Computation and the Function of Consciousness
November 12, 2020 G. Piccinini
The chapter examines three often-conflated theses about consciousness: functionalism (the mind is the brain's functional organization), the Computational Theory of Mind (CTM, the whole mind has a computational explanation), and computational functionalism (the mind is the brain's computational organization). The authors argue that functionalism does not entail CTM or computational functionalism, contrary to a common assumption. This opens an underexplored possibility: consciousness may be at least partly due to the brain's functional organization without being computational in nature, a noncomputational version of functionalism about consciousness.