Is the mind computational?
The cuts
Mind is what mind does: mental states are functional states, and the substrate is irrelevant.
Functionalism — the license every 'minds could run on silicon' argument still drives on.
The Nature of Mental States1967
We are all software. The mind is computational — but the relevant computation is a self-organizing pattern that writes itself, not a fixed program someone loads. 'You' are the running pattern, not the hardware it runs on.
Updates functionalism for the deep-learning era: the mind is less a script than a self-modifying process — closer to a standing wave than a program.
We Are All Software2024The tensions
Putnam’s functionalism proposed that mind is what mind does — the substrate is irrelevant. Every argument about machine understanding, machine consciousness, and uploading inherits from this fork, whether it cites it or not.
Bach presses the fork one turn further. If mind is software, the substrate isn’t just irrelevant — it’s the wrong level to look at. What matters is the self-organizing pattern that maintains and rewrites itself; you are that process, not the cells or the chips it happens to be running on this moment.
