Functionalism (philosophy of mind)

Functionalism in the philosophy of mind is the doctrine that what makes something a mental state of a particular type does not depend on its internal constitution.^{[clarification needed]} But rather on the way it functions, or the role it plays, in the system of which it is a part.

History

This doctrine is rooted in Aristotle's conception of soul, and has antecedents in Hobbes's conception of the mind as a "calculating machine", but it has become fully articulated only in the late 20th century. Though functionalism is used for designating a variety of positions in a variety of other disciplines, including psychology, sociology, economics, and architecture, this entry focuses exclusively on functionalism as a philosophical thesis about the nature of mental states.^[1]