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NED BLOCK (Ph.D.,
Harvard), Silver Professor of Philosophy, Psychology and Neural Science, came
to NYU in 1996 from MIT where he was Chair of the Philosophy Program. He works
in philosophy of mind and foundations of neuroscience and cognitive science and
is currently writing a book on attention. He is a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of
the Cognitive
Science Society, has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a
Senior Fellow of the Center for the Study of Language and Information, a Sloan Foundation Fellow, a faculty member at two National Endowment for the
Humanities Summer
Institutes and two Summer
Seminars, the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities the American Council of Learned Societies and the National
Science Foundation; and a recipient of the
Robert A. Muh Alumni Award in Humanities and Social
Science from MIT. He is a past president
of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, a past Chair of the MIT Press Cognitive Science Board, and
past President of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness. The Philosophers' Annual selected his papers as one of the "ten best" in 1983, 1990, 1995, 2002 and 2010.
He is co-editor of The Nature of
Consciousness: Philosophical Debates (MIT Press, 1997). The first of two volumes of his collected papers, Functionalism,
Consciousness and Representation, MIT Press came out in 2007. In 2008-2009, he was Distinguished Visiting Professor,
University of Hong Kong; Townsend Visitor,
University of California at Berkeley; and Smart Lecturer at
Australian National University.
In 2009-2010, he gave the Royal Institute of Philosophy
Annual
Lecture, was the Lansdowne
Lecturer at the University of Victoria
and gave the Josiah
Royce Lectures at Brown University. In 2010-2011, he gave the Thalheimer Lectures at Johns Hopkins. In 2011-12, he will give the Rudolf
Carnap
Lectures (with Susan Carey)
at Ruhr-UniversitŠt
Bochum and the William
James Lectures
at Harvard
University. In Fall, 2012 he will
give the Immanuel
Kant Lectures at Stanford
University. In Spring 2013 he
will give the John Locke
Lectures at Oxford University.
On-line videos
Consciousness
and Intelligence. Panel Discussion
with Giulio Tononi, Christof Koch and Shimon Ullman
Darwin Day 2011. Panel Discussion with Jaqueline Gottlieb
and Massimo Pigliucci
Consciousness
as illusion and other
videos at Closer
to the Truth: Cosmos, Consciousness, God
Section 1 of the 1995 ÒBlock
PanelÓ interview
of W.V. Quine on the inverted spectrum and related issues. (Download a
Quicktime version here). Section 2, Section 3
(in which Quine gives a very qualified endorsement of an inverted spectrum)
Articles in Handbooks or Encyclopedias
ÒPerceptual
consciousness overflows cognitive accessÓ. Trends in
Cognitive Sciences December
15, 12, 2011, p 567-575
One of the most important issues
concerning the foundations of conscious perception centers on the question of
whether perceptual consciousness is rich or sparse. The overflow argument uses
a form of Ôiconic memoryÕ to argue that perceptual consciousness is richer
(i.e., has a higher capacity) than cognitive access: when observing a complex
scene we are conscious of more than we can report or think about. Recently, the
overflow argument has been challenged both empirically and conceptually. This
paper reviews the controversy, arguing that proponents of sparse perception are
committed to the postulation of (i) a peculiar kind of generic conscious
representation that has no independent rationale (for example, an image of a
non-square rectangle that does not specify any orientation) and (ii) an
unmotivated form of unconscious representation that in some cases conflicts
with what we know about unconscious representation.
ÒThe
Higher Order Approach to Consciousness is Defunct,Ó Analysis, Volume 71, No. 3, July 2011, 419-431.
Argues that there is a
well-known objection to the higher order approach to consciousness that, with a
slight twist, is fatal.
David RosenthalÕs reply: ÒExaggerated
Reports: Reply to BlockÓ Analysis
71, 431-437
Josh WeisbergÕs reply: ÒAbusing
the notion of whatÕitÕs-like-ness: A response to BlockÓ, Analysis 71, 438-443
My reply: ÒResponse
to Rosenthal and WeisbergÓ Analysis
71, 443-448
ÒThe
Anna Karenina Theory of the Unconscious, in Neuropsychoanalysis,
2011, 13 (1)
The
Anna Karenina Theory says: all conscious states are alike; each unconscious
state is unconscious in its own way.
This note argues that many components have to function properly to
produce consciousness, but failure in any one of many different ones can yield
an unconscious state in different ways.
In that sense the Anna Karenina theory is true. But in another respect it is false:
kinds of unconsciousness depend on kinds of consciousness. This is a commentary on Heather BerlinÕs
ÒThe
Neural Basis of the Dynamic UnconsciousÓ
ÒFunctional ReductionÓ, forthcoming in Supervenience in Mind: A Festschrift for Jaegwon Kim, edited by Terry Horgan, David Sosa and Marcelo
Sabates.
Argues that the functional reduction picture of reductive explanation, a
picture shared by proponents such as David Lewis and
opponents such as Jaegwon Kim, David Chalmers and Frank Jackson,
misses an important insight in the reductionist point of view
ÒWhat
was I Thinking?Ó Review
of Antonio Damasio, Self
Comes to Mind: Constructing
the Conscious Brain, New
York Times Book Review, November 28, 2010
ÒAttention
and Mental PaintÓ, in Philosophical
Issues 20, 2010, p. 23-63
Much of recent philosophy of
perception is oriented towards accounting for the phenomenal character of
perception—what it is like to perceive--in a non-mentalistic
way—that is, without appealing to mental objects or mental qualities. In
opposition to such views, I claim that the phenomenal character of perception
of a red round object cannot be explained by or reduced to direct awareness of
the object, its redness and roundness—or representation of such objects
and qualities. Qualities of
perception that are not captured by direct awareness of or representation of
qualities of object are instances of what Gilbert Harman has called Òmental
paintÓ (Harman, 1990, Block, 1990).
The claim of this paper is that empirical facts about attention point in
the direction of mental paint. The
argument starts with the claim (later modified slightly) that when one moves
oneÕs attention around a scene while keeping oneÕs eyes fixed, the
phenomenology of perception can change in ways that do not reflect which
qualities of objects one is directly aware of or the way the world is
represented to be. These changes in
the phenomenology of perception cannot be accounted for in terms of awareness
of or representation of the focus of attention because they manifest themselves
in experience as differences in apparent contrast, apparent color saturation,
apparent size, apparent speed, apparent time of occurrence and other apparent
properties. There is a way of
coping with these phenomena in terms of vagueness or indeterminacy, but this
move cannot save direct realism or representationism because the kind of
vagueness or indeterminacy required clashes wth the phenomenology itself.
Ned Block and Philip Kitcher, ÒMisunderstanding DarwinÓ,
Boston Review, March, 2010 review of Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, What
Darwin Got Wrong
Reply by Fodor and
Piattelli-Palmarini
Rejoinder by Block
and Kitcher
ÒComparing
the Major Theories of Consciousness,Ó The
Cognitive Neurosciences IV,
Michael Gazzaniga (ed.) MIT Press, 2009
Argues
that the existence of the explanatory gap provides a reason to believe a
biological account of consciousness rather than a global workspace account or a
higher order account.
ÒConsciousness
and Cognitive AccessÓ, Proceedings
of the Aristotelian Society, 108, Issue 1 pt 3 (October 2008), p.
289-317. This is a much
shorter version of the paper below, aimed more at philosophers than scientists,
and incorporating improved formulations and replies to some of the commentators
listed below.
ÓConsciousness,
Accessibility and the Mesh between Psychology and Neuroscience,Ó in Behavioral and
Brain Sciences 30, 2007, 481-548,
along with 32 commentaries (available here)
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, OÕRegan & Myin, Prinz, Rosenthal, Sergent & Rees,
Shanahan & Baars, Snodgrass & Lepisto, Spener, Tye and Van Gulick; and authorÕs
replies.
How can we disentangle the neural basis of phenomenal consciousness from the
neural machinery of the cognitive access that underlies reports of phenomenal
consciousness? We can see the problem in stark form if we ask how we
could tell whether representations inside a Fodorian module are phenomenally
conscious. The methodology would seem straightforward: find the neural
natural kinds that are the basis of phenomenal consciousness in clear cases
when subjects are completely confident and we have no reason to doubt their
authority, and look to see whether those neural natural kinds exist within
Fodorian modules. But a puzzle arises: do we include the machinery underlying
reportability within the neural natural kinds of the clear cases? If the
answer is ÔYesÕ, then there can be no phenomenally conscious representations in
Fodorian modules. But how can we know the answer? The suggested
methodology requires an answer to the question it was supposed to answer! The
paper argues for an abstract solution to the problem and exhibits a source of
empirical data that is relevant, data that show that in a certain sense
phenomenal consciousness overflows cognitive accessibility. The paper
argues that we can find a neural realizer of this overflow if assume that the
neural basis of phenomenal consciousness does not include the neural basis of
cognitive accessibility and that this assumption is justified (other things equal)
by the explanations it allows.
ÒWittgenstein and QualiaÓ, Philosophical
Perspectives 21, 1, 2007: 73-115, edited by John Hawthorne. The
version linked to here is a substantially revised version that is coming
out in a volume edited by Maria Baghramian in honor of Hilary Putnam as part of
Oxford University PressÕs Mind Association Occasional Series
Wittgenstein (in
notes published first in 1968) endorsed
one kind of inverted spectrum hypothesis and rejected another. This paper
argues that the kind of inverted spectrum hypothesis that Wittgenstein endorsed
(the ÒinnocuousÓ inverted spectrum hypothesis) is the thin end of the wedge that
precludes a Wittgensteinian critique of the kind of inverted spectrum
hypothesis he rejected (the ÒdangerousÓ kind). The danger of the dangerous kind is that
it provides an argument for qualia, where qualia are (for the purposes of this
paper) contents of experiential states that cannot be fully captured in natural
language. I will pinpoint the
difference between the innocuous and dangerous scenarios that matters for the
argument for qualia, give arguments in favor of the coherence and possibility
of the dangerous scenario, and try to show that some standard arguments against
inverted spectra are ineffective against the version of the dangerous scenario
I will be advocating. I will also
agree with what I think is WittgensteinÕs position that the kind of inverted
spectrum hypothesis he rejected lets qualia in the door. At one crucial point, I will rely on a
less controversial version of an argument I gave in Block (1999). WittgensteinÕs views provide a convenient
starting point for a paper that is much more about qualia than about
Wittgenstein.
"Max BlackÕs Objection to Mind-Body Identity", in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, II, edited by Dean Zimmerman with
replies by John Perry and Stephen White, Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 3-78. WhiteÕs reply here.
Table of Contents here. Also in Torin
Alter and Sven Walter (eds.), Phenomenal
Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge, Oxford University Press, 2006, 249-306. (Amusingly, the
simultaneous OUP publications of this article were copy-edited by different
copy-editors, leading to slightly different versions.)
The mind-body identity theorist says phenomenal property Q = brain property
B. But in stating or thinking this identity claim, donÕt we have to have a
further, unreduced, phenomenal property that serves as a mode of presentation
of Q? This paper argues that this suspicion underlies both JacksonÕs Knowledge Argument
and the famous glimpse of an argument that J. J. C. Smart
ascribed to Max Black. The
argument is presented, dissected and refuted.
"Bodily Sensations as an Obstacle for
Representationism", in Pain: New Essays on Its Nature and the Methodology of
Its Study, edited by Murat
Aydede, MIT
Press, 2005, 137-142
Review of Alva No‘, Action in Perception, The Journal of Philosophy, CII, 5, May
2005, 259-272.
"Two Neural Correlates of Consciousness" This is a longer version of a paper in Trends in
Cognitive Sciences, vol (9), 2, February
2005 The shorter published version is here. This
paper was the top download from
the Trends in Cognitive Sciences web site of 2005 and was on ScienceDirectÕs list
of the Top 25 Hottest Articles of January-March, 2005 in the category of Neuroscience.
Review (or click here) of Patricia
ChurchlandÕs Brain-wise, Science 301,
2003, p. 1328
"Mental Paint" in Reflections and
Replies, a book of essays on Tyler
Burge, with replies by Burge, edited by
Martin Hahn and Bjorn Ramberg and published by MIT
Press, 2003. Here is Burge's reply to this paper (perhaps slightly different from the published version).
"Do Causal Powers Drain Away?" Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research Vol. 67, No. 1 (July 2003), pp. 110-127, with
a reply by Jaegwon Kim, "Blocking Causal Drainage and other Chores with
Mental Causation".
"Spatial Perception via Tactile Sensation", (or here) Trends in
Cognitive Sciences Volume 7, Issue 7,
July 2003, Pages 285-286. This is a reply to Susan Hurley and Alva No‘, "Neural plasticity and consciousness". (Note: the journal incorrectly reversed the noun phrases
in the title.) Hurley's and No‘'s reply to me, "Neural plasticity and consciousness: Reply to
Block" from the August, 2003 issue.
"The Harder Problem of Consciousness", PDF version, from The Journal of Philosophy XCIX, No. 8,
August 2002, 1-35.
The version that came out in The Journal
of Philosophy was shortened considerably because of space limitations in
the journal. Some of the cuts have been restored in the version here. (This
version appeared in Disputatio 15,
November 2003.) For critiques, see Brian McLaughlin, "A Naturalist-Phenomenal Realist Response To Block's
Harder Problem", Philosophical Issues, 13, (2003):163-204 (The version linked to
here may be slightly different from the published version.), and Jakob Hohwy, "Evidence, Explanation, and Experience: On the
Harder Problem of Consciousness" Journal of Philosophy, Volume CI, Number
5, May 2004 pp. 242-254 (Again, the version linked to here may be slightly
different from the published version.)
"Some Concepts of Consciousness" In Philosophy
of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings, David Chalmers (ed.) Oxford
University Press, 2002.
"Paradox and Cross Purposes in Recent Work on
Consciousness". This is an expanded and revised version
of a commentary on all the papers in a special issue of Cognition (April, 2001) on the state of the art in the neuroscience
of consciousness. (The special issue has come out separately: Stan Dehaene,
ed., The Cognitive
Neuroscience of Consciousness, M.I.T.
Press, 2001) Two philosophers–Dan Dennett and I–were asked to
comment on all the scientists' papers. (We both made some comments on each
others' papers as well). Dennett's paper is available by clicking here. If you want to
see the papers that Dennett and I commented on, see Cognition, Volume 79, Issues 1-2, Pages 1-237 (April 2001)
"Behaviorism Revisited".
This is a comment on J. K. O_Regan. and Alva No‘, "A Sensorimotor Account of Vision and Visual
Consciousness" The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 2001 (24:5).
"Sexism, Racism, Ageism and the Nature of
Consciousness", in The Philosophy of Sydney Shoemaker, Philosophical Topics, 26, 1 and 2, 1999. Edited by Richard Moran, Jennifer
Whiting, and Alan Sidelle.
"Conceptual Analysis, Dualism and the Explanatory
Gap" (with
Robert Stalnaker) The Philosophical Review,
January, 1999.
"Is Experiencing Just Representing?" (in a symposium on Michael Tye in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,
September, 1998).
"How Not to Find the Neural Correlate of
Consciousness" (in a volume of Royal
Institute of Philosophy lectures edited by Anthony O'Hear, 1998).
"Anti-Reductionism Slaps Back" Appeared in Mind, Causation, World, Philosophical
Perspectives 11, 1997, 107-133.
"On a Confusion about a Function of
Consciousness" The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18, 2, 1995, 227-287. There is a corrected version of this
article in Block, Flanagan and G|zeldere, The Nature of
Consciousness: Philosophical Debates (MIT Press, 1997). There
was a second
round of critiques by Joseph Bogen, Selmer Bringsjord, Derek Browne, David
Chalmers, Denise Gamble, Daniel Gilman, GŸven GŸzeldere and Murat Aydede, Bruce
Mangan, Alva No‘, Ernst Pšppel, David Rosenthal, A.H.C. van der Heijden, P.T.W.
Hudson and A.G. Kurvink. These
critiques plus replies appeared in 1997: "Biology versus computation in the
study of consciousness", Behavior
and Brain Sciences 20:1, 159-165, 1997
"How Heritability Misleads about Race" (Cognition
56, 1995: pp. 99-128).
Shortened version of "How Heritability Misleads about
Race", "Race, Genes and IQ", or here (Boston
Review, 1996).
"What is Dennett's Theory a Theory of?" (Philosophical
Topics 22, 1 and 2, 1994, pp. 23-40).
"An Argument for Holism", in Proceedings
of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol XCIV, 1995, p.151-169.
"Mental Pictures and Cognitive Science" (The
Philosophical Review, Volume 92, 4, Oct. 1983, pages 499-541.) Accessing
this paper requires a password. The paper is available without the password
from JSTOR, although you may not be able to get it without a
university account or a paid subscription.
"Psychologism and Behaviorism", PDF version; from The Philosophical Review LXXXX, No. 1, January 1981, 5-43.
Articles in Handbooks or Encyclopedias
"Consciousness"(in R. Gregory (ed.) Oxford Companion to the Mind, second edition 2004) Russian version here
"Qualia"
(in R. Gregory (ed.) Oxford Companion
to the Mind, second edition, 2004)
"Consciousness" (in Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, edited by Lynn Nadel. New York, NY, Nature Publishing
Group, 2003.)
"Holism, Mental and Semantic" (in The Routledge
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1998)
"Semantics, Conceptual Role" (in The Routledge
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1998)
"What is Functionalism?" (a revised version of the entry on functionalism in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy Supplement,
Macmillan, 1996)
"The Mind as the Software of the Brain" (An
Invitation to Cognitive Science, edited by D. Osherson, L. Gleitman, S.
Kosslyn, E. Smith and S. Sternberg, MIT Press, 1995)
"Qualia"
from S. Guttenplan (ed) A Companion to
Philosophy of Mind, Blackwell: Oxford
Courses
Minds & Machines, Fall 2011
Consciousness, Fall 2010
Conceptual and Empirical Issues
about Perception, Attention and Consciousness
Spring 2011 (with David Carmel)
Seminar on
Mind & Language, Spring 2010 (joint CUNY course with Jesse Prinz)
Philosophical
and Empirical Issues about Consciousness, Fall 2008 (joint Columbia/NYU
course with Hakwan Lau)
Consciousness,
Action and Attention, Spring 2008
Percepts and Concepts,
Fall 2005 (with Michael Strevens)
Research Seminar on Language and Mind: Consciousness, Spring 2005
(with Thomas Nagel)
Advanced Introduction to Philosophy of Mind, Fall 2003
Philosophy of Mind: Consciousness, Fall 2001
Research Seminar on Language and Mind: Consciousness, Spring 2000
(with Thomas Nagel)
Research Seminar on Language and Mind: Concepts, Spring 1998
(with Paul Boghossian)
Research Seminar on Language and Mind: Consciousness, Spring 1997
(with Thomas Nagel)
Metaphysics: Causation,
Fall 1997 (with Hartry Field)
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