Functionalism provides a highly schematic conception of the mind. One especially influential elaboration of this conception depicts minds as symbol processors. To see how this might work, consider a schematic specification of a functional system resembling the flowchart model deployed in the characterization of organizational hierarchies and computer programs (recall Figures 7.2 and 7.5, pp. 97 and 101). To keep matters simple, let us focus on beliefs and desires. Rather than conceiving of beliefs and desires individually, think of the mind as including a ‘belief box’ and a ‘desire box’ (Figure 8.1).
Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 278 citations exist upstream.
Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.