Realization functionalist idea

There is no consensus among NRP theorists as to what it takes for one event to realize another event. There is, however, a common core idea that underlies the leading views. It is the functionalist idea of role-playing or role-occupancy a realizer is a role-occupier. Thus, the basic idea is that a physical event can realize a mental event in virtue of occupying an appropriate role. The role is taken to be predominately a causal role, although it may include as well the participation of the realizing event in certain relations that are noncausal. This functionalist idea has been implemented in diflFerent ways. The issue that will concern us is whether any of the ways in which it has been implemented will serve the NRP theorist s purpose, that is to say, whether any of the ways yields a notion of physical realization that meets conditions (i) and (2). 

I think that no one has yet succeeded in showing how any way of implementing the functionalist idea of realization can fit this bill. Thus, I think that no NRP theorist has shown how such a notion of realization... 

The functionalist idea of realization has been implemented in at least two different ways. 1 have in mind the distinction between filler-functionalism and role-functionalism. 1 will focus here exclusively on these two ways of implementing the functionalist idea. As we will see in due course, the filler-functionalist implementation of the notion of realization is unavailable to the NRP theorist, for given that implementation, the claim that every mental event is realized by a physical event entails that every mental event is identical with a physical event. The role-functionalist implementation does not have that implication. But there are, I maintain, grounds for skepticism that the role-functionalist view of mental events is compatible with mental events being causes. Those grounds, moreover, are independent of the truth of physical closure and the physical effects principle and thus do not presuppose them indeed, the concerns are independent of whether our world is fundamentally physical but of this, more in due course. To anticipate, then, I will argue that appeal to the filler-functionalist notion realization will not enable NRP theorists to offer an account of the place of mental events in nature that meets condition (i) and that there are... 

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