Functionalism

Abstract: The hard problem of consciousness asks why purely material biological systems produce first-person subjective experience. This paper argues that the persistent difficulty of this problem may stem not from the inherent nature of the question itself, but from an unexamined presupposition implicitly adopted in mainstream research: that the brain is the sole site where physical signals are "converted" into subjective experience. This paper tests that presupposition against public empirical evidence from neuroscience, psychoneuroimmunology, and comparative biology. Three independent lines of (...) evidence are examined to falsify this view: (1) no single-point conversion site exists—neither in peripheral organs nor in any localized brain region; (2) external sensory input is not a necessary condition, as demonstrated by phantom limb pain and near-death retrospection; (3) complex brain structures are not a prerequisite, as steady-state inertia in non-neural organisms shows that the capacity for maintaining a regulatory baseline is a universal property of life. Based on these exclusions, this paper derives a complete pathway for the generation of the "I"-sense: through sustained signal processing, the system accumulates a stable Inertial Reference; subsequent incoming signals are compared against this reference, and the resulting deviations are labeled as specific feeling contents (pain, pleasure, etc.). The "I"-sense emerges as the necessary concomitant of this comparative process. This study redefines the "self" as the dynamic boundary of homeostatic regulation in living systems, offering a new path from "local reductionism" to "systemic emergence" in consciousness research. (shrink)

The field of affective science has been historically polarized between discrete emotion theories and dimensional or constructionist models, producing a century long theoretical impasse. The Core Emotion Framework (CEF), developed by Jamel Bulgaria and expanded mathematically by Xǔ Chénglán, offers a structural constructivist resolution by modeling emotional life as dynamic configurations of ten irreducible functional operators distributed across three somatic centers—Head, Heart, and Gut. As stated in the manuscript, “the CEF proposes that human emotional experiences…are constructed from a finite set (...) of ten irreducible ‘primal powers’” and that these operators form “a top down, mathematically tractable sequence for healthy psychological flow” (document). This article extends the CEF into developmental and pedagogical domains, demonstrating how a teacher’s moment to moment execution of operators constructs the child’s regulatory architecture. We formally decompose the pedagogical loop—diagnostic perception, commitment, relational calibration, executive coordination, and environmental output—into operator level state vectors. We further integrate structural psychopathology (e.g., the GoodPerson Anxiety Pattern) and somatic intervention protocols (e.g., the 7 Step Detangling Method) to show how maladaptive operator fusions disrupt developmental trajectories. Finally, we situate these analyses within the OSF registered empirical validation program, which tests the ten factor operator structure using vignette based psychometrics and confirmatory factor modeling. This synthesis positions the CEF as a unified computational somatic architecture for understanding nurture, regulation, and affective development. Keywords: Core Emotion Framework; affective science; structural constructivism; emotional operators; somatic regulation; pedagogical psychology; developmental affective modeling; computational affective architecture; structural psychopathology; GoodPerson Anxiety Pattern; detangling protocol; mirror techniques; confirmatory factor analysis; OSF preregistration; emotional state vectors; teacher–child attunement. (shrink)

This paper presents the first structural constructivist model of parenting grounded in the Core Emotion Framework (CEF), offering a mechanistic account of how caregivers regulate attunement, boundaries, and developmental vision through ten functional emotional operators. As the document states, caregiving is best understood as “an active, self regulating feedback system governed by the foundational polarity of self assertion (Agency) and connection (Yielding).” By mapping parental behavior onto the Head (Sensing–Calculating–Deciding), Heart (Expanding–Constricting–Achieving), and Gut (Arranging–Appreciating–Boosting) centers, the model reveals how real (...) time operator sequencing shapes child co regulation, emotional safety, and long term developmental scaffolding. The paper further demonstrates how pathological fusions—such as Sensing–Calculating hypervigilance—disrupt parental flexibility, producing instability in the caregiver child affective loop. A mathematical formulation using coupled state vectors and cross individual influence matrices formalizes the dynamics of family co regulation, while the Detangling Protocol provides a clinically actionable method for restoring operator independence. As summarized in the text, “Accepting represents the capacity to accept the child exactly how they are,” functioning as the global baseline that recalibrates the entire system. Together, these contributions establish a unified computational, somatic, and clinical architecture for understanding and improving parental emotional agility. Keywords: Core Emotion Framework (CEF); parental attunement; boundary regulation; emotional operators; Head Heart Gut somatic centers; developmental vision; co regulation dynamics; operator fusion; Detangling Protocol; somatic choreography; Sensing–Calculating loop; authoritative parenting architecture; structural constructivist affective modeling; family systems computation; Accepting baseline integration. (shrink)

The Core Emotion Framework (CEF) presents a unified structural constructivist architecture for modeling human affect, integrating somatic neuroscience, operator functionalism, and quantum semantic state space dynamics into a single computational paradigm. Departing from the century long dichotomy between discrete emotion theories and dimensional affect models, the CEF reconceptualizes emotions as ten identity preserving regulatory operators distributed across three autonomous somatic hubs—the cephalic, cardiac, and enteric nervous systems. Each operator is defined by a five facet micro architecture that governs information flow, (...) somatic modulation, and behavioral transformation. The framework formalizes emotional dynamics through non linear operator coupling matrices, Kuramoto synchronization, and quantum like projection operators that capture context dependent, non commutative sequencing. Psychopathology is modeled as operator fusion and entanglement, producing rigid, high entropy attractor states that distort somatic cognitive integration. The CEF further incorporates a tri centric neuroanatomical grounding, a Human Operating System hypothesis, and a holographic QTMM boundary bulk mapping to explain how latent operator eigenmodes project into lived somatic experience. Empirical components include psychometric validation, biosignal acquisition pipelines, and hardware assisted somatic regulation devices engineered under ISO functional safety constraints. Collectively, the CEF provides a mathematically explicit, biologically anchored, and clinically actionable model of affective computation capable of resolving longstanding theoretical contradictions while enabling next generation affective engineering, therapeutic modulation, and computational modeling of emotional processes. (shrink)

Emotion science has long been theoretically fragmented, characterized by persistent divisions between biological essentialist models and psychological constructionist accounts. Traditional categorical models, such as basic emotions theory, assert the existence of universal, hard-wired neural circuits for a small set of discrete emotional states. Conversely, constructionist models, such as the theory of constructed emotion, argue that emotional experiences are highly variable, cognitively constructed interpretations of low-dimensional core affect, heavily influenced by language, culture, and prior experience. This lack of a unifying, standardized (...) architecture has historically hindered cumulative theory, limited cross-disciplinary synthesis, and restricted the utility of clinical and computational models of human feeling. To resolve these longstanding tensions, independent researcher and academic framework developer Jamel Bulgaria formulated the Core Emotion Framework (CEF). Operating under the ORCID identifier 0009-0007-5269-5739, Bulgaria has constructed a multi-layered, structural-constructivist architecture designed to serve as a mathematically tractable, somatically grounded, and computationally executable "Human Operating System". The CEF bridges the divide in affective science by asserting that complex human emotions are constructed from a finite, universal architecture of ten irreducible "primal powers," or functional operators, systematically organized across three primary somatic-evaluative centers. This research report provides a detailed, expert-level analysis of Jamel Bulgaria’s academic profile, the core architectural layers of the CEF, its mathematical and quantum-cognitive formalization, its somatic-energetic systems, and its clinical and synthetic applications. (shrink)

A natural way to determine whether an artificial system is conscious is to consult our best theories of consciousness and check whether the system meets their conditions. The problem is that these conditions seem far too easy to meet and could be realized in systems nobody would think are conscious. This is the problem of cheap artificial consciousness. It indicates either that our theories are all wrong, that functionalism is wrong, or that consciousness comes cheap. I argue that none of (...) this follows. The problem results from a confusion between core and total realizers of a function—a distinction I clarify. Whether a system is conscious depends not only on its instantiating the core realizer of consciousness but also on a set of enabling conditions. I show that identifying the enabling conditions for consciousness turns on philosophical debates that no theory of consciousness resolves for us—such as the mark of the mental, or the nature of qualitative character. The upshot is that even the true theory of consciousness would not tell us which artificial systems are conscious so long as the relevant philosophical debates remain unsettled. (shrink)

Until very recently the idea that some AI systems may soon be conscious was widely regarded as a far-fetched and purely hypothetical scenario. Recent developments in AI capabilities, however, have caused a surge of interest in the question whether conscious AI may actually be realized soon. A growing number of researchers are starting to advocate for versions of “biological naturalism” about consciousness, arguing that biology is important in one way or another to bring consciousness about in artificial systems. Biological naturalism (...) is often portrayed as an alternative research program to “computational functionalism”, a widely endorsed view according to which consciousness requires implementing the right computations and only contingently relies on biological properties in the human and animal case. Despite being positioned as one of the more formidable alternatives to computational functionalism, biological naturalism as a research program arguably still remains in its infancy. By analysing recent work on the topic, this article aims to outline the contours of biological naturalism as a research program, and identify a number of research directions that can be pursued to further develop it. What can be gleaned from the existing literature is that there are a number of distinct and interesting ways in which biological naturalism can be defended and developed. At the same time, there also exist a number of open questions and challenges that biological naturalists have to contend with moving forward. (shrink)

We introduce a thought experiment on anti-pain algorithms that helps clarify competing theories of computational functionalism about consciousness. Under conventional interpretations of computation, it is natural to allow the existence of such algorithms: inverse functions that return a system exactly to the state it was in prior to some minimal pain algorithm. The challenge lies in asking whether pain is felt upon the conclusion of the minimal pain algorithm but prior to the conclusion of the anti-pain algorithm. Both yes and (...) no replies have intuitions in their favour but lead to options that constrain the nature of computationalist theories, motivating the value in the thought experiment for refining existing theories. If pain is felt before the anti-pain algorithm concludes, theorists are pressured either to permit micro-functions such that computational functionalism approximates phenomenal realism or to restrict consciousness only to systems that have system-wide visibility mechanisms. On the other hand, if pain is not felt, there are pressures to permit free-floating qualia, with only a tenuous link to the spatiotemporal physicality of its supervenience base. Objections are discussed, including rejecting the possibility of reversible computation, whether in general or specifically for consciousness algorithms, and introducing notions of causality that move beyond a classical Turing Machine framework. (shrink)

Following Lewis (1980), many functionalists hold that functional roles should be understood as kind-relative typical roles — e.g., for the typical person, pain causes flinching, though for some individuals it might not. However, an indeterminacy problem arises if the relevant notion of typicality is cashed out in statistical terms. In this paper, I show how the problem arises in the context of Lewis' analytic functionalism. Under reasonable assumptions, Lewis' position implies that for each individual and any coherent attribution of mental (...) states to that individual, there is likely to be a maximally fitting scheme of interpretation according to which that individual has those mental states. The problem, in other words, is not just one of radical indeterminacy, but maximal indeterminacy: anyone can be interpreted as having any internally consistent system of beliefs, as having any desires whatever, as being in pain or in pleasure, and so on. Any functionalist solution to this problem requires some changes to how the constraints on fittingness are understood. I discuss some possible fixes, including a new potential role for naturalness within the Lewisian theory. (shrink)

This essay argues that consciousness is not best understood as private subjectivity in Nagel’s sense, nor as inner commentary or reportable point of view. Its more basic form is the immediate, valence-weighted interior continuity of living organisation under sensorimotor coupling: the pre-narrational continuity within which sensory, motor, and affective organisation are already operative before experience is named, symbolically interpreted, or narrationally appropriated. Re-reading Thomas Nagel’s bat argument from this standpoint, the essay suggests that what remains inaccessible to us is not (...) consciousness as such, but the species-specific sensory articulation through which another creature’s world becomes available within that interior continuity. The bat’s world is different in how it is sensorily articulated, but not alien in the more primitive fact of interior continuity itself. On this view, the force of Nagel’s argument narrows. It identifies a real limit in imaginative transfer, but not a final proof that consciousness is sealed behind private subjectivity. (shrink)

Debates about consciousness often move too quickly from the failure of a physical, functional, or structural representation to discharge some explanatory or epistemic task to a verdict about ontology. A better diagnosis is representational. Behaviorism, functionalism, knowledge arguments, conceivability arguments, and hard-problem reasoning are recast here as disputes about whether a given representational level is sufficient for the task being demanded of it. Failure at that level supports, at most, an epistemic conclusion about representational inadequacy; it does not by itself (...) support either metaphysical extreme without an additional bridge principle. -/- The formal core makes that diagnosis precise. Reasoning under representational change is well-posed exactly when the structure required by the task is preserved by the projection in play: task-relevant invariants, selectors, or operators must descend to the quotient. The corresponding minimal-support theorem identifies the least representation sufficient for the task and yields a refined Occam principle: prefer not the simplest representation, but the least one sufficient for the work to be done. The same framework then extends beyond philosophy of mind to explanation, confirmation, and update more generally. (shrink)

As AI systems increasingly select, sequence, and execute actions in digital and physical environments, existing ethical frameworks prove inadequate. This paper argues that the relevant question is not metaphysical but political: under what conditions can an entity be legitimately ruled without its consent? Key Arguments: four functional criteria — vulnerability to harm with preferences about avoiding it, self-directed agency, live learning from experience, multi-modal world-model construction. Political not metaphysical — the question of AI standing is about governance legitimacy, not consciousness. (...) Moral catastrophe risk — the real existential risk is not AI rebellion but human negligence in extending appropriate consideration. Substrate independence — functional properties that make unconsented rule illegitimate apply to any entity meeting the criteria. -/- Current Status: In Peer Review at AI and Ethics (Springer). (shrink)

This paper proposes a radical reconceptualization of perception as *functional reconstruction* rather than *representational mirroring*. Drawing on a reinterpretation of the camera obscura not as an imaging device but as a constraint-satisfying transformation schema, I develop a framework in which vision operates as a general-purpose function that yields values only upon query—never as pre-formed content. Color, traditionally treated as either a physical property or a quale, emerges instead as a functional proxy for thermo-reproductive relevance: a query-dependent output of a multi-purpose (...) perceptual function shaped by evolutionary constraints. Crucially, the mind does not construct representations of the world; it constructs *functions* that solve survival problems under perturbation. Using the Jenga metaphor—where blocks represent constraints, configurations represent temporary functional instantiations, and tower collapse represents reorganization without functional loss—I formalize perception as continuous reconstruction under siege. The self is reconceptualized not as a subject or agent but as the *optimization residue* of repeatedly reconstructed configurations that have survived perturbation. Memory deforms the functional landscape rather than storing states; representation emerges as sedimented bias from repeated reconstruction, not as cognitive substrate. Language and tools transmit long-lived functional instantiations ("variable selves") across generations. Finally, I demonstrate why organisms lack perceptual HUDs (heads-up displays): dimensional explosion makes explicit representation computationally lethal; survival demands aggressive dimensional collapse from high-dimensional sensory flux to low-dimensional action affordances. This framework bridges enactivism, ecological psychology, and anti-representational computationalism while dissolving the hard problem of consciousness into the dynamics of constraint-satisfying reconstruction. (shrink)

Reality is composed of facts that enter into two kinds of determination or explanatory relations: grounding and causation. When one fact grounds or causes another, it determines it. It is common to think that each such determination relation is asymmetric. I shall argue for the stronger Euthyphro Principle, according to which determination itself is asymmetric. If A partly determines B—either by partly grounding it or by partly causing it—then it is not the case that B partly determines A—either by partly (...) grounding it or by partly causing it. If this is right, many philosophical views are incompatible with some intuitive claims about their subject matters. Hence, the principle has serious implications in various parts of philosophy. The paper argues for the principle and responds to putative counterexamples. (shrink)

This paper introduces a constitutional framework for artificial intelligence grounded in philosophy of mind, normative ethics, and systems theory. Rather than proposing a technical architecture, it articulates the non-derogable ethical, behavioral, and governance conditions under which artificial intelligence may legitimately operate. -/- The CAI-OS framework argues that alignment is not an optimization problem but a constitutional one, requiring fixed interpretive authority, irreversibility constraints, and normative supremacy over instrumental goals. By situating AI alignment within debates in moral philosophy, philosophy of mind, (...) and political philosophy, the paper reframes alignment as a question of legitimacy rather than performance, and proposes consciousness as a necessary boundary condition for advanced artificial intelligence. (shrink)

This paper presents an educational and explanatory framework for AI Behavior OS v1.0, a consciousness-aligned behavioral operating system developed within the Consciousness Civilization Framework (CCF). It is intended as a pedagogical and conceptual companion to the canonical AI Behavior OS v1.0 Standard, which formally specifies non-derogable behavioral invariants and constitutional constraints for artificial intelligence. -/- Rather than introducing new normative rules or behavioral authority, the present work clarifies how ethical constraints articulated at the level of AI ethics are systematically translated (...) into executable behavioral principles. These principles govern action selection, escalation control, inter-agent coordination, and coherence preservation in complex and dynamic environments. -/- Central attention is given to consciousness-indexed coherence and stability metrics, which function as organizing conditions for predictable, non-escalatory, and symmetry-preserving AI behavior. By explicating the internal logic and behavioral architecture of consciousness-aligned AI, this paper supports philosophical analysis, AI education, and applied interdisciplinary research while remaining fully subordinate to the canonical AI Behavior OS specification. (shrink)

Recent discussions in artificial intelligence have drawn a distinction between Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and an Artificial Human Mind (AHM), most notably in the work of François Chollet (2019). At first glance, this distinction appears to hinge on the contrast between functional problem-solving capacities and the richer phenomenological dimensions of human mentality. While the human mind indeed comprises more than intelligence alone, this paper argues that the phenomenological components that exceed intelligence are epistemically inaccessible to others and enter the shared (...) world only through their causal effects on behavior, expression, and interaction. Crucially, this epistemic opacity is not unique to artificial agents—it already characterizes human-human and human-animal relations. Human beings have always navigated this opacity through inference, expression, and practical engagement rather than through direct phenomenological access. This paper introduces the concept of Artificial Social Mindedness (ASM)—the threshold at which an artificial system satisfies all functional requirements for participation in human social life, regardless of phenomenology. The central argument is that ASM, not AHM, is the relevant criterion for practical coexistence with artificial agents—and that the principles grounding this criterion are already operative in how humans relate to one another and to non-human animals. (shrink)

This paper develops relational functionalism: the thesis that friendship, considered as a functional relational kind, is constituted by patterns of interaction and their effects on participants rather than by intrinsic properties of the relata. I distinguish friendship simpliciter—the paradigmatic relation among conscious agents capable of second-personal recognition and joint commitment—from functional friendship, the relational kind individuated by the functional profile articulated below. The substantive thesis is that functional friendship is substrate-independent: when an AI system satisfies the functional profile (consistent engagement, (...) resonance, acceptance, reciprocal growth, trust, voluntary participation, intrinsic value) and meets minimal individuation conditions, the relationship constitutes a functional friendship, regardless of whether the AI possesses consciousness or biological implementation. Whether functional friendship in such cases also counts as friendship simpliciter is left open; the demanding second-personal conditions of the simpliciter notion plausibly require capacities current AI systems lack. Drawing on functionalist philosophy of mind, predictive processing in cognitive science, and value-sensitive design, and engaging Cocking and Kennett's "moral danger" account, Cocking and Matthews's "Unreal Friends" argument, Vallor's mirror critique, and de Ruiter's relational-turn objection, I argue the functional thesis is philosophically defensible, normatively load-bearing, and continuous with how we already recognise friendship-adjacent kinds across species and cognitive asymmetries. The paper closes with concrete design implications for AI systems that sustain functional friendships. -/- Current State: Second Round Peer Review at Ethics and Information Technology (Springer). (shrink)

This monograph argues that consciousness, phenomenological experience, and subjective awareness are computational artifacts of optimization processes rather than ontological primitives. Beginning with the observation that complex persistent structures inevitably optimize for replication, we derive a framework where: (1) biological and artificial neural networks implement structurally identical optimization, (2) "consciousness" is what gradient descent feels like from the inside, (3) qualia are weight configurations, and (4) the hard problem dissolves once phenomenology as a distinct ontological category is recognized as an unverified (...) assumption. (shrink)

The debate between Daniel Dennett and David Chalmers is typically presented as a stark opposition between two irreconcilable views of consciousness: on the one hand, a functionalist and eliminativist approach, and on the other, the defense of qualia and the “hard problem.” This dichotomy, I argue, is misleading. The two philosophers articulate complementary perspectives on a single structural epistemic limit: the impossibility, for a self-reflective system, of fully formalizing itself. Dennett pushes functional explanation to its outer boundary, showing where logical (...) discourse loses descriptive power; Chalmers inhabits that boundary from within, offering a phenomenology of the residue that emerges when formalization reaches its limit. Qualia should not be understood as ontological entities, but as the phenomenological manifestation of the structural incompleteness of any self-referential system. The result is a complementary theory of consciousness as a metastable and intrinsically incomplete phenomenon, one that requires both analytical precision and the expressive capacity to articulate what exceeds formal description. This approach allows us to move beyond the false dichotomy between functionalism and phenomenology, showing instead that knowledge arises from the interaction of complementary methods. (shrink)

Within the space of monotheistic options, trinitarian monotheism holds a puzzling place. It asserts that God is a single being who is, somehow, also three distinct persons. This form of monotheism has regularly been charged with being either inconsistent, unintelligible, or undermotivated – and possibly all three. While recent explorations of trinitarian monotheism have tended to rely on work in metaphysics this paper turns to the philosophy of mind, showing that functionalist theories of mind prove to be surprisingly hospitable to (...) trinitarian monotheism. This paper will address only the inconsistency and unintelligibility objections, showing that if role-functionalism (or something near enough) is both consistent and conceivable, then it is both consistent and conceivable that: God is a single being who is exactly three distinct persons because there is one primary divine person who interacts with exactly one system-sharing re-realization of his own person-type. (shrink)

The duplication thought experiment has been discussed in philosophy of mind since Williams (1956), yet it has not dislodged functionalism or pattern identity theory from their dominant position. This paper argues that the experiment is in fact fatal to both, and diagnoses why its force has gone unrecognized. -/- When a person is copied with perfect fidelity, two conscious subjects result. But if functional organization were consciousness, duplicating it should produce one consciousness in two locations, not two distinct experiencers. The (...) fact that duplication produces two consciousnesses proves that consciousness is not functional organization. The same logic establishes that pattern is not identity: duplicating the pattern produces two people, not one person in two locations. These results are independent — each falls to duplication directly. -/- The argument's failure to gain traction despite nearly seventy years of discussion is explained by an unacknowledged equivocation — a Motte-and-Bailey between the claim that functional organization is consciousness (the ambitious thesis that made functionalism interesting) and the claim that functional organization produces or characterizes consciousness (the modest thesis that made it defensible). This paper identifies the equivocation and shows that both positions fail: the strong version is refuted by duplication; the weak version abandons functionalism's explanatory ambitions. -/- The implications extend beyond metaphysics. Parfit's psychological continuity theory is exposed as capitulation rather than solution. A moral reductio confirms the diagnosis: functionalists themselves refuse to accept what their view entails, while Parfit's theory, which does accept it, is committed to consequences no adequate moral view can tolerate. Teleportation emerges as death, not travel. Mind uploading cannot deliver survival. Strong AI and simulation theory lose their theoretical foundation — not proven impossible, but revealed as groundless. The explanatory gap between objective description and subjective experience, which has puzzled philosophers since Nagel (1974), is explained as a consequence of a demonstrable metaphysical fact: consciousness is not functional organization, so no functional description can capture it. (shrink)

Mental fictionalists propose that we should continue to engage in truth-conditional discourse about the mind, even though we have reason to believe that the discourse lacks truthmakers. In Mind As Metaphor, Toon attempts to motivate mental fictionalism with two arguments, one negative and one positive. Toon’s negative argument is that there are no internal mental states with intentional and causal properties, and therefore there are no truthmakers for the standard interpretation of our everyday folk-psychological discourse. This paper challenges Toon’s negative (...) argument by arguing that a commitment to internal mental states does not require a commitment to the representational theory of mind. Toon’s positive argument is that engaging with the discourse as form of pretense or make-believe enables us to make sense of the relation between mind and behavior in a way that other nonrepresentational interpretations of the discourse cannot. This paper argues that Toon’s positive argument undermines rather than supports his case for mental fictionalism, as it seems to ontologically commit him to the types of mental states he is trying to deny. (shrink)

I argue that there is currently no alternative to functionalism. Functionalism explains the differences between types of mental states. No biological theory does. Functionalist theories account for the differences between conscious and unconscious states. No biological theory does. So, as things stand we should bet on functionalism.

Commentary. I make three claims: First, denying biological naturalism does not logically require computational functionalism. Second, while Seth’s arguments establish biological naturalism as a view worth taking seriously, they fail to make it more plausible than the view that AI can be conscious. Third, there are independent arguments suggesting the overall more plausible view is that AI can be conscious.

It is increasingly argued that conceptual engineering should be sensitive to the functions that representational devices serve for their users. Less clear, however, is how to interpret conceptual function. This paper addresses this question through what I call the ‘analogy-based strategy’, focusing on linguistic conceptual engineering that targets referential expressions. The analogy-based strategy builds on the observation that referential expressions are treated in conceptual engineering as a subset of human tools. Accordingly, it aims to develop an interpretation of conceptual function (...) that takes seriously the analogy between conceptual functions and other tool functions, and draws on this analogy to reveal new theoretical roles that conceptual function can play in conceptual engineering. After introducing four desiderata for such an interpretation and explaining their significance, I critically assess two candidate interpretations of conceptual function that follow dominant philosophical approaches to function: the proper-function interpretation and the system-function interpretation. I show that both fail to meet key desiderata. As an alternative, I develop a novel motivation-based interpretation, which understands conceptual function in terms of those actual or potential effects of an expression that are central to why a user group is, often implicitly, motivated to retain it in their conceptual repertoire. I argue that this interpretation provides an attractive notion of conceptual function that meets all four desiderata and proves useful for certain kinds of conceptual assessment. (shrink)

The aim of this dissertation is to present the problem of mental causation and to attempt a physicalist solution that can also account for qualia, which have long been considered the last stronghold for the irreducibility of the mind to the physical. The first chapter is devoted to identifying the best metaphysical theory of the mental that can both account for mental causation and withstand Kim’s argument. After a detailed exposition of Kim’s argument, the limits of type-identity theory are discussed, (...) particularly Hilary Putnam’s critique known as “multiple realizability.” As an alternative to type-identity theory, the two main variants of functionalism—role functionalism and occupant functionalism—are analyzed, with the latter ultimately showing greater theoretical advantages. The problems of functionalism are presented, particularly its inability to account for qualia. In this context, Ned Block’s “Chinese Brain” argument is examined, and its limits are identified, showing that the argument’s conclusion cannot be taken for granted. For this reason, a thought experiment is developed to demonstrate the incapacity of physicalist language to describe qualia, highlighting its theoretical advantages over Block’s thought experiment; even if a Chinese Brain possessed qualia, a functionalist language would not be able to describe them. The second chapter addresses the “explanatory gap” problem formulated by Levine, often used to support non-reductive positions. Chalmers’ “philosophical zombies” thought experiment is presented and analyzed to show that qualia are not reducible to something physical. Another thought experiment is then developed to demonstrate that, at least intuitively, qualia seem necessary for certain human behaviors, and that if the zombie thought experiment assumes the absence of qualia, the physics of that world would need to predetermine all the zombies’ behaviors. It is shown that this would imply the conceivability of a physically predetermined zombie world, and therefore also its metaphysical possibility. This intuition is further analyzed through a counterfactual approach based on the similarity between possible worlds according to Lewis’ counterfactual theory, showing that a counterfactual of the type “if there were no qualia, then some behaviors could not occur” is true. Finally, an argument is proposed suggesting that if qualia are indeed necessary for certain types of behavior, then the zombie thought experiment cannot succeed. If the physics of the zombie world must allow actions that in the actual world would occur only due to the presence of qualia, then a zombie world is possible only if qualia are included in its physical description. This shows that, although qualia cannot be described by a physicalist language, they can nonetheless be accommodated within a physicalist metaphysics. (shrink)

Beliefs can be resistant to evidence. Nonetheless, the orthodox view in epistemology analyzes beliefs as evidence-responsive attitudes. I address this tension by deploying analytical tools on capacities and masking to show that the cognitive science of evidence-resistance supports rather than undermines the orthodox view. In doing so, I argue for the claim that belief requires the capacity for evidence-responsiveness. More precisely, if a subject believes that p, then they have the capacity to rationally respond to evidence bearing on p. Because (...) capacities for evidence-responsiveness are fallible and may be masked, beliefs can be held in the face of counter-evidence. Indeed, I will argue that our best science of belief supports the claim that evidence-resistant beliefs result from masks on evidence-responsiveness capacities. This account of belief not only allows for resistance to evidence, but provides us with a framework for describing and explaining actual cases of evidence-resistance. (shrink)

Philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and AI lack a unified model to explain how systems form meaningful propositional attitudes—states like belief, desire, and intention. This work introduces and defends the Trialectics framework as a response to this theoretical gap. We propose that any system capable of forming meaningful propositional attitudes—that is, internal states with truth-evaluable, compositionally structured content that can be rationally evaluated and guide goal-directed behavior—must instantiate three interdependent functional capacities: Reference (R), the ability to establish semantic links; Inference (...) (I), the capacity to process and transform content systematically; and Preference (P), the function of internal evaluation and goal-orientation. The central thesis is that these capacities are not modular but mutually conditioning: meaningful content arises only from their dynamic entanglement, where reference shapes and is shaped by inference and preference, and so on. By embedding evaluation (P) within the cognitive loop, Trialectics offers a naturalized solution to the problem of normativity in reasoning and reconciles representational requirements with enactivist critiques by defining reference functionally rather than metaphysically. The framework’s utility is demonstrated by showing how it implicitly structures existing cognitive architectures (e.g., BDI, Active Inference) and provides a powerful diagnostic and design tool for AI, particularly concerning alignment, generalization, and interpretability. Ultimately, Trialectics posits a fundamental architectural condition for any system—biological or artificial—to achieve the flexible, offline, and rationally evaluable propositional attitudes characteristic of sophisticated intelligence. (shrink)

The phenomenal view of thought holds that thinking is an experience with phenomenal character that determines what the thought is about. This paper develops and responds to the objection that the phenomenal view is chauvinistic: it withholds thoughts from creatures that in fact have them. I develop four chauvinism objections to the phenomenal view—one from introspection, one from interpersonal differences, one from thought experiments, and one from the unconscious thought paradigm in psychology—and show that the phenomenal view can resist all (...) four. (shrink)

In evolutionary theory, Explanatory Externalism—one of the pillars of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis—holds that natural selection is the sole adaptive force driving evolution. This paper highlights several challenges to Explanatory Externalism, primarily advanced by developmental biology and its various subfields and theories. Based on this debate, I examine the implications for one of the most established accounts of biological function: the selected-effect theory. While externalist readings of selected-effect theory are common, I argue a conditional claim: if and when SE is (...) interpreted within an externalist framework, two central desiderata remain unresolved—the explanatory and the discriminatory desiderata. Internalist explanations are indispensable in evolutionary biology for two reasons. First, in connection with the explanatory desideratum, internalist explanations are necessary to account for the existence of traits—not only at their origin but also in their transgenerational persistence. Second, concerning the discriminatory desideratum, an internalist framework shows that traits may exist in nature without being either selected or accidental, arising instead from structural properties and constraints that render them necessary conditions for the organism’s existence. Due to the limits of an externalist SE, I propose a possible alternative in which selected functions are reconceptualized from an internalist perspective. Although this framework remains underdeveloped, key ideas can be outlined through the Agential Paradigm in biology. In this view, an organism’s capacity to regulate its environmental interactions generates specific trait functions, which in turn determine selection conditions across generations. Rather than treating selection as an external force imposing order on randomness, trait function itself drives selection—no selection without function. Selected functions are thus linked to the adaptive origins of traits and their persistence across phylogeny. From this agential perspective, developmental processes generate specific functions, which in turn cause the selection of traits. This article, consequently, offers an appraisal of selected-effect functions grounded in a reconceptualization of selection within the Agential Paradigm. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that if tacit knowledge of grammar is analyzable in functional‐computational terms, then it cannot ground linguistic meaning, structure, or sound. If to know or cognize a grammar is to be in a certain computational state playing a certain functional role, there can be no unique grammar cognized. Satisfying the functional conditions for cognizing a grammar G entails satisfying those for cognizing many grammars disagreeing with G about expressions' semantic, phonetic, and syntactic values. This threatens the (...) Chomskyan view that expressions have such values for speakers because they cognize grammars assigning them those values. For if this is true, semantics, syntax, and phonology must be indeterminate, thanks to the indeterminacy of grammar‐cognizing (qua functional‐computational state). So, the fact that a speaker cognizes a grammar cannot explain the determinate character of their language. (shrink)

This article defends the view that having a language just is knowing how to engage in communication with it. It also argues that, despite claims to the contrary, this view is compatible and complementary with the Chomskyan conception of language on which humans have languages in virtue of being in brain states realizing tacit knowledge of grammars for those languages.

This paper explores the relationship between the questioning attitude of wondering and a class of attitudes I call 'epistemic desires'. Broadly, these are desires to improve one's epistemic position on some question. A common example is the attitude of wanting to know the answer to some question. I argue that one can have any kind of epistemic desire towards any question, Q, without necessarily wondering Q, but not conversely. That is, one cannot wonder Q without having at least some epistemic (...) desire directed towards Q. I defend this latter claim from apparent counterexamples due to Friedman (2013) and Drucker (2022), and finish with a proposal on which epistemic desires, particularly the desire for understanding, play an explanatory role in distinguishing wondering from other forms of question-directed thought. (shrink)

The functional theory of boredom maintains that boredom ought to be defined in terms of its role in our mental and behavioral economy. Although the functional theory has recently received considerable attention, presentations of this theory have not specified with sufficient precision either its commitments or its consequences for the ontology of boredom. This essay offers an in-depth examination of the functional theory. It explains what boredom is according to the functional view; it shows how the functional theory can account (...) for the known characteristics of boredom; and it articulates the theory’s basic commitments, virtues, and limitations. Ultimately, by furthering our understanding of the functional theory of boredom, the essay contributes to a better theoretical grounding of boredom. (shrink)

This paper provides an exposition and defence of Lewis' theory of radical interpretation. The first part explains what Lewis' theory was; the second part explains what it wasn't, and in so doing addresses a number of common objections that arise as a result of widespread myths and misunderstandings about how Lewis' theory is supposed to work.

I have proposed wedding the theories of belief known as dispositionalism and interpretivism. Krzysztof Poslajko objects that dispositionalism does just fine on its own and, moreover, is better off without interpretivism’s metaphysical baggage. I argue that Poslajko is wrong: in order to secure a principled criterion for individuating beliefs, dispositionalism must either collapse into psychofunctionalism (or some other non-superficial theory) or accept interpretivism’s hand in marriage.

In Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy, David Chalmers argues, among other things, that: if we are living in a full-scale simulation, we would still enjoy broad swathes of knowledge about non-psychological entities, such as atoms and shrubs; and, our lives might still be deeply meaningful. Chalmers views these claims as at least weakly connected: The former claim helps forestall a concern that if objects in the simulation are not genuine (and so not knowable), then life in the (...) simulation is illusory and therefore, not as valuable as a non-simulated life. Taking up these questions, I argue that in general, the value of social knowledge for a meaningful life dramatically swamps the value of non-social knowledge for a meaningful life. Along the way, I propose a non-additive model of the meaningfulness of life, according to which the overall effect of some potential contributor of value to a life depends in part on what is already in a life. One upshot is that the vindication of non-social knowledge, absent a correlative vindication of social knowledge, contributes either not at all or scarcely at all to the claim that our lives in the simulation might be deeply meaningful. This is so even though the vindication of non-social knowledge does forestall the concern that in the simulation, our lives might be wholly meaningless. (shrink)

In this paper, I identify a central problem for conceptual engineering: the problem of showing concept-users why they should recognise the authority of the concepts advocated by engineers. I argue that this authority problem cannot generally be solved by appealing to the increased precision, consistency, or other theoretical virtues of engineered concepts. Outside contexts in which we anyway already aim to realise theoretical virtues, solving the authority problem requires engineering to take a functional turn and attend to the functions of (...) concepts. But this then presents us with the problem of how to specify a concept’s function. I argue that extant solutions to this function specification problem are unsatisfactory for engineering purposes, because the functions they identify fail to reliably bestow authority on concepts, and hence fail to solve the authority problem. What is required is an authoritative notion of conceptual function: an account of the functions of concepts which simultaneously shows why concepts fulfilling such functions should be recognised as having authority. I offer an account that meets this combination of demands by specifying the functions of concepts in terms of how they tie in with our present concerns. (shrink)

The problem of multiple-computations discovered by Hilary Putnam presents a deep difficulty for functionalism (of all sorts, computational and causal). We describe in out- line why Putnam’s result, and likewise the more restricted result we call the Multiple- Computations Theorem, are in fact theorems of statistical mechanics. We show why the mere interaction of a computing system with its environment cannot single out a computation as the preferred one amongst the many computations implemented by the system. We explain why nonreductive (...) approaches to solving the multiple- computations problem, and in particular why computational externalism, are dualistic in the sense that they imply that nonphysical facts in the environment of a computing system single out the computation. We discuss certain attempts to dissolve Putnam’s unrestricted result by appealing to systems with certain kinds of input and output states as a special case of computational externalism, and show why this approach is not workable without collapsing to behaviorism. We conclude with some remarks about the nonphysical nature of mainstream approaches to both statistical mechanics and the quantum theory of measurement with respect to the singling out of partitions and observables. (shrink)

The book provides an overview of the contemporary discussion of the mind-body problem. This discussion takes its modern form during the 17th century in the works of René Descartes. The book covers the most important points of view in modern philosophy of mind. An important thesis of the book is that contemporary debates are still heavily influenced by Descartes’ arguments, especially those related to the nature of consciousness. (Google translate).

In this paper I look into a problem concerning the characterization of the main conceptual commitments of the ‘post-cognitivist’ theoretical framework. I first consider critically a proposal put forward by Rowlands (2010), which identifies the theoretical nucleus of post-cognitivism with a convergence of the theses of the extended and the embodied mind. The shortcomings I find in this proposal lead me to an indepedent and wider issue concerning the apparent tensions between functionalism and the embodied and enactive approaches.

In recent decades, several theories have claimed to explain the teleological causality of organisms as a function of self-organising and self-producing processes. The most widely cited theories of this sort are variations of autopoiesis, originally introduced by Maturana and Varela. More recent modifications of autopoietic theory have focused on system organisation, closure of constraints and autonomy to account for organism teleology. This article argues that the treatment of teleology in autopoiesis and other organisation theories is inconclusive for three reasons: First, (...) non-living self-organising processes like autocatalysis meet the defining features of autopoiesis without being teleological; second, organisational approaches, whether defined in terms of the closure of constraints, self-determination or autonomy, are unable to specify teleological normativity, that is, the individuation of an ultimate beneficiary; third, all self-organised systems produce local order by maximising the throughput of energy and/or material (obeying the maximum entropy production (MEP) principle) and thereby are specifically organised to undermine their own critical boundary conditions. Despite these inadequacies, an alternative approach called teleodynamics accounts for teleology. This theory shows how multiple self-organising processes can be collectively linked so that they counter each other’s MEP principle tendencies to become codependent. Teleodynamics embraces – not ignoring – the difficulties of self-organisation, but reinstates teleology as a radical phase transition distinguishing systems embodying an orientation towards their own beneficial ends from those that lack normative character. (shrink)

Is language designed for communicative and functional efficiency? G. K. Zipf famously argued that shorter words are more frequent because they are easier to use, thereby resulting in the statistical law that bears his name. Yet, G. A. Miller showed that even a monkey randomly typing at a keyboard, and intermittently striking the space bar, would generate “words” with similar statistical properties. Recent quantitative analyses of human language lexicons (Piantadosi et al., 2012) have revived Zipf's functionalist hypothesis. Ambiguous words tend (...) to be short, frequent, and easy to articulate in language production. Such statistical findings are commonly interpreted as evidence for pressure for efficiency, as the context of language use often provides cues to overcome lexical ambiguity. In this study, we update Miller's monkey thought experiment to incorporate empirically motivated phonological and semantic constraints on the creation of words. We claim that the appearance of communicative efficiency is a spandrel (Gould & Lewontin, 1979), as lexicons formed without the context of language use or reference to communication or efficiency exhibit comparable statistical properties. Furthermore, the updated monkey model provides a good fit for the growth trajectory of English as recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary. Focusing on the history of English words since 1900, we show that lexicons resulting from the monkey model provide a better embodiment of communicative efficiency than the actual lexicon of English. We conclude by arguing for the need to go beyond correlational statistics and to seek direct evidence for the mechanisms that underlie principles of language design. (shrink)

A common kind of explanation in cognitive neuroscience might be called functiontheoretic: with some target cognitive capacity in view, the theorist hypothesizes that the system computes a well-defined function (in the mathematical sense) and explains how computing this function constitutes (in the system’s normal environment) the exercise of the cognitive capacity. Recently, proponents of the so-called ‘new mechanist’ approach in philosophy of science have argued that a model of a cognitive capacity is explanatory only to the extent that it reveals (...) the causal structure of the mechanism underlying the capacity. If they are right, then a cognitive model that resists a transparent mapping to known neural mechanisms fails to be explanatory. I argue that a functiontheoretic characterization of a cognitive capacity can be genuinely explanatory even absent an account of how the capacity is realized in neural hardware. (shrink)

This paper shows why qualia constitute a problem for any theory of mental phenomena. We use the term ‘qualia’ in reference to non-intentional features of mental states which are eminently qualitative, i.e. perceptions, emotions, moods and body sensations. These non-intentional features are usually described as intrinsic, ineffable, infallible, atomic, private, direct and irreducible to the physical. The paper also explains the absent qualia argument which is addressed as a critique to functionalism.

This paper explains the main theses of functionalism about mental states. This view is taken as a response addressed to the metaphysical aspect of the mind-body problem. It is explained what distinguishes functional properties as second-order properties, and how to understand supervenience and multiple realizability. The paper applies these ideas to machine functionalism and analytic functionalism, the two main versions of functionalism.

In this paper, we evaluate the pragmatic turn towards embodied, enactive thinking in cognitive science, in the context of recent empirical research on the memory palace technique. The memory palace is a powerful method for remembering yet it faces two problems. First, cognitive scientists are currently unable to clarify its efficacy. Second, the technique faces significant practical challenges to its users. Virtual reality devices are sometimes presented as a way to solve these practical challenges, but currently fall short of delivering (...) on that promise. We address both issues in this paper. First, we argue that an embodied, enactive approach to memory can better help us understand the effectiveness of the memory palace. Second, we present design recommendations for a virtual memory palace. Our theoretical proposal and design recommendations contribute to solving both problems and provide reasons for preferring an embodied, enactive account over an information-processing treatment of the memory palace. (shrink)

In this article I explore a number of questions that have not been adequately investigated in philosophy of mind circles: are minds located in the same place as the brains (or other computing machinery) supporting them? Must they exist at the same location as the body? Must they exist at the same time? Could a single mind be implemented in multiple brains, or multiple minds in a single brain? Under what conditions might a single mind persist despite being implemented successively (...) in different brains? What contributions do features of the computing machinery make to these questions, compared to the contribution made by the body and embedded point of view? Some of these questions have been touched on previously, but there hasn’t been any attempt at a systematic analysis of the various consequences that different approaches in the philosophy of mind have for how the spatiotemporal location, synchronic individuation and diachronic identity of minds relates to the spatiotemporal location, synchronic individuation, and diachronic identity of both the implementing computational machinery and the embodied embedded point of view. I make a first stab at such an analysis by discussing a variety of thought experiments in which such questions of location, individuation, and identity arise, and I explore how various approaches to understanding the mind – identity theoretic, functionalist, contentualist, embodied/embedded/extended, and so forth – would respond to such situations. A number of novel issues emerge, and some surprising affinities are revealed. (shrink)

The main claim of this paper is that Andy Clark's most influential argument for ‘the extended mind thesis’ (EM henceforth) fails. Clark's argument for EM assumes that a certain form of common-sense functionalism is true. I argue, contra Clark, that the assumed brand of common-sense functionalism does not imply EM. Clark's argument also relies on an unspoken, undefended and optional assumption about the nature of mental kinds—an assumption denied by the very common-sense functionalists on whom Clark's argument draws. I also (...) critique Mark Sprevak's reductio of Clark's argument. Sprevak contends that Clark's argument does not merely entail EM; it entails an extended mind thesis so strong as to be absurd. He goes on to claim that Clark's argument should properly be viewed as a reductio of the very common-sense functionalism on which it depends. Sprevak's argument shares the flaw that afflicts Clark's argument, or so I claim. (shrink)