Bomb Threats for Functionalists - Erkenntnis Functionalist theories of consciousness attribute consciousness to a system when it displays specific patterns of behaviors and state changes in response to perceptual events and its prior state. Thes...

I discuss this and other related thought experiments in “Bomb threats for functionalists”, out at Erkenntnis: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

By chance, the connections may never fire. The brain actually acts just like a normal human brain despite its abnormal counterfactual tendencies. Functionalism denies it consciousness, even though its activities are human-identical.

A system's functional profile depends on the state transitions it is likely to undergo, even if it doesn’t. Take a normal human brain and add a bunch of chancy neural connections. These change state transition probabilities: it isn’t conscious.

Functionalism about consciousness makes some counterintuitive predictions even granting the world is purely physical. The most interesting come from its dependence on counterfactuals.

Academia seems to encourage people to defend their positions with confidence, but consciousness is such a big, confusing, and controversial topic that at the end of the day none of us should feel all that good about our own positions. I appreciate that this piece tries to expose the nuances.