Putnam, Hilary (1926–2016)

6. Functionalism

In a series of papers beginning in 1960, Putnam proposed a fresh approach to the philosophy of mind that purports to secure the autonomy of mind without positing a non-physical mind-substance. 'The question of the autonomy of our mental life does not hinge on and has nothing to do with that all too popular…question about matter or soul-stuff. We could be made of Swiss cheese and it wouldn’t matter’ (1975b: 291). What matters, Putnam argued, is functional organization. This approach has become known as functionalism. Putnam’s guiding analogy for functional organization was the computer (Turing machine). Evidently, different machines need not share the same hardware to carry out the same computation. Similarly, Putnam claimed, pain-states, or jealousy-states, can be functionally alike though physically different. In other words, each pain-token has a physico-chemical realization, but no reduction of the type, pain, to a given physico-chemical type of state is assumed. The computer analogy suggested that mental states are computational states, characterized syntactically, the projected research programme being to provide the ’software’ for their interaction.

In the late 1970s, Putnam began to reconsider this proposal. First, there were considerations of meaning (§3). Thinking of something seems like a simple enough example of a mental state, but if, as Putnam argued, ‘meanings just ain’t in the head’ (1975b, p.227) then meanings cannot be identified with internal computational states. The response of some theorists, notably Jerry Fodor and Ned Block, was to use the distinction between narrow and wide content, presented by Putnam in "The Meaning of 'Meaning" (1975 reprinted in 1975b), to save the computational picture. While acknowledging the contribution of physical and cultural environment to meaning in the wide sense, they held on to computationalism with respect to meaning in the narrow sense. Putnam’s concern over intentionality led him to reject this solution. As he argued in Representation and Reality (1988) narrow-content computationalism is still an attempt to reduce the intentional to the non-intentional. But even the ascription of meaning in the narrow sense involves interpretation, that is, it involves the attribution of reasonable beliefs, norms, and individual experiences to the speaker. Eliminating intentionality is therefore untenable. Functionalism had conceived the computational level as autonomous, that is, irreducible to, even if supervenient on, the physico-chemical level. Putnam’s critique of functionalism makes an analogous point with regard to the autonomy and irreducibility of the mental vis-à-vis the computational. As a result Putnam came to adopt a 'liberal functionalism' that does not construe functions as completely internal, that is, describable solely in terms internal to the brain (see Computational theories of mind; Functionalism; Reductionism in the philosophy of the mind).

A cluster of interrelated problems lying at the interface of the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, epistemology and ontology pertains to the complex relation between language, thought and perception. Can there be pre-linguistic thought? Do we first perceive and then conceptualize the contents of our perception or is our perception conceptualized 'all the way down'? Do we perceive reality as it is or only as we are disposed to perceive it? (For example, when we see a red apple is this redness in the apple or is it a property of the apple to generate the impression 'red' in us?) Does perception give us reasons for belief or is the connection between perception and belief merely causal? These problems and the answers given to them by leading philosophers and linguists have engaged Putnam at least since the 1990s. Inspired by Wittgenstein and MacDowell, he was initially attracted to a 'language all the way down' position, which implies that there is no perception without conceptualization. But he has later come to admit a pre-linguistic level of perception that allows us to make contact with reality (as animals do) but not to reason about it. It is the higher level of thought and reasoning that presupposes language. He has been collaborating with Hilla Jacobson in developing an account of perception along these lines.