Ned Block: Difference between revisions
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| school_tradition = [[Analytic philosophy]] | | school_tradition = [[Analytic philosophy]] | ||
| main_interests = [[Philosophy of mind]] | | main_interests = [[Philosophy of mind]] | ||
| notable_ideas = [[Blockhead (thought experiment)|Blockhead]]<br>[[China brain]] | | notable_ideas = [[Blockhead (thought experiment)|Blockhead]]<br>[[China brain]] | ||
| notable_students = [[Daniel Stoljar]]<ref>{{Cite web|title=Tree – David Chalmers|url=http://consc.net/tree/|access-date=2020-07-22|language=en-US}}</ref> | | notable_students = [[Daniel Stoljar]]<ref>{{Cite web|title=Tree – David Chalmers|url=http://consc.net/tree/|access-date=2020-07-22|language=en-US}}</ref> | ||
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Block is Past President of the [[Society for Philosophy and Psychology]] and was elected a Fellow of the [[American Academy of Arts & Sciences]] in 2004.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.amacad.org/content/news/pressReleases.aspx?pr=59|title=Press Releases - American Academy of Arts & Sciences|website=www.amacad.org}}</ref> | Block is Past President of the [[Society for Philosophy and Psychology]] and was elected a Fellow of the [[American Academy of Arts & Sciences]] in 2004.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.amacad.org/content/news/pressReleases.aspx?pr=59|title=Press Releases - American Academy of Arts & Sciences|website=www.amacad.org}}</ref> | ||
He is married to the developmental psychologist [[Susan Carey]]. Block is ethnically Jewish.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.jinfo.org/Philosophers.html |title = Jewish Philosophers}}</ref> | He is married to the developmental psychologist [[Susan Carey]]. Block is ethnically Ashkenazi Jewish.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.jinfo.org/Philosophers.html |title = Jewish Philosophers}}</ref> | ||
==Philosophical work== | ==Philosophical work== | ||
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===Consciousness=== | ===Consciousness=== | ||
In his more recent work on [[consciousness]], he has made a distinction between [[phenomenal consciousness]] and [[ | In his more recent work on [[consciousness]], he has made a distinction between [[phenomenal consciousness]] and [[access consciousness]], where phenomenal consciousness consists of subjective experience and feelings and access consciousness consists of that information globally available in the cognitive system for the purposes of reasoning, speech and high-level action control. He has argued that access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness might not always coincide in human beings. | ||
====Overflow argument==== | ====Overflow argument==== | ||
Ned Block has mounted the overflow argument, which argues against the view that phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness are identical. Instead, Ned Block argues that phenomenal consciousness overflows conscious access, meaning that one can consciously experience something that they do not have conscious access to. Empirically, this means that a subject can have some content included in their conscious experience, but lack the cognitive recognition of the content that is necessary to report that the content was in fact experienced.<ref name="Block 2011 pp. 567–575">{{cite journal | last=Block | first=Ned | title=Perceptual consciousness overflows cognitive access | journal=Trends in Cognitive Sciences | volume=15 | issue=12 | date=2011 | doi=10.1016/j.tics.2011.11.001 | pages=567–575| pmid=22078929 | url=https://philpapers.org/rec/BLOPCO-2 }}</ref> | Ned Block has mounted the overflow argument, which argues against the view that phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness are identical. Instead, Ned Block argues that phenomenal consciousness overflows conscious access, meaning that one can consciously experience something that they do not have conscious access to. Empirically, this means that a subject can have some content included in their conscious experience, but lack the cognitive recognition of the content that is necessary to report that the content was in fact experienced.<ref name="Block 2011 pp. 567–575">{{cite journal | last=Block | first=Ned | title=Perceptual consciousness overflows cognitive access | journal=Trends in Cognitive Sciences | volume=15 | issue=12 | date=2011 | doi=10.1016/j.tics.2011.11.001 | pages=567–575| pmid=22078929 | url=https://philpapers.org/rec/BLOPCO-2 | url-access=subscription }}</ref> | ||
==See also== | ==See also== | ||
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[[Category:20th-century American philosophers]] | [[Category:20th-century American philosophers]] | ||
[[Category:21st-century American philosophers]] | [[Category:21st-century American philosophers]] | ||
[[Category:Jewish philosophers]] | [[Category:Jewish American philosophers]] | ||
[[Category:Harvard University alumni]] | [[Category:Harvard University alumni]] | ||
[[Category:American consciousness researchers and theorists]] | [[Category:American consciousness researchers and theorists]] | ||
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[[Category:Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society]] | [[Category:Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society]] | ||
[[Category:Silver professors]] | [[Category:Silver professors]] | ||
[[Category:Jewish American academics]] | |||
Latest revision as of 07:59, 15 October 2025
Template:Short description Script error: No such module "Template wrapper".Script error: No such module "Check for clobbered parameters". Ned Joel Block (born 1942) is an American philosopher working in philosophy of mind who has made important contributions to the understanding of consciousness and the philosophy of cognitive science. He has been professor of philosophy and psychology at New York University since 1996, and a Silver Professor since 2005.[1]
Education and career
Block obtained his PhD from Harvard University in 1971 under the direction of Hilary Putnam. He joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as an assistant professor of philosophy (1971–1977), and then served as associate professor of philosophy (1977–1983), professor of philosophy (1983–1996) and as chair of the philosophy section (1989–1995). He has, since 1996, been a professor in the departments of philosophy and psychology at New York University (NYU).
Block received the Jean Nicod Prize in 2013, and has given the William James Lectures at Harvard University in 2012 and the John Locke Lectures at Oxford University in 2013,[2] among many others.
Block is Past President of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2004.[3]
He is married to the developmental psychologist Susan Carey. Block is ethnically Ashkenazi Jewish.[4]
Philosophical work
Philosophy of artificial intelligence
Block is noted for presenting the Blockhead argument against the Turing test as a test of intelligence in a paper titled "Psychologism and Behaviorism" (1981). He is also known for his criticism of functionalism, arguing that a system with the same functional states as a human is not necessarily conscious.[5]Template:Rp
Block has been a judge at the Loebner Prize contest, a contest in the tradition of the Turing Test to determine whether a conversant is a computer or a human.[6]Template:Rp
Consciousness
In his more recent work on consciousness, he has made a distinction between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness, where phenomenal consciousness consists of subjective experience and feelings and access consciousness consists of that information globally available in the cognitive system for the purposes of reasoning, speech and high-level action control. He has argued that access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness might not always coincide in human beings.
Overflow argument
Ned Block has mounted the overflow argument, which argues against the view that phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness are identical. Instead, Ned Block argues that phenomenal consciousness overflows conscious access, meaning that one can consciously experience something that they do not have conscious access to. Empirically, this means that a subject can have some content included in their conscious experience, but lack the cognitive recognition of the content that is necessary to report that the content was in fact experienced.[7]
See also
- American philosophy
- List of American philosophers
- New York University Department of Philosophy
- Philosophy of artificial intelligence
References
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- ↑ Ritchie, S. L., Divine Action and the Human Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), p. 174.
- ↑ van de Gevel, Ad J. W., & Noussair, C. N., The Nexus between Artificial Intelligence and Economics (Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer, 2013), pp. 14–15.
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External links
- Pages with script errors
- 1942 births
- Living people
- 20th-century American philosophers
- 21st-century American philosophers
- Jewish American philosophers
- Harvard University alumni
- American consciousness researchers and theorists
- New York University faculty
- American philosophers of mind
- Philosophers from New York (state)
- Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society
- Silver professors
- Jewish American academics