Transcript Brain Events and Functionalism

Human Minds (HM)
• Descartes: HM
immaterial spirits acting
from the central cavity
of the brain
• Many Contemporary
Philosophers: HM
computational
mechanisms housed in
the “wetware” of the
brain
CNS/Thermostat
• Control Systems
1.
2.
3.
4.
Adaptive
Complexity
Biology/Identity
Learning
(Adaptive) Control System
• Nervous system
coordinates adaptive
responses
• Overall function:
adaptive interaction with
environment
• Enables animal to
detect relevant events,
select responses, and
be guided by the effects
of the responses
(feedback)
Complexity
Identity
• Humans seek more
than biological survival
• Cooney suggests not
simply “staying alive”
setting but “identity”
setting
• A conjunction of
prescriptions that
enables me to continue
to be not only the kind
of animal I am, but also
the kind of individual I
am
Learning
1996: Kasparov
defeats Deep Blue
1997: Deep Blue
defeats Kasparov
Brain Events & Subjective
Experience
• Neural code: nerves &
brain sites --> same sort of
content/patterned impulses
• Neural code analyzable:
spatial relations, energy,
duration, frequency, etc.
• Subjective “transduction”
of code: qualitatively
different sensations (not
observable or
mathematically
analyzable)
Functionalist Theory
• Most brain events are
remarkably similar at
the cellular level
• How to explain then the
diversity of color, sound
and other qualitative
experience?
• Spatiotemporal
patterning, resulting
input/out relations of
neurons with each
other and with external
environment