Functionalism, Consciousness and Face Recognition (3,341ww) To deny plumply that ‘consciousness exists’ seems so absurd on the face of it—for undeniably, ‘thoughts’ do exist—that I fear some readers will follow me no further. Let me then immediately explain that I mean only to deny that the word stands for an entity, but to insist most emphatically that it does stand for a function. William James 1904, “Does Consciousness Exist?” H.G. Callaway HG1Callaway@gmail.com Abstract (238ww) This paper draws on recent work on face recognition to provide details and empirical context for outlining a functional approach to consciousness and its contents. 1 Human beings are able to detect and recognize a given face, distinct from an extensive gallery of others, usually in less than a second. The process occurs accurately and with little or no apparent effort. Much is known about how we are able to recognize faces, and results have been detailed in the literature of psychology and neuroscience. Since consciousness is by far the more daunting concept of interest here, the burden of argument in this paper falls on an elucidation of functionalism in relation to results in the psychology of human face recognition—to marshal empirical support for a functionalist approach to consciousness. Although function and functionalism are customarily contrasted with structure and structuralism, part of the overall argument of this papers rests on emphasizing the theoretical advantages of extending the concept of function in the direction of traditional accounts of the elements of psychological structure—the contents of consciousness. We can only understand elements of experience or of psychological processing, such as the look or image of something red, or the distinctive character of visual recognition, in light of overall functions. Given the empirical results concerning face recognition, it will be argued that understanding the functional roles of content is 1. An earlier version of the paper was read at the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division meeting in January 2021.