Structural functionalism focuses on how large structures fit together, and conflict theory looks at how society defines sources of inequality and conflict.
In contrast to structural functionalism, conflict theories imagine society as being composed of different groups that struggle over scarce resources – like power, money, land, food, or status.
And as our society becomes more global, the questions raised by two of our camps of sociology, structural functionalism and conflict theory, become even more pressing.
Such homuncular functionalism (as the approach is known in AI circles) replaces the infinite regress with a finite one that terminates at tasks so dull and simple that they can be done by machines.
They rely on an account of " computational functionalism, " according to which consciousness is reduced to pieces of information passed back and forth within a system, like in a pinball machine.