No Substitute for Functionalism by Natesh Ganesh

December 30, 2021
by Josh Hoffman

In this talk, the author will expand on the model of falsification proposed in 'Falsification & Consciousness' by Kleiner & Hoel, allowing us to identify two different types of 'variation' -- Type-1 and 2. We will show that only variations of Type-2 lead to the falsification results in the original paper. Motivated by examples from neural networks, finite state automata and Turing machines, we will prove that substitutions based on Type-2 variations do not exist for a very broad class of functionalist theories, rendering them immune to the substitution argument. We will briefly discuss implications for both the substitution argument and functionalist theories of consciousness.

Keywords: #Consciousness #Mathematical_Models_of_Consciousness #Ganesh #Falsification #Neural_Netowrks #Finite_State_Automata #Turing_Machine