"Triviality arguments" against functionalism in the philosophy of mind hold that the claim that some complex physical system exhibits a given functional organization is either trivial or has much less content than is usually supposed. I survey several earlier arguments of this kind, and present a new one that overcomes some limitations in the earlier arguments. Resisting triviality arguments is possible, but requires functionalists to revise popular views about the "autonomy" of functional description. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008.
CITATION STYLE
Godfrey-Smith, P. (2009). Triviality arguments against functionalism. Philosophical Studies, 145(2), 273–295. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9231-3
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