Broadly Speaking: In Praise of (a particular) Functionalism

(by Jonny)

In “Philosophy and Flesh” (1996) George Lakoff and Mark Johnson give a clear and lucid introduction to the notion of the embodied mind, and what they see as its major implications. The book is very readable, let a little down by its claim to paradigm shattering originality and tendency toward over-generalisation. One particular point on which I found the authors to be a little confused was in their objection to 'functionalism'. The authors' basic point seems to be that the functionalism is misled in believing mind can be studied in terms of its cognitive functions whilst ignoring the role the body and brain has to play in those functions (75). For them functionalism is “essentially disembodied”,  a view where the mind “can be studied fully independently of any knowledge of the body and brain, simply by looking at functional relations among concepts represented symbolically” (78).

I think Lakoff and Johnson are too quick to jump the gun, too quick to dismiss a strong principle in their eagerness to overthrow the shackles of traditional “Anglo-American” assumptions (75). From my view, responsible functionalism never ignores anything which might reasonably thought of as contributing to the ultimate function of a mental state, and this must include the body and brain. Perhaps functionlism has a tendency to slip into to the impractically abstract, ignoring the very stuff that must be studied in order to understand function- but this is not necessarily so. The authors quote Ned Block saying, “The key notions of functionalism...are representation and computation. Psychological states are seen as systematically representing the world via a language of thought, and psychological processes are seen as computations involving these representations” (257). Yet to be functionalists we don't have to accept a Fodorian language of thought as the underlying force which must define a mental state's function, though even if we do, this will not and should not stop us ignoring the real world inputs and outputs dependent on the brain and body.

I think perhaps the authors of Philosophy and Flesh are conflating a narrow, abstract, empirically removed functionalism with a broad, scientifically informed version. Functionalism in the broader sense is simply the idea that what matters is what stuff does and as Dennett says functionalism construed this way “is so ubiquitous in science that it is tantamount to a reigning presumption of all science” (2006: 17). As he goes on to say, “The Law of Gravity says that it doesn't matter what stuff a thing is made of- only its mass matters...It is science's job to find the maximally general, maximally non-committal- hence minimal- characterization of whatever power or capacity is under consideration”(17-18). When it comes to the mind, functionalism makes the claim that it's not what the brain is made out of as such, but what that stuff does that matters. This does not ignore the stuff, it does not ignore the brain or body, but it does ask why the stuff matters. To quote Dennett one last time, “Neurochemistry matters because- and only because- we have discovered that the many different neuromodulators and other chemical messengers that diffuse through the brain have functional roles that make important differences” (19). In accepting the significance of the body in cognition, from the reliance of our particular sensori-motor apparatus to perception and conceptualisation to the importance of the body's interaction with its environment to reason, we do not need to reject broad, empirically responsible functionalism.

Dennett, D (2006) Sweet Dreams Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness MIT Press: Cambridge (MA)

Lakoff, G., Johnson, M (1996) Philosophy of the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its challenge to Western Thought Basic Books