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What is functionalismIn Ned Joel Block (ed.), Readings in Philosophy of Psychology: 1, Harvard University Press. 1980.What is Functionalism? Functionalism is one of the major proposals that have been offered as solutions to the mind/body problem. Solutions to the mind/body problem usually try to answer questions such as: What is the ultimate nature of the mental? At the most general level, what makes a mental state mental? Or more specifically, What do thoughts have in common in virtue of which they are thoughts? That is, what makes a thought a thought? What makes a pain a pain? Cartesian Dualism said the ultim…Read more
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Mental paintIn Martin Hahn & Björn T. Ramberg (eds.), Reflections and Replies: Essays on the Philosophy of Tyler Burge, Mit Press. pp. 165--200. 2003.The greatest chasm in the philosophy of mind--maybe even all of philosophy-- divides 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
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188Holism, mental and semanticIn Edward Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Genealogy to Iqbal, Routledge. 1996.Mental (or semantic) holism is the doctrine that the identity of a belief content (or the meaning of a sentence that expresses it) is determined by its place in the web of beliefs or sentences comprising a whole theory or group of theories. It can be contrasted with two other views: atomism and molecularism. Molecularism characterizes meaning and content in terms of relatively small parts of the web in a way that allows many different theories to share those parts. For example, the meaning of 'c…Read more
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152Semantics, conceptual roleIn Edward Craig (ed.), [Book Chapter] (Unpublished), Routledge. pp. 242-256. 1997.According to Conceptual Role Semantics ("CRS"), the meaning of a representation is the role of that representation in the cognitive life of the agent, e.g. in perception, thought and decision-making. It is an extension of the well known "use" theory of meaning, according to which the meaning of a word is its use in communication and more generally, in social interaction. CRS supplements external use by including the role of a symbol inside a computer or a brain. The uses appealed to are not just…Read more
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A. G eneraIn David John Chalmers (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings, Oxford University Press Usa. pp. 206. 2002.
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62Fictionalism, Functionalism and Factor AnalysisPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1974. 1974.
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4ConsciousnessIn Vicki Bruce (ed.), Unsolved Mysteries of the Mind: Tutorial Essays in Cognition, Taylor & Francis. 1996.
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Flanagan., O., Güzeldere, GIn Ned Block, Owen Flanagan & Guven Guzeldere (eds.), The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates, Mit Press. 1997.
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71States of Mind (review)Science 3384 (6696): 629. 2024.Review of Christof Koch, "States of mind: a neuroscientist searches for the seat of consciousness."
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112Two neural correlates of consciousnessTrends in Cognitive Sciences 9 (2): 46-52. 2005.Neuroscientists continue to search for 'the' neural correlate of consciousness (NCC). In this article, I argue that a framework in which there are at least two distinct NCCs is increasingly making more sense of empirical results than one in which there is a single NCC. I outline the distinction between phenomenal NCC and access NCC, and show how they can be distinguished by experimental approaches, in particular signal- detection theory approaches. Recent findings in cognitive neuroscience provi…Read more
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Debate on unconscious perceptionIn Bence Nanay (ed.), Current Controversies in Philosophy of Perception, Routledge. 2016.
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55Responses to my criticsAnalysis 83 (3): 575-588. 2023.Ian Phillips and Chaz Firestone have written a wonderful article on the rationale for adaptation as an indicator of perception, and more generally, on the purpo.
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60Perception is iconic, perceptual working memory is discursiveBehavioral and Brain Sciences 46. 2023.The evidence that the target article cites for language-of-thought (LoT) structure in perceptual object representations concerns perceptual working memory, not perception. Perception is iconic, not structured like an LoT. Perceptual working memory representations contain the remnants of iconic perceptual representations, often recoded, in a discursive envelope.
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3QIn Samuel D. Guttenplan (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, Blackwell. 1994.qualia include the ways it feels to see, hear and smell, the way it feels to have a pain; more generally, what it's like to have mental states. Qualia are experiential properties of sensations, feelings, perceptions and, in my view, thoughts and desires as well. But, so defined, who could deny that qualia exist? Yet, the existence of qualia is controversial. Here is what is controversial: whether qualia, so defined, can be characterized in intentional, functional or purely cognitive terms. Oppon…Read more
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12If perception is probabilistic, why does it not seem probabilistic?Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 373. 2018.
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Max Black's objection to mind-body identityIn Torin Andrew Alter & Sven Walter (eds.), Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism, Oxford University Press. 2006.
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283Let's get rid of the concept of an object fileIn Brian McLaughlin & Jonathan Cohen (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind, Second Edition, Wiley. pp. 494-516. forthcoming.
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1976The Border Between Seeing and ThinkingOUP Usa. 2023.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., that perception is cognitively penetrable, but t…Read more
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Optimal attention: reply to Sebastian WatzlIn Adam Pautz & Daniel Stoljar (eds.), Blockheads! Essays on Ned Block’s Philosophy of Mind and Consciousness, Mit Press. 2019.
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Perception |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Philosophy of Neuroscience |
Philosophy of Mind |