Paste your essay in here..In the last few decades, functionalism has become a popular philosophy of mind and theory in the cognitive sciences. It is a type of upgrade to behaviorism, which has problems that functionalism has proved to overcome. Causal-theoretical functionalism, which is a type of functionalism, is what I will be arguing for over ontological behaviorism for which, I will give two disparities. I will then show why Causal theoretical functionalism does not suffer from the same inconsistencies, and is a more concrete philosophy of mind.
Ontological behaviorism follows that mental states are but the mere behaviors they exhibit. These are caused by stimuli gathered empirically. It is referred to as ontological behaviorism, because it is positing what mental states are, and what they are, are behaviors exclusively. An example could be that pain literally equals winces and groans, and whether or not other mental states are present, they are irrelevant unless they are also behaviors.
Causal-theoretical functionalism, according to Kim, follows very similar to functionalism in that a, “mental state can be characterized in terms of the input-output relations it causally mediates, where the inputs and outputs may include other mental states as well as sensory stimuli and physical behaviors.” Causal-theoretical functionalism (or CTF), adds to general functionalism through the input-output relationship by being a causal relation of mental states to exhibited behaviors or other mental states. A mental state of pain for instance, could be caused by the sensory input of tissue damage. The mental state of pain then causes an associated behavior such as wincing and groaning. The function of the pain that causes wincing and groaning is to escape the danger that is causing the tissue damage. A sensory input of a weapon might cause fear which will cause other mental states such as a desire to flee and then the behavior of fleeing.
Though ontological behaviorism and CTF have similarities, the key to the argument lies in the differences. There are two conflicts that arise with ontological behaviorism (OB) that do not follow from CTF. The first, is that there are no internal relational mental states associated with the outward behavior for OB but only external sources causing the behavior. Behaviorism tries to identify individual mental terms in relation to associated behaviors. The first fault is a problem because it does not account for the multitude of mental states we experience when exhibiting one certain behavior. Fear, pain, desire, anger might be mental states that occur when experiencing tissue damage and those listed plus or minus others might affect a behavioral response. It is also a problem in the case of phantom pains. For if winces and groans and escape behavior are the ontological nature of pains then similar behaviors without an actual location of tissue damage leaves the pain to just be a mere mental state. CTF solves this problem by embracing other mental states or outputs in response to sensory inputs and other causal mental state inputs. The network of mental states is more accurate to our experience because a certain mental state does not always dispose us to behave.
The second problem is one of circularity. A main issue associated with behaviorism is that it is circular in its nature. If someone is disposed to act in a certain way and their mental state is just their behavior then someone acted in a way because they were disposed to act in that way given that mental states are dispositions to a certain behavior. Functionalism suffers from circularity as well but avoids inconsistency due to the Ramsey-Lewis Method. For a functionalist, a mental state is defined by inputs, outputs like behavior, and other mental states. This is a problem because the inputs and outputs of mental states could be infinite or as Kim puts it, “To explain what a given mental state is, we need to refer to other mental states, and explaining these can only be expected to require reference to further mental states and so on- a process that can go on in an unending regress or infinite loop.” the Ramsey-Lewis Method, first introduced by David Lewis and Frank Ramsey, cures the circular regression, “by exploiting the entire network of causal relations involving all psychological states–in effect, a comprehensive psychological theory–to anchor the physical behavioral definitions of individual mental properties.”
Ontological behaviorism lacks the realization of multiple mental states in associated behaviors and falls victim to circularity where Causal-theoretical functionalism does not. As far as a philosophy of mind that resembles experience as a network of inputs and outputs of mental states, stimuli and behaviors, functionalism seems to be a more adequate theory.