Bomb Threats for Functionalists.
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. These patterns can be disrupted in ways that would intuitively not preclude consciousness. The challenge...
| Publicado en: | Erkenntnis Vol. 91; no. 3; pp. 1251 - 1271 |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Springer Nature
Mar2026
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| Sumario: | 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. These patterns can be disrupted in ways that would intuitively not preclude consciousness. The challenge for functionalists is to explain why pattern-disrupting influences do not remove consciousness. This paper explores this issue in connection with a simple case. Bombs may make it unlikely that nearby brains will manifest typical behaviors. Non-exploding bombs do not preclude consciousness within systems in their vicinity no matter how likely they are to go off. The challenge is trickier than it may first appear: this paper surveys possible responses and raises issues for each. |
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