Philosophical and
Empirical Issues about Consciousness
December 8: change in last reading posted at the end
Inform Linda Bahdo, lb2532@columbia.edu if any of the
Columbia links don’t work. If
other links don’t work, inform Ned Block at ned.blockATSIGNnyu.edu
Instructors: Ned Block and Hakwan Lau
NYU location: 5 Washington Place, 2nd floor seminar
room
Columbia location: probably
somewhere in Schermerhorn Hall
Mondays 6-8
All assigned readings are
available on the web, but some require a password
that will be mentioned in class.
Readings that can only be accessed for free via a university library
site linked to separately for NYU and Columbia
Please send reports of
broken links and other website problems to Ned Block
Location: NYU
Topic:
Introduction to the Neural Correlates of Visual Awareness (& course
logistics)
Readings:
Rees
G, Kreiman G, Koch C (2002) Neural correlates of
consciousness in humans. Nature Reviews
Neuroscience
3(4):261-70 NYU
Link Columbia
Link
Chalmers
D (1995) The Puzzle of Conscious
Experience Scientific
American 273(6):80-6
Lau HC (2008/in press) Are
we studying consciousness yet? In Frontiers of Consciousness (OUP) Edited
by Davies M and Weiskrantz L
September
15
Location: Columbia
Topic: Higher Order Thought
Readings: (Access to these readings require a password.)
David
Rosenthal, "Sensory Qualities,
Consciousness, and Perception", in Consciousness
and Mind, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005, pp. 175-226.
David Rosenthal, "Unity of
Consciousness and the Self", in Consciousness
and Mind, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005, pp. 339-363
Daniel Pollen, “Fundamental
Requirements for Primary Visual Perception”, Cerebral Cortex 18 (9), 2008
p. 1991-1998. Read at least the
first few pages of this article.
(Requires password. Or go through the
university library.)
September
22
Location: NYU
Topic:
Signal detection theory and consciousness
Readings:
David
Heeger's handout on this topic - http://www.cns.nyu.edu/~david/handouts/sdt/sdt.html
Lau
H (2008) A higher order Bayesian decision theory of consciousness
Progress in
Brain Research
Lau HC (2008/in press) Are
we studying consciousness yet? In Frontiers of Consciousness (OUP) Edited by
Davies M and Weiskrantz L
Target
article for debate: Goldberg II, Harel M, Malach R.
(2006) When the brain loses its self: prefrontal
inactivation during sensorimotor processing.
Neuron 50, 329-339. NYU
Link Columbia
link
Hakwan Lau’s
comments on this article. (Password required)
September
29
Location: NYU
Topic:
The Extended Mind
Readings
Alva Noe and Evan Thompson, "Are There Neural Correlates of
Consciousness?", Journal of Consciousness Studies, 11, 1,
2004.
Alva Noë and Evan Thompson, “Sorting Out the Neural
Basis of Consciousness”, Journal of Consciousness Studies 11, 1, 204, 87-98
Selected
replies on Noë and Thompson in same issue of Journal
of Consciousness Studies.
(This link requires the password, but these replies are also available
from your library site.)
Susan Hurley,
"Varieties
of Externalism", in The Extended Mind, ed. Richard Menary, in
press Ashgate. (This link requires the password
mentioned in class.)
October 6: NO
CLASS
October 13
Location: NYU
Topic:
The Explanatory Gap and its Relation to Theories of Consciousness
Readings
Thomas Nagel, "What is it Like to be a Bat?" The Philosophical Review, LXXXIII(4), 435-450.
Ned Block, “Comparing
Theories of Consciousness” Forthcoming in Michael Gazzaniga
(ed.) The
Cognitive Neurosciences IV, MIT Press.
Stanislas Dehaene. And J-P Changeux (2005), “Neural Mechanisms for Access to Consciousness”,
The Cognitive Neurosciences III,
Michael Gazzaniga (ed.) MIT Press
.
October 20
Location: NYU
Topic:
Volition and the functions of consciousness
Readings:
Libet B (1985) Unconscious
cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action
Behavioral
and Brain Sciences. 8:529–66 (Access
requires password.)
Lau H (in press) Volition
and the functions of consciousness, Forthcoming in Michael Gazzaniga (ed.) The Cognitive Neurosciences IV, MIT Press.
plus
Paper
for debate:
van Gaal S, Ridderinkhof KR, Fahrenfort JJ, Scholte HS, Lamme VA. (2008) Frontal cortex mediates
unconsciously triggered inhibitory control. Journal of Neuroscience 28, 8053-8062 NYU Link Columbia Link
October 27
Location: NYU
Topic:
Consciousness and Accessibility
Readings
Ned Block, ”Consciousness,
Accessibility and the Mesh between Psychology and Neuroscience,” Behavioral and
Brain Sciences 30, 481-548
Selected Replies from those by Balog, Burge, Byrne Hilbert & Siegel, Clark & Kiverstein, Gopnik, Grush, Harman, Hulme &
Whitely, Izard Quinn & Most, Jacob, Kentridge,
Koch & Tsuchiya, Kouider, Gardelle
& Dupoux, Lamme, Landman & Sligte, Lau & Persaud, Laureys, Levine, Lycan, Malach, McDermott, Naccache & Dehaene, O’Regan & Myin, Prinz, Rosenthal, Sergent &
Rees, Shanahan & Baars, Snodgrass & Lepisto, Spener, Tye and Van Gulick
Ned Block, “Overflow,
Access and Attention,” responses to the 32 replies
November
3
Location: NYU
Topic:
Recurrent processing, attention and visual awareness
Readings:
Macknik S & Martinez-Conde
S (in press) Recurrent processing and visual awareness, Forthcoming
in Michael Gazzaniga (ed.) The Cognitive Neurosciences IV, MIT
Press.
Lamme VA. (2003) Why visual attention and
awareness are different. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 7(1):12-18. NYU
Link Columbia
Link
Koch
C, Tsuchiya N. (2007) Attention
and consciousness: two distinct brain processes (or here
if the KochLab web site is not working). Trends in
Cognitive Sciences 11(1):16-22 NYU
Link Columbia
Link
Target
article for debate: Tse PU, Martinez-Conde
S, Schlegel AA, Macknik SL. (2005) Visibility,
visual awareness, and visual masking of simple unattended targets are confined
to areas in the occipital cortex beyond human V1/V2. Proceedings of the National Academy of Scence U S A.
November 10
Location: NYU
Topic: Disjunctivism
Reading
John
Campbell, Reference
and Consciousness, Chapter 6.1, “The
Relational View of Experience”, Oxford 2002
Tyler Burge.
Disjunctivism and perceptual psychology. Philosophical
Topics 33 (1):1-78
John
Campbell, “Demonstrative
Reference, The Relational View of Experience and the Proximality
Principle”
November 17
Location: NYU
Topic: Disjunctivism
Reading
John
Campbell, Reference
and Consciousness, Chapter 6.1, “The
Relational View of Experience”, Oxford 2002
Tyler Burge.
Disjunctivism and perceptual psychology. Philosophical
Topics 33 (1):1-78
John
Campbell, “Demonstrative
Reference, The Relational View of Experience and the Proximality
Principle”
November 24
Location: NYU
Topic:
Blindsight
Readings:
Cowey A.
(2004) The 30th Sir Frederick Bartlett lecture. Fact, artefact, and myth about
blindsight. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
A. 57(4):577-609 NYU
Link Columbia
Link
Azzopardi P, Cowey A. (1998) Blindsight and visual awareness. Conscious & Cognition 7(3):292-311
plus NYU
Link Columbia
Link
Paper for debate: Beck DM,
Rees G,
Frith CD, Lavie N. (2001) Neural correlates of change
detection and change blindness. Nature
Neuroscience 4 (6) 645-650, 2001 NYU
Link Columbia
Link
December 1
Location: NYU
Topic:
Phenomenal Concepts
Michael Tye: Consciousness
Revisited: Materialism without Phenomenal Concepts, MIT Press,
2009. Access requires password. To be published in December, 2008 or
January, 2009. Read chapters 1 and
7 for this week. Please do not
share this file with anyone outside the class.
December 8
(Last meeting)
Location: NYU
Topic:
The information integration theory of consciousness
Readings:
Tononi G. (2004) An information integration theory of consciousness. BMC Neurosci. 5(1):42
plus
Article
for debate:
Massimini
M, Ferrarelli F, Huber R, Esser
SK, Singh H, Tononi G, Breakdown of cortical
effective connectivity during sleep. Science.
2005 Sep 30;309(5744):2228-32.
Extra reading: Wyart V, Tallon-Baudry C.
(2008) Neural dissociation between visual awareness and spatial attention. Journal of Neuroscience 28, 2471-2484. NYU Link Columbia Link
Message from Hakwan
of September 16th
Dear class,
Next week (September 22nd) we'll be debating the article
of Goldberg et al instead,
which is the article originally set for Nov 24. Hope
it is ok.
What is this debate business? Usually in my seminars we spend a lot
of
time (like a whole hour) discussing a single,
short, empirical
article. I find this a useful exercise. But with the
unexpected class
size, and your varied background, I understand I
may have to change
strategy somewhat.
So next Monday, we may or may not have a proper
debate. Or maybe a
very brief one. However, I still require you to do
the following:
- Notify me whether you think positively or negatively of the paper
the day before class, by email. Positive and
negative are relative.
For the five debates you have to be negative in at least 3
occasions,
if you're not writing a term paper.
- If you're negative, you should write up a critical review of
ABSOLUTELY NO MORE THAN 500 words. It has to be succinct and clear,
and to be handed in before class (by email; an
extra hard copy is much
appreciated). You don't have to mention
everything you don't like. You
should focus on the critical points that you think
really make the
paper unsound. I prefer you focus more on the issues
regarding
experimental design, data analysis and
interpretation. Conceptual
issues could be discussed, but points that are mainly
semantic may not
be much appreciated, e.g. "this study claims
that they want to study
consciousness, but I think they are only
studying awareness". These
kind of criticisms can be very meaningful, but they
miss the point of
the exercise. I want you to think like an
empirical scientist, e.g.
have they carried out the necessary control
conditions to rule out a
particularly plausible alternative
explanation?
- Positive doesn't mean you don't have to do anything. I usually ask
the positive students to take us through the
FIGURES: what does each
figure says? what are the
axes and labels? You may be asked at random,
or not asked at all, but you must be prepared.
Also, you should be
prepared to defend the criticisms that your opponents
may raise.
- If you're not writing a term paper, your best 3 critical reviews
would count towards the major component of your
final grade. You could
do both obviously, but you don't have to.
- If you need to read background material to understand the
methodology in paper in order to make a
judgment, I assume that you
would. Wikipedia is a good source, and is usually
sufficient. (You
don't have a understand every single detail.) This
is a 4-credit
(Columbia units?) graduate class, which
means the work should be more
than just coming to class once a week without
preparation, and no
exams. Fair enough?
I'll tell you in class what I think are the points in each paper
that
are weak and could be criticized.
Hakwan