What is Functionalism in Psychology Example? Is Functionalism a Dualism?

During our life, we have to face lots of mind and body problems. The name of the proposals that provide possible solutions to these mind and body problems is known as functionalism. Their solutions provide lots of answers to the questions like what is the nature of our mind, which things make our mind mental and what are the possible thoughts regarding the specific point of views. Here, experts of dissertation writing services will provide enough idea about the functionalism.

Main ideas of functionalism
In philosophy, the theory that describes the specific nature of the minds is known as functionalism. The main ideas of functionalism are explained below;

1. In the functionalism, firstly, there comes the concept of function. According to the functionalist sociologists, the main function of functionalism is to maintain society. For this reason, a family is responsible for producing and socializing the new members of society.
2. Secondly, there comes a collective conscience and value consensus. According to functionalists, without collective conscience and value consensus, it is almost impossible for us to achieve social orders. Without social orders, it is almost impossible for us to achieve the well-being of society.
3. Thirdly, there come functional alternatives. These functional alternatives argue us to replace some religious and cultural ideologies in order to perform well in society.
4. Fourthly, there comes a social order. According to this social order, the four basic needs of a society are food, money, shelter and clothing.
5. At last, there comes functionalism and education. According to this idea of functionalism, education is necessary for a society because it can bring change in society.

Functional psychology
Functional psychology is also known as a psychological school of thought. Its main focus is on the attention that is modified over the years. The founder of functional psychology is Edward L. Thorndike. He has performed lots of experiments with trial and error learning. The main content of Edward L. Thorndike was about consciousness rather than the motives of human behaviour. For this reason, he had denied the famous principle of inspection. Nowadays, functional psychology has become its own formal school. Edward Titchener was the first person who gave the first definition of functional psychology. According to him, the branch of science in which we study the mental behaviour of someone is known as functional psychology. James Angel, Mary Calkin and John Dewey have played essential roles in functionalism psychology.

Functionalism is dualism
As we have discussed earlier that functionalism is about consciousness and therefore, we can say that functionalism is dualism. There are two kinds of stuff like mental stuff and physical stuff. In the mental stuff, there come desires, dreams and wishes of a person whereas in the physical stuff, there come height, weight and colour of a person. No doubt, mental stuff is completely different from the physical stuff but functionalism relies on both of them. That’s why we can say that functionalism is dualism. Now, the challenge for the dualists is that they have to face the interaction between the mental stuff and physical stuff.