Source
Putnam (1967), Psychological Predicates, LIT-396. The original (Art, Mind, and Religion, pp. 37–48) is closed. NOTE-335 is a Skimmed reading of a course excerpt of the 1975 reprint (“The Nature of Mental States”), enough to quote the hypothesis and condition (3) verbatim and not enough to say what the elided text contains. The account is filed on that reading because it is the founding statement of a view that the record’s full readings of Block (LIT-407), Chalmers (LIT-404) and Schwitzgebel (LIT-159) all take as their starting point, and they quote it in the same terms.
What was actually shown
The hypothesis, verbatim from the excerpt.
(1) All organisms capable of feeling pain are Probabilistic Automata. (2) Every organism capable of feeling pain possesses at least one Description of a certain kind (i.e., being capable of feeling pain is possessing an appropriate kind of Functional Organization). (3) No organism capable of feeling pain possesses a decomposition into parts which separately possess Descriptions of the kind referred to in (2). (4) For every Description of the kind referred to in (2), there exists a subset of the sensory inputs such that an organism with that Description is in pain when and only when some of its sensory inputs are in that subset.
A Description is any true statement that a system has states related to one another and to inputs and outputs by a given Machine Table; states are specified “only ‘implicitly’” by its transition probabilities. The organisation must include something like a “preference function”, an “inductive logic” and “pain sensors”.
The argument against the brain-state view. The brain-state theorist must find one physical-chemical state shared by every possible pain-feeler, mammal, octopus and extraterrestrial. One psychological predicate applicable to a mammal and an octopus with different physical correlates collapses that view, and “it seems to me overwhelmingly probable that we can do this”. The functional hypothesis needs only a shared organisation, and behaviour is evidence for that. It is offered as an empirical hypothesis, a “schema”, accepted for its fruitful predictions and questions.
Condition (3). “The purpose of condition (3) is to rule out such ‘organisms’ (if they can count as such) as swarms of bees as single pain-feelers.” No other motive appears in the passage read.
What could have come out otherwise. As a hypothesis it could fail: a shared physical state across pain-feelers could be found. The paper reports no such search; its support is plausibility.
What this does not say
- That functionalism is incompatible with dualism. Putnam says it is not: a body plus a soul can be a probabilistic automaton.
- That clause (1) constrains anything. It “is, in fact, empty, since everything is a Probabilistic Automaton under some Description”. That liberalism is what condition (3) patches.
- That condition (3) is principled. It is stipulated, with one motive. Block shows it ad hoc (LIT-407, NOTE-366), and THEORY-043 sets out why no anti-nesting principle yet has independent support.
- That condition (3) concerns whether the parts feel pain. It concerns whether they separately possess the pain-capable organisation. Schwitzgebel’s “parts which are separately capable of feeling pain” is a paraphrase (NOTE-335, Corrections).
- What the 1967 printing says. Whether it words the hypothesis and condition (3) as the reprint does is unknown here.
Connections
- The dispute it began. THEORY-043 holds that a mind of mindless parts and a mind of minded parts are one functionalist move run in two directions; condition (3) is the first of the anti-nesting principles it examines.
- Implementation. Chalmers (THEORY-609) shows that clause (1)‘s emptiness survives a counterfactual definition of implementation for finite-state automata, and that a richer formalism is needed if “possessing a Description” is to constrain anything.
- Experience. THEORY-095 holds that phenomenal character is not fixed by long-arm functional role, and leaves short-arm functional accounts open. Putnam’s organisation is defined over sensory inputs and motor outputs, so it is on the open side. Block’s China brain (LIT-407) is the case pressed against functionalism about experience as such.
- The causal-powers alternative. Searle (THEORY-638) rejects the functional route for intentionality.