Ned Block

New York University, Philosophy, Faculty Member

Philosophy of Mind +13

8,154 Followers 198 Following 5 Co-authorsTotal Views187 Public Mentions

Papers

Solely Generic Phenomenology

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Top-down attention and consciousness: comment on Cohen et al

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2012

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Consciousness, accessibility, and the mesh between psychology and neuroscience

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2007

How can we disentangle the neural basis of phenomenal consciousness from the neural machinery of ... more 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 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 “Yes,” then there can be no phenomenally conscious representations in Fodorian modules. But how can we know if the answer is “Yes”? The suggested methodology requires an answer to the question it was supposed to answer! This target article ...

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A-consciousness : The local newspaper of the mind ?

Consciousness is a mongrel concept: there are a number of very different "consciousnesses.&q... more 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 example a form of reasoning about a function of "consciousness" based on the phenomenon of blindsight. Some information about stimuli in the blind field is represented in the brains of blindsight patients, as shown by their correct "guesses," but they cannot harness this information in the service of action, and this is said to show that a function of phenomenal consciousness is somehow to enable information represented in the brain to guide action. But stimuli in the blind field are BOTH accessunconscious and pheno...

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Content and Psychological Explanation

... I am also very grateful to Josh Cohen and Stephen White, the other members of my committee, w... more

If perception is probabilistic, why does it not seem probabilistic?

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, Jan 19, 2018

The success of the Bayesian perspective in explaining perceptual phenomena has motivated the view... more The success of the Bayesian perspective in explaining perceptual phenomena has motivated the view that perceptual representation is probabilistic. But if perceptual representation is probabilistic, why does normal conscious perception not reflect the full probability functions that the probabilistic point of view endorses? For example, neurons in cortical area MT that respond to the direction of motion are broadly tuned: a patch of cortex that is tuned to vertical motion also responds to horizontal motion, but when we see vertical motion, foveally, in good conditions, it does not look at all horizontal. The standard solution in terms of sampling runs into the problem that sampling is an account of perceptual decision rather than perception. This paper argues that the best Bayesian approach to this problem does not require probabilistic representation.This article is part of the theme issue 'Perceptual consciousness and cognitive access'.

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Does unconscious perception really exist? Continuing the ASSC20 debate

Neuroscience of Consciousness

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Measuring away an attentional confound?

Neuroscience of Consciousness

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The philosophy of psychology

Finessing the Bored Monkey Problem

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2020

This is a response to Ian Phillips and Jorge Morales, "The Fundamental Problem with No-Cognition ... more

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Opportunities and challenges for a maturing science of consciousness

by Matthias Michel, David Carmel, Ned Block, and Diane Beck

Nature Human Behavior, 2019

Scientific research on consciousness is critical to multiple scientific, clinical, and ethical is... more Scientific research on consciousness is critical to multiple scientific, clinical, and ethical issues. The growth of the field could also be beneficial to several areas including neurology and mental health research. To achieve this goal, we need to set funding priorities carefully and address problems such as job creation and potential media misrepresentation.

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If perception is probabilistic, why doesn't it seem probabilistic?

The success of the Bayesian approach to perception suggests probabilistic perceptual representati... more The success of the Bayesian approach to perception suggests probabilistic perceptual representations. But if perceptual representation is probabilistic, why doesn't normal conscious perception reflect the full probability distributions that the probabilistic point of view endorses? For example, neurons in MT/V5 that respond to the direction of motion are broadly tuned: a patch of cortex that is tuned to vertical motion also responds to horizontal motion, but when we see vertical motion, foveally, in good conditions, it does not look at all horizontal. This article argues that the best Bayesian approach to this problem does not require probabilistic representation.

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Functional Role and Truth Conditions

Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1988

This paper is about truth-conditional content from the point of view of a use theory of meaning. ... more This paper is about truth-conditional content from the point of view of a use theory of meaning. I shall be taking up the question of how a use theory of meaning should deal with cases where uses of words might be said to be the same, but truth conditions differ-specifically Putnam&amp;#x27;s&amp;#x27; twin earth&amp;#x27;cases.&amp;#x27;The background issue is whether there is a legitimate notion of meaning or content that is purely&amp;#x27;inside the head&amp;#x27;-not dependent on the external context of things referred to or on the language community. This paper defends the ...