Functionalists see the mind as something that is abstract and may or may not be more than the sum of its parts. Functionalists also admit that physical states in the brain could account for all that is considered the mind. If that were the case, the mind would be made up of parts, in our case, brain cells. In the other case, if there is some non-physical quality to our minds, to clarify all the different mental states we can experience, it would still be necessary to describe the mind in parts. What is the function of these parts? There are many possible answers, such as happiness, courage, computation, or memory. It follows that all of them would be functions of the mind. It is not important what the parts of the mind are made up of, only that those parts serve a function that is considered a mental one. A mind is something that can have mental states, and since there are a vast number of metal states that could occur, we should expect to find minds in unlikely places. Currently technology is insufficient to create something that could genuinely be perceived as real intelligence. However, it is possible that we are simply bias, and that our standards for intelligence change when attributing it to things we are uncomfortable with. In many ways, computers are already thinking, learning, and communicating. Is it necessary for them to be self aware? Could we imagine being advanced enough to create a being like Data from Star Trek? Clearly technology is not the issue since it is always changing. The real issue is what qualifies as a mind. By reexamining the qualifiers of a mind, it is possible to create a computer that has a mind.
Functionalists introduce a new concept they call multiple realizability. They use a chess board as an analogy. Since chess ...