth. But the whole of Operant Conditioning could be taught in a half year class. It was so simple in terms of theory that there was very little more to learn.
Functionalism was a technological wet dream version of psychology. The shtick was that brain states were multirealisable because they were just “patterns of information”. So artificial intelligence was a DARPA research project with a 10 year payback. Sign my grant cheque please.
Cognitive science was great in its early days when computation was mostly a metaphor. Psychologist did real useful work in developing a more modular conception of how the brain could work. But then computer science took functionalism into fantasy land.
Yet cogsci still trumps behaviourism as it did create a rich landscape of thought. It branched in all directions as there is something right about understanding the mind as an informational process.
This is more or less what I was trying to get at with my post in the intro thread that spawned this one, which I assumed would be moved over here in the split:
Quoting Malcolm Lett
Quoting Pfhorrest
Quoting Hanover
Quoting Pfhorrest