However, unlike physicalism, eliminative materialism disbelieved deeply of the possibility to identify brain phenomena on the basis of the mental categories. On the basis of that assumption is the belief that the conceptual network of preteorica Psychology (what is technically known as folk psychology) is radically erroneous and, therefore, confundente. Accordingly, they advocate a neglect Tote of psychological categories to replace them with a conceptual system derived from a mature Neuroscience (among others) developed by Putnam and Fodor, which – implicitly – identifies the States and mental States and informational processes of a system, which in turn are characterized by their functional relationship with other mental States and/or behavioural. According to functionalism mental exists and is a level of legitimate study which should not be reduced nor the neurophysiological and behavioral level. 5 Functionalism (extended characterization)?Functionalism, inspired by the software-hardware distinction developed by computer science, says that States and mental processes actually exist and that its nature is not reducible (in ontological terms) to States and neurophysiological processes. ?At the time of characterized – in positive terms – what are really mental phenomena, functionalism refers to two aspects: * States and mental processes are basically States informational system. ** In keeping with the foregoing, what defines the specific character of a mental state is its causal role or functional role or – in sense lato – its function. Say that a particular State is defined by their causal role means to say that essentially at the same it is the set of causal relationships with other mental States and/or behavioural; IE: States that depends on and those which in turn causes. To integrate the above-mentioned aspects have, for example, the following type definitions: fear is an informational State X of an organism (or system) or which arises from the perception of an external stimulus and which is signified as A threatening and that triggers a PA action plan and the concomitant evitativa conduct CF?In terms of its relationship with the software-hardware distinction, functionalism is based on the idea that the functional nature of a system (VG, what this is capable of doing) does not depend on its nature physical (VG, the substance of which it is made), but the way in which it is organized.