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212-998-8322 ned-dot-block-atsign-nyu-dot-edu FAX: 917-595-5391 April-June 2013 at University
of Oxford |
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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 Jack 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 gave the William
James Lectures
(list of past
lecturers) at Harvard
University and the Rudolf
Carnap Lectures (with Susan Carey)
at Ruhr-UniversitŠt Bochum. In Fall, 2012 he gave the Immanuel
Kant Lectures (list of past
lecturers) at Stanford University. In Spring 2013 he will give the John Locke
Lectures (list of past
lecturers) at Oxford
University. In Spring, 2014, he
will give the Jean Nicod Lectures in Paris and in the Fall of 2014 he will
give the Kim
Young-Jung Memorial Lectures at Seoul National University.
On-line videos
What
is Consciousness? Interview and
music by Joe LeDoux on a Scientific American site
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
Ned Block and Susanna Siegel, ÒAttention
and Perceptual Adaptation,Ó Behavioral
and Brain Sciences, forthcoming, 2013
Comment on Andy Clark on predictive coding: Clark
advertises the predictive coding (PC) framework as applying to a wide range of phenomena,
including attention. We argue that for many attentional phenomena, the
predictive coding picture either makes false predictions, or else it offers no
distinctive explanation of those phenomena, thereby reducing its explanatory
power.
ÒThe
Grain of Vision and the Grain of Attention,Ó Thought:
A Journal of Philosophy. Volume
1, Issue 3, September 2012. First
published online: 3 JAN 2013 DOI: 10.1002/tht3.28
Often when there is no attention to an object, there is no
conscious perception of it either, leading some to conclude that conscious
perception is an attentional phenomenon. There is a well-known perceptual
phenomenon—visuo-spatial crowding, in which
objects are too closely packed for attention to single out one of them. This
article argues that there is a variant of crowding—what I call
ÔÔidentity-crowdingÕÕ—in which one can consciously see a thing despite
failure of attention to it. This conclusion, together with new evidence that
attention to an object occurs in unconscious perception, suggests there may be
a double dissociation between conscious perception of an object and attention
to that object, constraining the extent to which consciousness can be
constitutively attentional. The argument appeals to a comparison between the
minimal resolution (or ÔÔgrainÕÕ) of object-attention and object-seeing.
Naotsugu Tsuchiya, Ned Block, Christof Koch, ÒTop-down
attention and consciousness: comment on Cohen et al.Ó Trends in Cognitive Sciences 16, 11,
2012, p. 527
J.Kevin OÕRegan & Ned Block, ÒDiscussion
of J. Kevin OÕReganÕs Why Red DoesnÕt Sound Like a Bell: Understanding the Feel of
ConsciousnessÓ, The Review of
Philosophy and Psychology, 2012
ÒResponse
to Kouider, et al.: which view is better supported by
the evidence.Ó Replies to Kouider, et. al. and Overgaard & GrŸnbaum,
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Vol 16, No. 3, March, 2012
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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