Questions about functionalism in Kant's philosophy of mind: lessons for cognitive science

Author: McCormick M.

Source: Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, Volume 15, Number 2, 2003 , pp. 255-266(12)

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Abstract:

It has been argued by Kitcher, Brook, Sellars and others that: (1) Kant's philosophy of mind has valuable contributions to make to contemporary cognitive science and artificial intelligence projects contra earlier positivist commentators like P. F. Strawson; and (2) Kant's theory of mind is an early version of functionalism. The author agrees with the first thesis and disagrees with the second. Kant's theory of mental processing has a superficial resemblance to functional theories, but it diverges on several important points: Kant employs a transcendental method that is distinct and more powerful than the functionalist method, Kant believes that there is a specific transcendental architecture in the mind that functionalism is not well equipped to identify, Kant's theory has much stronger ontological commitments than those of functionalism, on Kant's view causal relationships are the product of cognitive processing, functionalism presupposes them, and Kant describes a reflexive problem created by the attempts of the mind to analyse the mind that functionalism overlooks.

Keywords: Kant; functionalism; history of cognitive science; transcendental psychology; subjective deduction; transcendental method; discursive mind

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/095281303763981276

Affiliations: 1: Department of Philosophy, California State University, Sacramento, CA 95819-6033, USA e-mail: mccormick@csus.edu

Publication date: 2003-01-01

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