Artificial Psychology, Functionalism and Mental Representation

In this paper, I aim to reveal and examine the ideology behind artificial intelligence and functionalism from a philosophical perspective. To this aim, I first give a short review of functionalism. Then, I move on to explain the Platonic ideology, which, according to me, is deeply rooted in almost all versions of functionalism. I argue for the claim that the software/hardware dichotomy is only a pragmatic distinction and one should not expect to find mutually exclusive categories signified by software and hardware terms. In the final section, I suggest that there could be a better, more sensible, metaphysics at the background of functionalism, one that may offer a much more fruitful way to understand the nature of representation and mind.