A Discourse on Putnam’s Analogical Hypothesis of Mental State and Machine State

Abstract

The concern of Putnam’s computational functionalism is to settle the age old mind-body problem. Computational functionalism attempted to reduce explanations of mental state to machine state explanation. This reductionism, on the initial assumption that mental state is a functional state of the whole organism, is used to argue that each thing about mental state could be reduced to and then explained through an adequate understanding of machine state. This research attempted to find out whether, perhaps, there are some mental properties which may not be sufficiently reduced and then adequately explained by computational functionalism. The research found out that there may be some properties, phenomena experience, propositional attitude, which may not be sufficiently reduced and then adequately explained by computational functionalism. But, at the heart of the whole discussion, the research found out that a lot of cloud will be cleared if the relationship between our language and mental state on the one hand, and our language and machine state on the other, is sufficiently clarified.

Keywords: Computational functionalism, Qualia, Algorithm, Mental state, Machine state.