computational functionalism

“You can represent anything by state transitions.”
→ physics (and every representational theory we know) is computationalist.

Background for computational functionalism

Mathematics … the domain of all formal languages

Reality is math hypothesis … the universe is a mathematical object

Epistemological math hypothesis … all that can be known is mathematical (needs to be represented in a language)

Minds do math hypothesis … all mental activity can be described in mathematical terms

Classical mathematicians: “There exist mathematical objects that cannot be constructed (computed), but they nevertheless exist”

Computationalists: “That doesn’t make sense / you’re hallucinating those objects → Only constructive maths (computation) works” … At some point you run into contradictions. Experience requires representation. What you have to do instead is build up everything from a simple table of automata. There are many equivalent ways of doing this (church-turing thesis).
→ Consciousness is computational, i.e. can be exhaustively captured as discrete state transitions.

As opposed to anti-computationalism (state transitions are insufficient as a model of consciousness → consciousness is not physically realizable, or physics cannot capture reality), or even stronger, anti-naturalism (consciousness is beyond all formal systems, and is unmodelable in principle).
→ Some philosophers: “People can make proofs that computers cannot make”

Functionalism: What matters for consciousness is what it does, its causal organization (rather than its “essence” or substrate).

As opposed to essentialism (consciousness depends on its substrate).

→ Computational functionalist: Computers can think.
… if we can reverse-engineer the corresponding algorithms and run them on machines with enough power.

Link to original

Foundations of computational functionalism

Information … discernible differences
Meaning … relationship to changes in other information
Functions … invariance in changes (mapping pattern → pattern, modelling transitions)
Objects … are constructed over invariances in relationships (functionalism)
Knowledge … representation of a model in a language, accurately describing predictive/observational patterns (abstract reasoning only or empirical)

Computationalist functionalism is not a theory that computers think… that’s an organic result of this much broader theory.