 NED BLOCK Department of Philosophy, New York University Room 405 5 Washington Place New York, NY 10003 tel: (212) 998-8322 fax: (212) 995-4179 or (212) 475-2338 e-mail: ned.blockATSIGNnyu.edu Photo byWinston Chang NED BLOCK (Ph.D., Harvard), Silver Professor ofPhilosophy, Psychologyand Neural Science, came to NYU in 1996 from MIT where he was Chair of thePhilosophy Program. He works in philosophy of mind and foundations ofneuroscience and cognitive science and is currently writing a book onconsciousness. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has been a Guggenheim Fellow, aSenior Fellow of the Center for the Study of Language and Information, a Sloan Foundation Fellow, a faculty member at two NEHInstitutes and two NEH Seminars, the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment forthe Humanities the American Council of LearnedSocieties and the NationalScience Foundation; and a recipient of theRobert A. Muh Alumni Award in Humanities and SocialScience from MIT. He is a past presidentof the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, a past Chair of the MIT Press Cognitive Science Board, andpast 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 and 2002. He isco-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 May, 2007. Click to see the website for the AustralianNational University Workshop, 2003: Themes from Ned Block. In 2008-2009, he will be Distinguished Visiting Professor,University of Hong Kong, Townsend Visitor,University of California at Berkeley, Smart Lecturer, atANU, Efron Symposiast, Pomona College, and Distinguished Visitor, University ofWarwick. In 2010, he willgive the Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lecture. Some of his recent papers are availablebelow.  Articles in Handbooks or EncyclopediasOnline PapersUndergraduate CoursesGraduateCourses Articles in Handbooks or Encyclopedias "Consciousness"(in R. Gregory (ed.) OxfordCompanion to the Mind, secondedition 2004) Russian version here"Qualia" (in R. Gregory (ed.) OxfordCompanion to the Mind, secondedition, 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 Encyclopediaof Philosophy Supplement, Macmillan, 1996)"The Mind as the Software of theBrain" (An Invitation to Cognitive Science,edited by D. Osherson, L. Gleitman, S. Kosslyn, E. Smith and S. Sternberg, MITPress, 1995)"Qualia" (from S. Guttenplan (ed) A Companion to Philosophy of Mind, Blackwell: Oxford, 1994) Online Papers “Comparingthe Major Theories of Consciousness,” forthcoming in The Cognitive Neurosciences IV, Michael Gazzaniga (ed.) MIT PressArgues that the existence of the explanatory gap provides a reason to believe abiological account of consciousness rather than a global workspace account or ahigher order account. “Functional Reduction”, forthcoming in afestschrift for Jaegwon Kim, Supervenience inMind, edited by Terry Horgan, MarceloSabates and David Sosa.This paper argues that the functional reduction picture of reductiveexplanation, a picture shared by proponents such as David Lewis andopponents such as Jaegwon Kim, David Chalmers and Frank Jackson,misses an important insight in the reductionist point of view ”Consciousness,Accessibility and the Mesh between Psychology and Neuroscience,” in Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30, published in 2008 but backdated to 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, O’Regan & Myin, Prinz, Rosenthal, Sergent & Rees,Shanahan & Baars, Snodgrass & Lepisto, Spener, Tye and Van Gulick; and author’sreplies. How can we disentangle the neural basis of phenomenal consciousness from theneural machinery of the cognitive access that underlies reports of phenomenalconsciousness? We can see the problem in stark form if we ask how wecould tell whether representations inside a Fodorian module are phenomenallyconscious. The methodology would seem straightforward: find the neuralnatural kinds that are the basis of phenomenal consciousness in clear cases whensubjects are completely confident and we have no reason to doubt theirauthority, and look to see whether those neural natural kinds exist withinFodorian modules. But a puzzle arises: do we include the machineryunderlying reportability within the neural natural kinds of the clear cases? If the answer is ‘Yes’, then there can be no phenomenally consciousrepresentations in Fodorian modules. But how can we know the answer? The suggested methodology requires an answer to the question it wassupposed to answer! The paper argues for an abstract solution to the problemand exhibits a source of empirical data that is relevant, data that show thatin a certain sense phenomenal consciousness overflows cognitive accessibility. The paper argues that we can find a neural realizer of this overflow ifassume that the neural basis of phenomenal consciousness does not include theneural basis of cognitive accessibility and that this assumption is justified(other things equal) by the explanations it allows. “Wittgenstein and Qualia”, Philosophical Perspectives 21, 1, 2007:73-115, edited by John Hawthorne. Theversion linked to here is a substantially revised version that is comingout in a volume edited by Maria Baghramian in honor of Hilary Putnam as part ofOxford University Press’s Mind Association Occasional Series. Thepublished version is hereWittgenstein (in notes published first in 1968) endorsed one kind of inverted spectrum hypothesis andrejected another. This paper argues that the kind of inverted spectrumhypothesis that Wittgenstein endorsed (the “innocuous” inverted spectrumhypothesis) is the thin end of thewedge that precludes a Wittgensteinian critique of the kind of invertedspectrum hypothesis he rejected (the “dangerous” kind). The danger of the dangerous kind is thatit provides an argument for qualia, where qualia are (for the purposes of thispaper) contents of experiential states that cannot be fully captured in naturallanguage. I will pinpoint thedifference between the innocuous and dangerous scenarios that matters for theargument for qualia, give arguments in favor of the coherence and possibilityof the dangerous scenario, and try to show that some standard arguments againstinverted spectra are ineffective against the version of the dangerous scenarioI will be advocating. I will alsoagree with what I think is Wittgenstein’s position that the kind of invertedspectrum hypothesis he rejected lets qualia in the door. At one crucial point, I will rely on aless controversial version of an argument I gave in Block (1999). Wittgenstein’s views provide aconvenient starting point for a paper that is much more about qualia than aboutWittgenstein. "Max Black’s Objection to Mind-Body Identity", in Oxford Studiesin Metaphysics, II, edited by Dean Zimmerman withreplies by John Perry and Stephen White, Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 3-78. White’s reply here. Table of Contents here. Also in TorinAlter 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-editedby different copy-editors, leading to slightly different versions.) The mind-body identity theorist says phenomenal property Q = brain propertyB. But in stating or thinking this identity claim, don’t we have to have afurther, unreduced, phenomenal property that serves as a mode of presentationof Q? This paper argues that this suspicion underlies both Jackson’s Knowledge Argumentand the famous glimpse of an argument that J. J. C. Smartascribed to Max Black. Theargument is presented, dissected and refuted. "Bodily Sensations as an Obstacle forRepresentationism", in Pain: New Essays on Its Nature and the Methodology ofIts Study, edited by MuratAydede, MITPress, 2005, 137-142 Review of Alva Noë, Action inPerception, The Journal of Philosophy, CII, 5, May2005, 259-272. "Two Neural Correlates of Consciousness" This is a longerversion of a paper in Trends in CognitiveSciences, vol (9), 2, February 2005The shorter published version is here. Thispaper was the top download fromthe Trends inCognitive Sciences web siteof 2005 and was on ScienceDirect’s listof the Top 25 Hottest Articles of January-March, 2005 in the category of Neuroscience. Review (or click here) of PatChurchland’s Brain-wise, Science 301,2003, p. 1328 "Mental Paint" in Reflections and Replies, a book of essays on TylerBurge, with replies by Burge, edited byMartin Hahn and Bjorn Ramberg and published by MITPress, 2003. Here is Burge's reply to this paper (perhaps slightly different from the published version). "Do Causal Powers Drain Away?" Philosophy and Phenomenological ResearchVol. 67, No. 1 (July 2003), pp. 110-127, with a reply by Jaegwon Kim, "Blocking Causal Drainage and other Chores withMental 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 Noë, "Neural plasticity and consciousness". (Note: the journal incorrectly reversed the noun phrasesin the title.) Hurley's and Noë's reply to me, "Neural plasticity and consciousness: Reply toBlock" from the August, 2003 issue. "The Harder Problem of Consciousness", PDF version, from The Journal ofPhilosophy XCIX, No. 8, August 2002, 1-35. The version that cameout in TheJournal of Philosophy was shortened considerably because of spacelimitations in the journal. Some of the cuts have been restored in the versionhere. (This version appeared in Disputatio 15, November 2003.) For critiques, see Brian McLaughlin, "A Naturalist-Phenomenal Realist Response To Block'sHarder Problem", Philosophical Issues, 13, (2003):163-204(The version linked to here may be slightly different from the publishedversion.), and Jakob Hohwy, "Evidence, Explanation, and Experience: On theHarder Problem of Consciousness" Journal ofPhilosophy, Volume CI, Number 5, May 2004 pp. 242-254 (Again, the versionlinked to here may be slightly different from the published version.)"Some Concepts of Consciousness" In Philosophy of Mind: Classical andContemporary Readings, David Chalmers (ed.) Oxford University Press, 2002. "Paradox and Cross Purposes in Recent Work onConsciousness". This is an expanded andrevised 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 andI–were asked to comment on all the scientists' papers. (We both made somecomments on each others' papers as well). Dennett's paper is available byclicking here. If you want tosee the papers that Dennett and I commented on, see Cognition, Volume 79, Issues 1-2, Pages1-237 (April 2001) "Behaviorism Revisited". This is a comment on J. K. O_Regan. and Alva Noë, "ASensorimotor Account of Vision and Visual Consciousness" The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 2001 (24:5). "Sexism, Racism, Ageism and the Nature ofConsciousness", in The Philosophy ofSydney Shoemaker, Philosophical Topics, 26, 1 and 2, 1999. Edited by RichardMoran, Jennifer Whiting, and Alan Sidelle. "Conceptual Analysis, Dualism and the ExplanatoryGap" (with Robert Stalnaker) The Philosophical Review, January, 1999."Is Experiencing Just Representing?" (in a symposium onMichael Tye in Philosophyand Phenomenological Research, September, 1998). "How Not to Find the Neural Correlate ofConsciousness" (in a volume of RoyalInstitute of Philosophy lectures edited by Anthony O'Hear, 1998). "Anti-Reductionism Slaps Back" Appeared in Mind, Causation,World, PhilosophicalPerspectives 11, 1997, 107-133. "On a Confusion about a Function ofConsciousness" (link to uncorrectedproof on BBS web site) The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1995. There is a more up todate version of this in Block, Flanagan and G|zeldere, The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates (MIT Press, 1997) Thereplies to the second round of critiques, "Biology versus computation in the study ofconsciousness", Behavior and Brain Sciences 20:1,159-165, 1997, are available here. The critics inthis round are Joseph Bogen, Selmer Bringsjord, Derek Browne, David Chalmers,Denise Gamble, Daniel Gilman, Güven Güzeldere and Murat Aydede, Bruce Mangan,Alva Noë, Ernst Pöppel, David Rosenthal, A.H.C. van der Heijden, P.T.W. Hudsonand A.G. Kurvink. Their critiques are available here. "How Heritability Misleads about Race" (Cognition 56, 1995: pp. 99-128).Shortenedversion 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 ofthe 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 paperis available without the password from JSTOR, (along with past issues of this and other philosophyjournals up to about five years ago) although you may not be able to get itwithout a university account or a paid subscription. "Psychologism and Behaviorism", PDF version; from The Philosophical Review LXXXX, No. 1,January 1981, 5-43. Courses UndergraduateConsciousness, Fall 2007Minds & Machines,Spring 2004 GraduatePhilosophicaland Empirical Issues about Consciousness, Fall 2008 (joint Columbia/NYUcourse with Hakwan Lau)Consciousness,Action and Attention, Spring 2008Percepts 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 2003Philosophy of Mind: Consciousness, Fall 2001Research 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)  Illustration of an example in "Troubles withFunctionalism" by Jolyon Troscianko |
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