Multiple Realisability Argument
Overview
Pain can plausibly be materialised in very different types of brains: people, cats, octopodes, etc. What matters is not the physical medium but the pattern of functional organisation. Since computation abstracts away from physical details and focuses on functional structure, CF naturally accounts for multiple realisability.
Responses
Each physical medium may in fact have key physical features in common that support the experience of pain, such that pattern + substrate is necessary, rather than pattern alone.
Further reading
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2013). Multiple Realizability