Consider, finally, the following frightening scenario. Suppose that, in order to avoid the risks to his patient of anaesthesia, a resourceful surgeon finds a way of temporarily depriving the patient of whatever nonfunctional condition the critic of functionalism insists on, while keeping the functional organization of the patient’s brain intact. As the surgeon proceeds with, say, a massive abdominal operation, the patient’s functional organization might lead him to think that he is in acute pain and to very much prefer that he not be, even though the surgeon assures him that he could not be in pain because he has been deprived of precisely “what it takes.” It is hard to believe that even the most ardent qualiaphile would be satisfied by such assurances. Georges Rey
Citation Information
Article Title: Philosophy of mind
Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published: 03 March 2017
URL: https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosophy-of-mind
Access Date: August 17, 2019
Additional Reading Problematic phenomena
Problems of consciousness, rationality, free will, and personal identity are discussed from various perspectives in Lancelot Law Whyte, The Unconscious Before Freud, new ed. (1978, reprinted 1983); Joseph Levine, Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness (2001, reissued 2004); Alfred R. Mele, Irrationality: An Essay on Akrasia, Self-Deception, and Self-Control (1987, reissued 1992); and Daniel Kolak and Raymond Martin (eds.), Self & Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues (1991). Traditional metaphysical positions
The classic statement of radical behaviourism is B.F. Skinner, Science and Human Behavior (1953, reissued 1967); Noam Chomsky, “A Review of B.F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior,” is a definitive refutation, in the opinion of many. Various contemporary metaphysical positions are presented in Hilary Putnam, Mind, Language and Reality (1975, reissued 1979); Jaegwon Kim, Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays (1993), and Mind in a Physical World: An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental Causation (1998, reissued 2000); and Donald Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, 2nd ed. (2001). Computational theories
Functional and specifically computational accounts are considered in Edward A. Feigenbaum and Julian Feldman (eds.), Computers and Thought: A Collection of Articles (1963, reissued 1995); Jerry Fodor, The Language of Thought (1975); Daniel C. Dennett, Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology (1978, reissued 1997), The Intentional Stance (1987, reissued 1989), and Consciousness Explained (1991); Herbert Dreyfus, What Computers Still Can’t Do, rev. ed. (1992); Georges Rey, Contemporary Philosophy of Mind: A Contentiously Classical Approach (1997), and “A Question About Consciousness,” in Ned Block, Owen Flanagan, and Güven Güzeldere (eds.), The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates (1997), pp. 461–482; and Noam Chomsky, Language and Mind, 3rd ed. (2006). Georges Rey