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Full Idea
Physicalism is a chauvinist theory: it withholds mental properties from systems that in fact have them.
Clarification
'Chauvinist' here means prejudiced in favour of the human way of doing things
Gist of Idea
Physicalism is prejudiced in favour of our neurology, when other systems might have minds
Source
Ned Block (Troubles with Functionalism [1978], p. 71)
Book Ref
'The Philosophy of Mind', ed/tr. Beakley,B /Ludlow P [MIT 1992], p.71
A Reaction
This criticism interprets physicalism too rigidly. There may be several ways to implement a state. My own view is that other systems might implement our functions, but they won't experience them in a human way.
| 2574 | Behaviour requires knowledge as well as dispositions [Block] |
| 2576 | In functionalism, desires are internal states with causal relations [Block] |
| 2575 | Functionalism is behaviourism, but with mental states as intermediaries [Block] |
| 2578 | Could a creature without a brain be in the right functional state for pain? [Block] |
| 2577 | Simple machine-functionalism says mind just is a Turing machine [Block] |
| 2580 | A Turing machine, given a state and input, specifies an output and the next state [Block] |
| 2579 | Physicalism is prejudiced in favour of our neurology, when other systems might have minds [Block] |
| 2581 | Intuition may say that a complex sentence is ungrammatical, but linguistics can show that it is not [Block] |
| 2582 | A brain looks no more likely than anything else to cause qualia [Block] |
| 2583 | You might invert colours, but you can't invert beliefs [Block] |
| 2584 | Lobotomised patients can cease to care about a pain [Block] |
| 2585 | Not just any old functional network will have mental states [Block] |
| 2586 | In functionalism, what are the special inputs and outputs of conscious creatures? [Block] |