The Stanford entry on Functionalism

Here. 

The final paragraph is as follows:

In general, the sophistication of functionalist theories has increased since their introduction, but so has the sophistication of the objections to functionalism, especially to functionalist accounts of mental causation (section 5.2), introspective knowledge (Section 5.3), and the qualitative character of experiential states (Section 5.5). For those unconvinced of the plausibility of dualism, however, and unwilling to restrict mental states to creatures physically like ourselves, the initial attractions of functionalism remain. The primary challenge for future functionalists, therefore, will be to meet these objections to the doctrine, either by articulating a functionalist theory in increasingly convincing detail, or by showing how the intuitions that fuel these objections can be explained away.

Hasker on Dennett's Dangerous Dogmatic Presupposition

A redated post. 

William Hasker, in the preface to The Emergent Self,(Cornell, 1999) x, wrote:

But there is one kind of approach to these issues that is unlikely to be affected by the views and arguments contained in this book. As an example of this approach, (though by no means not the only one) we may take Daniel Dennett, as he presents himself in his essay in A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind (Blackwell, 1995). He tells us that, having come to distrust the methods employed by other philosophers, he decided that "before I could trust my intuitions about the mind, I had to figure out how the brain could possibly accomplish the mind's work." This means accepting, right from the outset that the brain is a "syntactic engine" that mimics the competence of "semantic engines. (How we mere syntactic engines could ever know what a semantic engine might be is not addressed). All this is dictated by an "initial allegiance....to the physical sciences and the third-person point of view," an allegiance which in turn is justified by appeal to an evolutionary perspective. The foundational commitment to mechanistic materialism is unmistakable. This commitment is subsequently refined and elaborated, but it is never subjected to a fundamental re-evaluation; rather, data that conflict with it are dismissed as illusory. ("This conviction that I, on the inside, deal directly with meanings turns out to be something rather like a benign 'user illusion.'") In view of this, it seems appropriate to characterize Dennett's physicalism as a dogmatic presupposition--and such dogmatism is hardly rendered benign by the fact that it is fairly widespread in the philosophy-of-mind community.

Three Arguments for Dualism

A discussion by Jeremy Pierce.

Colin McGinn reviews Ramachandran

Interesting because McGinn is a "mysterian" about the mind.

William Dembski's critique of materialism

He compares materialist philosophy of mind to alchemy. A redated post.

C. S. Lewis's Meditation in a Toolshed

It is interesting to see how much this essay anticipates more recent discussions in the philosophy of mind.

HT: Steve Lovell

Stewart Goetz on Mind-Body Dualism

An answer given for Craig's Reasonable Faith site.

Bertrand Russell accuses Aquinas of Special Pleading

There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an inquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know m advance. Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the Catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given I in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading. (H.W.P.p463)

VR: Funny thing. A good deal of present-day philosophy of mind could be accused of the same thing. In many discussions in the philosophy of mind materialism is a base assumption that is not to be questioned, and the debate concerns what version of materialism is true.

Some reflections of a Christian philosophy of mind

A Thomas Nagel paper on conceiving the impossible and the mind-body problem

The conceivability argument for dualism--if I only had a brain

From Edward Feser's Philosophy of Mind: A Short Introducion, presenting an argument for dualism he attributes to W. D. Hart, based on the conceivability of disembodied existence.

Imagine waking up one day and staggering groggily to the bathroom sink to splash some water on your face. As you gaze into the mirror, you notice, to your great horror, that where normally there would be two eyes staring back at you., you see instead two dark and vacant eye sockets—with the eyeballs completely missing! Frantic, you reach into the sockets to verify that they are empty and, sure enough, feel nothing but the stumps of the optic nerves. This would, of course, be impossible in real life. But you can certainly conceive of it happening, without contradiction—you can vividly imagine having an unsettling experience of this sort, in a way that you cannot conceive of a circular square or 2 = 2 adding up to 5. If you can conceive of this, you can also conceive that, being intrigued by your ability to see without eyeballs, and wondering if any other vision-related parts of your body are missing, you get out a hacksaw and remove the top of your skull, only to reveal an empty cavity where your brain should be. And if that’s conceivable, you can take the next step and imagine that instead of seeing empty eye sockets staring back at you, what you see is your own headless body—in which case you’d be conceiving of seeing without a head. Finally, following this exercise to its final, logical conclusion, you can imagine that what you see in the mirror is not even a headless body, but nothing more than the wall behind you and no body at all. Wondering whether someone has installed a trick mirror or if you’ve become a vampire, you look down at your torso, arms, and legs, but find that you can’t see them, only the floor under you, as you realize that your attempt to touch them has failed—there’s nothing there to touch! You would now be conceive of seeing without a body. But seeing is a mental process, as is the frenzied thinking you’d now be engaging in; which means that what you’ve conceived of is your mind existing apart from a body or brain. So again, it’s conceivable that the mind exists apart from the brain—in which case they are not identical.

Edward Feser, Philosophy of Mind: An Introduction, pp. 25-26.

Vallicella on the "problem of interaction"

This is an objection that, according to William Hasker, sets the all-time record for overrated philosophical arguments.