|
|
Consciousness (V83.0081) 2010 Silver Center 206 Monday and Wednesday 3:30-4:45 Professor: Ned Block 212-998-8322 (Note: you will have better TAs: Knut Skarsaune,
kos214
at-sign nyu.edu Office hours: Tuesdays 11-12 and by
appointment Philippe Lusson,
pal305 at-sign nyu.edu, Office Hours: Thursday 12:30-2:30 Sections: Philippe Lusson Th 9:30–10:45 Th 11–12:15 Knut Skarsaune T 9:30–10:45 T 12:30–1:45 |
|
|
|
ATTENTION: The final examination will be in class on
Wednesday, December 15, 2010 the last class.
No late papers.
If you miss the deadline for one assignment, just do another.
Read Jim Pryor’s advice on writing a
philosophy paper: Guidelines on
Writing a Philosophy Paper
Assignments (and slides) are posted on
Blackboard. Please submit your assignments in .doc, .docx or .rtf format, but not .pdf
format.
Final Exam: December 15th: questions will be based
on the assignments
Please send info
about broken links to Ned Block
|
All readings will be available on the
web. Some will require a password that
will be revealed in class. The reading for this
course is not lengthy but it is difficult material. You should expect to read
almost everything twice. |
|
The Explanatory Gap Thomas Nagel, "What is it
Like to be a Bat?" The
Philosophical Review, LXXXIII (4), 435-450, 1974 Sept 13, 15 David Chalmers, “Facing Up to the Problem of
Consciousness”, Journal of Consciousness Studies
1995 Sept 15,
20 Higher
Order Theories of Consciousness David Rosenthal, “A
Theory of Consciousness” in N. Block, O. Flanagan and G. Güzeldere,
The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates
(MIT Press,
1997). Sept 22 Josh
Weisberg, “Misrepresenting
Consciousness”, Philosophical
Studies 2010 Sept 27 Ned
Block, “The
Higher Order Approach to Consciousness is Defunct” Sept 29 Concepts
of Consciousness Stanislas Dehaene.
And J-P Changeux (2005), “Neural
Mechanisms for Access to Consciousness”, The Cognitive Neurosciences III,
Michael Gazzaniga (ed.) MIT Press October 4th Ned Block, “Consciousness and Cognitive
Access”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,
108, Issue 1 pt 3 (October 2008), p. 289-317 October 6th Commentaries
by Burge, Byrne, et. al., Clark & Kiverstein, Garelle & Dupoux, Lau & Persaud,
Levine, Lycan, Malach, Naccache
& Dehaene, Prinz, Sergent, et. al., van Gulick
and author’s replies (The commentaries and replies
are parts of the same document.) October 11 is a holiday so this material will be
discussed October 13th. Consciousness
vs. Attention Christopher Mole, “Attention”, Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy October 18th Christof Koch
& Naotsugu Tsuchiya, “The
Relationship between Consciousness and Attention,” in Laureys
& Tononi,
The Neurology of Consciousness, 2008 October 20th Victor Lamme, V. (2003) Why
visual attention and awareness are different. Trends in Cognitive Sciences
7:12–18.
October 25th Jesse Prinz,
“When
is Perception Conscious?” In Bence Nanay, Perceiving
the World: New Essays on Perception. New York: Oxford University Press,
2010. October
27th Eric Lormand,
Comments on “A Neurofunctional
Theory of Visual Consciousness” Consciousness
and Cognition 9 (2), June 2000, Pages 260-266 November 1st Jesse
Prinz, A Reply to Lormand, Consciousness
and Cognition 9 (2), June 2000, Pages 274-278 November 1st Jesse
Prinz, “Does
Consciousness Outstrip Sensation?”, in On the Human, National Humanities Center
Blog, November 1, 2010, November 3rd Modularity of Mind and
Top-Down Effects on Perception Fiona
Macpherson, “"Cognitive Penetration
of Colour Experience: Rethinking the Issue in
Light of an Indirect Mechanism", Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research, forthcoming November 8th Keith
Payne, “Weapon Bias”: Split-Second
Decisions and Unintended Stereotyping, Current
Directions in Psychological Science 15, 6, 2006 November 10th Harold Bekkering and Sebastiaan F. W. Neggers, “Visual
Search is Modulated by Action Intentions,” Psychological Science 13, 4,
2002. November
15th Dennis R. Proffitt, “Distance
Perception,” Current
Directions in Psychological Science 15, 3, 2006 November 15th The Inverted Spectrum Alex Byrne, “Inverted Qualia”,
in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy November 17th Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical
Investigations, paragraphs 89-133,
243-315 November
22nd Ned Block, “Wittgenstein and Qualia”, Philosophical
Perspectives (21, 1) edited by John Hawthorne. 2007: 73-115 November 24th Daniel Dennett, "Quining Qualia",
in A.
Marcel and E. Bisiach, eds,
Consciousness in Modern Science,
Oxford University Press 1988 November 29th Time
and Eliminativism about Consciousness Daniel
Dennett and Marcel Kinsbourne, "Time and the Observer: The Where and When of
Consciousness in the Brain" Behavioral and Brain Sciences 1991 December 1st Replies
to Dennett and Kinsbourne and their rejoinders. The replies by Antony, Block, Damasio, Clark, Lycan and VanGulick
may come up in class December
6th Ian Phillips, “The Temporal Structure
of Experience,” To
appear in D. Lloyd and V. Arstila (eds.) Subjective
Time: the Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Temporality MIT
Press. December
8th December 13th:
review The
Zombie Within Andy Clark, "Visual Experience and Motor Action: Are the Bonds Too Tight?" Phil Review Oct 2001. Christof Koch & Frances Crick, The zombie within. Nature (2001) 411, 893, or, if that link doesn’t work use library access to the Nature web site The
Sense of Ownership of the Body Manos Tsakiris & Patrick Haggard, “The Rubber
Hand Illusion Revisited: Visuotactile Integration
and Self-Attribution, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human
Perception and Performance, 2005, 31, 1, 80-91 Frédérique de Vignemont, Habeas Corpus:
The Sense of Ownership of One’s Own Body, Mind & Language 22,
4, 427-449, September 2007 H. Henrik Ehrsson, “The
Experimental Induction of Out-of-Body Experiences” Science 317,
2007, p. 1048. Greg Miller, “Out-of-Body
Experiences Enter the Laboratory,” Science 317, 2007, p. 1020a Bigna Lenggenhager, Tej Tadi, Thomas Metzinger &
Olaf Blanke, “Video Ergo
Sum: Manipulating Bodily Self-Consciousness,” Science 317, 2007,
p. 1096. Angelo Moravita, Atsushi Iriki,
“Tools for the body (schema)”, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8, 2,
2004 Is
the Conscious Will Epiphenomenal? Dan Wegner, “Who is the
controller of controlled processes? In R. Hassin, J.S. Uleman, & J.A.
Bargh (Eds.) The New Unconscious (pp. 19-36).
New York: Oxford University Press. Richard Holton, review of Wegner, The
Illusion of Conscious Will, Mind
113 (2004) 218-21 Tim
Bayne, Phenomenology
and the Feeling of Doing: Wegner on the Conscious Will, In S. Pockett, W. P. Banks and S. Gallagher (eds.) Does Consciousness Cause Behavior?
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 169-186, 2006 Slides will be posted on Blackboard after
each class. MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science
|
|
|
REQUIREMENTS,
GRADING, AND RULES
|
There
will be a 3-5 page writing assignment posted each week and due the following
week. You must choose three of these
assignments, including one of Assignments 1-3, and one assignment after
Assignment 6. There
will be a final examination, the questions of which will be very similar to
questions on the weekly writing assignments. So you should be satisfied that
you understand the questions even for assignments that you do not do in
writing. The
writing assignments will normally require statements of positions taken by
one of the authors that you've read. These statements should be couched in
your own words, explaining how you see what the author has said. No quotations; no paraphrases. Grading:
Each of the three papers will count for one fifth of the grade, the final
will count for one fifth of the grade and participation in class (including
section) will be another one fifth. Joint
work is encouraged. Arguing about your views with others is the best way to
find out where your position leads. If your paper is a product of joint work,
all of the participants should turn in their own versions, with the communal
ideas stated in each paper in the writer's own words. When you do work together
on an assignment, this must be stated on each paper. All participants in
joint work get full credit.
|
