Claim
Multiple realizability
Overview
In the philosophy of mind, multiple realizability is the thesis that the same mental property, state, or event can be implemented by different physical properties, states, or events.
Philosophers of mind have used multiple realizability to argue that mental states are not the same as—and cannot be reduced to—physical states. They have also used it to defend or criticize many versions of functionalism, especially machine-state functionalism.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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They mean that _in_ the logical procedure data must not be shifted without a corresponding change in the hypothesis and conversely. The doctrine that "theoretically" there may be any number of hypotheses for "the same facts" is, when these multiple hypotheses are anything more than different names or symbols, nothing less than the very essence of formal contradiction. It doubtless makes little difference whether a…
John Dewey, Creative Intelligence
States what Multiple realizability is.
Thus then we may resume, with entire confidence, those realistic conceptions which philosophy at first sight seems to dissipate. Though reality under the forms of our consciousness, is but a conditioned effect of the absolute reality, yet this conditioned effect standing in indissoluble relation with its unconditioned cause, and being equally persistent with it so long as the conditions persist, is, to the…
Herbert Spencer, First Principles
States what Multiple realizability is.
Philosophers, on the other hand, have maintained often that matter is a mere fiction imagined by mind, and sometimes that mind is a mere property of a certain kind of matter. Those who maintain that mind is the reality and matter an evil dream are called "idealists"--a word which has a different meaning in philosophy from that which it bears in ordinary life. Those who argue that matter is the reality and mind a…
Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind
States what Multiple realizability is.
Philosophers who discussed Multiple realizability
Related ideas
- Artificial intelligence
- Alan Turing
- Ernest Nagel
- Life
- Functionalism (philosophy of mind)
- Particle physics
- Physicalism
- Jaegwon Kim
- Scientific law
- Turing machine
- Overdetermination
- David Lewis (philosopher)
- Type physicalism
- Causal closure
- Jerry Fodor
- Mental representation
- Reductionism
- Carbon
- Philosophy of mind
- Hilary Putnam
- Zenon Pylyshyn
- Gualtiero Piccinini
- Ernest Lepore
Place in the tradition
Part of Analytic philosophy.