Functionalism and Self‐Consciousness
Mark McCullagh
Mind & Language November 1, 2000 DOI: 10.1111/1468-0017.00146 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Proposes that functional roles for self-conscious mental-state identification must be roles playable in less psychologically complex creatures. |
Abstract
I offer a philosophically well‐motivated work‐around for a problem that George Bealer (‘Self‐consciousness’, Philosophical Review v. 106, 1997) has identified, which he claims is fatal to functionalism. The problem concerns how to generate a satisfactory Ramsey sentence of a psychological theory in which mental predicates occur within the scopes of other mental predicates. My central claim is that the functional roles in terms of which a creature capable of self‐consciousness identifies her own mental states must be roles that items could play within creatures whose psychology is less complex than her own.