Energy Requirements Undermine Substrate Independence and Mind-Body Functionalism

Substrate independence and mind-body functionalism claim that thinking does not depend on any particular kind of physical implementation. But real-world information processing depends on energy, and energy depends on material substrates. Biological evidence for these claims comes from ecology and neuroscience, while computational evidence comes from neuromorphic computing and deep learning. Attention to energy requirements undermines the use of substrate independence to support claims about the feasibility of artificial intelligence, the moral standing of robots, the possibility that we may be living in a computer simulation, the plausibility of transferring minds into computers, and the autonomy of psychology from neuroscience.