Functionalism is a sub-theory of physicalism which tackles the question of the mind and body. It tries to answer the prominent question of whether we have a mind, what the mind is and whether the mind and the body interact.
Functionalism is the theory that mental states are functional states, this means that anything is a mind if it functions the way a mind does. Any entity which has a physical mechanism with functions analogous to the neurones in our brain can have a mind, as physical functional states determine our mental functional states. The theory dictates the idea that our mental states are defined by what they do rather than what they are made up of and the bionic half of the face has circuitry which looks like the coalition of hardware and software working together. Functionalism supports the idea that Artificial Intelligence (AI) should be possible because, according to the Turing Test, if one is unable to tell the difference between a human and computer response to a question – the computer has a mind. Many people believe that one of the key functions of a mind is the ability to carry out a conversation with others so if a computer passes the Turing Test, it can be conceived to be having a mind. The Turing test is as follows: a questioner sits in a room sending out questions to two rooms, the two recipient rooms have a machine and a person, respectively, but the questioner does not know which room has which. If he believes that the response from the computer is analogous to a normal human response, the computer has passed the Turing test and therefore has a mind.
However, this idea of Functionalism does have its fair share of flaws. John Searle, a famous philosopher, introduced the Chinese Room Argument as a counter to this theory. He said that even if computers have the capacity to give human-like responses due to programming and intelligence, it only can give answers using syntax. The answers that the computer give do not have any semantics attached to it just the way that Google Translate (modern-day example of the Chinese Room argument) translates words – the phrases would be similar to a Chinese speaker but the semantics and, thereby, the connotations would not be present as only the syntax would be used to construct the sentence. A mind should have the capacity to understand the meanings of words (independent of other words) and if a computer can only give meanings through a rule book (programming), there is not sufficient evidence that mental states actually do exist. A more grave issue with this theory is the problem with Qualia. Qualia is the quality/property experienced by a person in response to a stimulus and this can vary from person to person as everyone has their own Qualia to every object in the universe. According to Functionalism, identical minds should have the same mental state (function) when it comes to experiencing a colour but this is not correct as two identical twins will have different responses to the same colour.
Although Functionalism has a more pragmatic approach to explaining the mind in terms of physical states, it does not fully comprehend the entirety of the mind and does not tackle many issues deriving from experience (eg. Qualia). Functionalism shows the relationship between mental states and physical states to be an ontological dependence however this does not work as not all physical stimuli can enable the same mental response. Therefore, this theory does not fully tackle the mind and it, along with most physicalist theories, cannot be used to answer the questions posed by the Mind and Body.
Here is an artwork that I made embodying the theory of Functionalism:
