In the late 1960s and 1970s the computer model of mind set in, and functionalism became the dominant model of mind. On this model, mind is not what the brain consists in (electrochemical transactions in neurons in vast complexes). Instead, mind is what brains do: their function of mediating between information coming into the organism and behavior proceeding from the organism. Thus, a mental state is a functional state of the brain or of the human (or animal) organism.
More specifically, on a favorite variation of functionalism, the mind is a computing system: mind is to brain as software is to hardware; thoughts are just programs running on the brain’s “wetware”. Since the 1970s the cognitive sciences—from experimental studies of cognition to neuroscience—have tended toward a mix of materialism and functionalism.
Since the late 1980s, and especially the late 1990s, a variety of writers working in philosophy of mind have focused on the fundamental character of consciousness, ultimately a phenomenological issue.?
So do our brains secrete consciousness?
More specifically, on a favorite variation of functionalism, the mind is a computing system: mind is to brain as software is to hardware; thoughts are just programs running on the brain’s “wetware”. Since the 1970s the cognitive sciences—from experimental studies of cognition to neuroscience—have tended toward a mix of materialism and functionalism.
Since the late 1980s, and especially the late 1990s, a variety of writers working in philosophy of mind have focused on the fundamental character of consciousness, ultimately a phenomenological issue.?
So do our brains secrete consciousness?
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