Ned Block

New York University, Philosophy, Faculty Member

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Papers by Ned Block

Attention and Mental PAINT1

Philosophical Issues, 2010

Much of recent philosophy of perception is oriented towards accounting for the phenomenal charact... more 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 what one is directly aware of or by representational content are instances of what Gilbert Harman has called “mental paint” (Block, 1990; Harman, 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) that when one moves one's attention around a scene while keeping one's eyes fixed, the phenomenology of perception can change in ways that do not refle...

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Consciousness science: real progress and lingering misconceptions

Trends in cognitive sciences, 2014

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, ... more The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full DRO policy for further details.

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Is Perception Probabilistic

Scientific question Is perception probabilistic? This is a grand question about the fundamental n... more Scientific question Is perception probabilistic? This is a grand question about the fundamental nature of how our mind operates and how this operation is implemented in brain circuits. The question is also interpreted differently by different people, making progress difficult. In this adversarial collaboration, four scientists with different backgrounds and perspectives on this issue1–7 engaged in considerable discussion of how the issue of probabilistic perception can be operationalized as to be made empirically tractable. We have agreed that a critical dividing line between probabilistic and non-probabilistic views of perception is defined by the following question: Can humans perform flexible and deliberate (i.e., cognitive) computations that require access to more than summary statistics (mean and variance) of a perceptual likelihood function or posterior on a single-trial basis?

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Perceptual consciousness overflows cognitive access

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Dec 1, 2011

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Phenomenal Precision and Some Possible Pitfalls

Open MIND, 2-vol. set

Ground Representationism is the position that for each phenomenal feature there is a representati... more Ground Representationism is the position that for each phenomenal feature there is a representational feature that accounts for it. Against this thesis, Ned Block has provided an intricate argument that rests on the notion of “phenomenal precision”: the phenomenal precision of a percept may change at a different rate from its representational counterpart. If so, there is then no representational feature that accounts for a specific change of this phenomenal feature. Therefore, Ground Representationism cannot be generally true. Although the notion of phenomenal precision is intuitive, it is admittedly in need of clarification. Here, I reconstruct Block’s argument by suggesting away of estimating phenomenal precision that is based on the assumption that parts of perceptual wholes can share phenomenal features independently of their place in the whole. Understood like this, the overall argument shows what it is supposed to show. A more thorough look at the notion of phenomenal precision suggests tension with Block’s other work: in order to be non-trivial, we have to accept that some of our phenomenality is not concrete, but only generic. Such “solely generic phenomenology”, however, is a position mainly held by opponents to Block’s “Access- vs. Phenomenal Consciousness”-distinction. Interpreting phenomenal imprecision as constituted by introspective imprecision does not suffice as a way out. It seems that phenomenal precision is either trivial, self-contradictory, or incompatible with Block’s position elsewhere. So some additional elucidation on this crucial notion is needed.

The Puzzle of Perceptual Precision

Open MIND, 2-vol. set

Solely Generic Phenomenology

The MIT Press eBooks, May 20, 2016

Solely Generic Phenomenology

The MIT Press eBooks, May 20, 2016

Functional reduction

Supervenience in Mind, 2008

There are a number of opposing views of reductive physicalism. According to the functional reduct... more There are a number of opposing views of reductive physicalism. According to the functional reduction view, the first step in a reductive physicalist enterprise is to functionally characterize the property to be reduced and the second step is to find the physical property that fills the functional role. Reductive physicalism is true for the mind if both steps can always be carried out. This picture of what reductive explanation is has been advocated in one form or another by Smart, Armstrong, Lewis, Kim, Levine, Chalmers and Jackson, even though these figures differ ...

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Conscious machines: Defining questions

Science (New York, N.Y.), Jan 26, 2018

In their Review “What is consciousness, and could machines have it?” (27 October 2017, p. [486][1... more

Should Philosophy and Psychology Remarry?

PsycCRITIQUES, 1973

Solely Generic Phenomenology

If representationism is true, phenomenal precision is given by representational precision. But wh... more If representationism is true, phenomenal precision is given by representational precision. But what if representationism is false as I claim? Can we make sense of phenomenal precision? Fink argues that there is a danger of trivialization of phenomenal precision and that the one way out may be incompatible with my view that consciousness overflows cognition. I try to say more about how to clarify phenomenal precision and its relation to my views on overflow.

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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

A recent fMRI study by Webb et al. (Cortical networks involved in visual awareness independent of... more A recent fMRI study by Webb et al. (Cortical networks involved in visual awareness independent of visual attention, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2016;113:13923-28) proposes a new method for finding the neural correlates of awareness by matching attention across awareness conditions. The experimental design, however, seems at odds with known features of attention. We highlight logical and methodological points that are critical when trying to disentangle attention and awareness.

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The philosophy of psychology

Ned Block

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