Ned Block
Biographic Data
| ID | 616079 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ned Block |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ned |
| FAMILY NAME | Block |
| SIGNATURE | BLOCK N |
| AFFILIATIONS | New York University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0587-6899 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 230 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1971 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Responses to critics
Précis of The Border between Seeing and Thinking
The Border Between Seeing and Thinking
This book argues that there is a joint in nature between seeing and thinking, perception, and cognition. Perception is constitutively iconic, nonconceptual, and nonpropositional, whereas cognition does not have these properties constitutively. The book does not appeal to “intuitions,” as is common in philosophy, but to empirical evidence, including experiments in neuroscience and psychology. The book argues that cognition affects perception, i.e.…
Blockheads!
New essays on the philosophy of Ned Block, with substantive and wide-ranging responses by Block. Perhaps more than any other philosopher of mind, Ned Block synthesizes philosophical and scientific approaches to the mind; he is unique in moving back and forth across this divide, doing so with creativity and intensity. Over the course of his career, Block has made groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of intelligence, representation, an…
Opportunities and challenges for a maturing science of consciousness
The Anna Karenina Principle and Skepticism about Unconscious Perception
Seeing‐As in the Light of Vision Science
Readings in Philosophy of Psychology, Volume I
Perceptual consciousness overflows cognitive access
Consciousness and cognitive access
Consciousness, accessibility, and the mesh between psychology and neuroscience
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 see the problem in stark form if we ask how we can 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 s…
Consciousness, Function, and Representation
This volume of Ned Block's writings collects his papers on consciousness, functionalism, and representationism. A number of these papers treat the significance of the multiple realizability of states for the mind-body problem -- a theme that has concerned Block since the 1960s. One paper on this topic considers the upshot for the mind-body problem of the possibility of a robot that is functionally like us but physically different -- as is Command…
Wittgenstein and Qualia 1
Two neural correlates of consciousness
Action in Perception by Alva Noë
Do Causal Powers Drain Away
The Harder Problem of Consciousness
How Not To Find the Neural Correlate of Consciousness
There are two concepts of consciousness that are easy to confuse with one another, access-consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. However, just as the concepts of water and H2O are different concepts of the same thing, so the two concepts of consciousness may come to the same thing in the brain. The focus of this paper is on the problems that arise when these two concepts of consciousness are conflated. I will argue that John Searle s reasoni…
Conceptual Analysis, Dualism, and the Explanatory Gap
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Duke University Press and Philosophical Review are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
Is Experiencing Just Representing
Mental Paint and Mental Latex
The greatest chasm in the philosophy of mind -maybe even all of philosophydivides two perspectives on consciousness. The two perspectives differ on whether there is anything in the phenomenal character of conscious experience that goes beyond the intentional, the cognitive and the functional. A convenient terminological handle on the dispute is whether there are qualia. Those who think that the phenomenal character of conscious experience goes be…
On a confusion about a function of consciousness
Consciousness is a mongrel concept: there are a number of very different “consciousnesses.” Phenomenal consciousness is experience; the phenomenally conscious aspect of a state is what it is like to be in that state. The mark of access-consciousness, by contrast, is availability for use in reasoning and rationally guiding speech and action. These concepts are often partly or totally conflated, with bad results. This target article uses as an exam…
IX—An Argument for Holism
Journal Article IX—An Argument for Holism Get access Ned Block Ned Block Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 95, Issue 1, 1 June 1995, Pages 151–170, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/95.1.151 Published: 09 September 2015
Past, Space, and Self
Humans were thought to be unique among the species in having minds, but recent results showing the richness and diversity in animal psychology makes this view untenable. Yet there remains the question of whether we can map the features of a particularly human psychology that are responsible for its overall structure. In this book John Campbell shows that the general structural features of human thought can be seen as having their source in the di…
Inverted Earth
Conceptual Analysis, Dualism, and the Explanatory Gap
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Duke University Press and Philosophical Review are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
What Psychological States are Not
AS FAR as anyone knows, different organisms are often in psychological states of exactly the same type at one time or another, and a given organism is often in psychological states of exactly the same type at different times. Whenever either is the case, we shall say of the psychological states of the organism(s) in question that they are type identical. One thing that currently fashionable theories in the philosophy of mind often try to do is ch…
Seeing‐As in the Light of Vision Science
Do Causal Powers Drain Away
Inverted Earth
Psychologism and Behaviorism
This paper makes two claims: first, psychologism is true, and thus a natural behaviorist analysis of intelligence that is incompatible with psychologism is false. Second, the standard arguments against behaviorism are inadequate to defeat this natural behaviorist analysis of intelligence or to establish psychologism. While psychologism is of course anathema to behaviorists, it also seems wrong-headed to many philosophers who would not classify th…
The Harder Problem of Consciousness
Are Absent Qualia Impossible
Mental Pictures and Cognitive Science
The Anna Karenina Principle and Skepticism about Unconscious Perception
Is Experiencing Just Representing
Opportunities and challenges for a maturing science of consciousness
Wittgenstein and Qualia 1
Précis of The Border between Seeing and Thinking
Are Mechanistic and Teleological Explanations of Behaviour Incompatible
Journal Article Are Mechanistic and Teleological Explanations of Behaviour Incompatible? Get access N. J. Block N. J. Block Harvard University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 21, Issue 83, April 1971, Pages 109–117, https://doi.org/10.2307/2218333 Published: 01 April 1971
Are Mechanistic and Teleological Explanations of Behaviour Incompatible
Journal Article Are Mechanistic and Teleological Explanations of Behaviour Incompatible? Get access N. J. Block N. J. Block Harvard University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 21, Issue 83, April 1971, Pages 109–117, https://doi.org/10.2307/2218333 Published: 01 April 1971
What Psychological States are Not
AS FAR as anyone knows, different organisms are often in psychological states of exactly the same type at one time or another, and a given organism is often in psychological states of exactly the same type at different times. Whenever either is the case, we shall say of the psychological states of the organism(s) in question that they are type identical. One thing that currently fashionable theories in the philosophy of mind often try to do is ch…
The IQ Controversy
Are Absent Qualia Impossible
Psychologism and Behaviorism
This paper makes two claims: first, psychologism is true, and thus a natural behaviorist analysis of intelligence that is incompatible with psychologism is false. Second, the standard arguments against behaviorism are inadequate to defeat this natural behaviorist analysis of intelligence or to establish psychologism. While psychologism is of course anathema to behaviorists, it also seems wrong-headed to many philosophers who would not classify th…
Mental Pictures and Cognitive Science
Advertisement for a Semantics for Psychology
Inverted Earth
Past, Space, and Self
Humans were thought to be unique among the species in having minds, but recent results showing the richness and diversity in animal psychology makes this view untenable. Yet there remains the question of whether we can map the features of a particularly human psychology that are responsible for its overall structure. In this book John Campbell shows that the general structural features of human thought can be seen as having their source in the di…
On a confusion about a function of consciousness
Consciousness is a mongrel concept: there are a number of very different “consciousnesses.” Phenomenal consciousness is experience; the phenomenally conscious aspect of a state is what it is like to be in that state. The mark of access-consciousness, by contrast, is availability for use in reasoning and rationally guiding speech and action. These concepts are often partly or totally conflated, with bad results. This target article uses as an exam…
IX—An Argument for Holism
Journal Article IX—An Argument for Holism Get access Ned Block Ned Block Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 95, Issue 1, 1 June 1995, Pages 151–170, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/95.1.151 Published: 09 September 2015
Mental Paint and Mental Latex
The greatest chasm in the philosophy of mind -maybe even all of philosophydivides two perspectives on consciousness. The two perspectives differ on whether there is anything in the phenomenal character of conscious experience that goes beyond the intentional, the cognitive and the functional. A convenient terminological handle on the dispute is whether there are qualia. Those who think that the phenomenal character of conscious experience goes be…
Is Experiencing Just Representing
Conceptual Analysis, Dualism, and the Explanatory Gap
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Duke University Press and Philosophical Review are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
How Not To Find the Neural Correlate of Consciousness
There are two concepts of consciousness that are easy to confuse with one another, access-consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. However, just as the concepts of water and H2O are different concepts of the same thing, so the two concepts of consciousness may come to the same thing in the brain. The focus of this paper is on the problems that arise when these two concepts of consciousness are conflated. I will argue that John Searle s reasoni…
The Harder Problem of Consciousness
Do Causal Powers Drain Away
Two neural correlates of consciousness
Action in Perception by Alva Noë
Consciousness, accessibility, and the mesh between psychology and neuroscience
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 see the problem in stark form if we ask how we can 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 s…
Consciousness, Function, and Representation
This volume of Ned Block's writings collects his papers on consciousness, functionalism, and representationism. A number of these papers treat the significance of the multiple realizability of states for the mind-body problem -- a theme that has concerned Block since the 1960s. One paper on this topic considers the upshot for the mind-body problem of the possibility of a robot that is functionally like us but physically different -- as is Command…
Wittgenstein and Qualia 1
Consciousness and cognitive access
Perceptual consciousness overflows cognitive access
Readings in Philosophy of Psychology, Volume I
Philosophy (22 works) · Psychology (21 works) · Epistemology (19 works) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (14 works) · Consciousness (12 works) · Cognitive science (10 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Cognitive psychology (8 works) · Analytic philosophy (7 works) · Contemporary philosophy (7 works)