19 papers in the library · 5,910 citations · publishing 1995-2026
Trends in Cognitive Sciences April 1, 2026 Ned Block
Computational functionalism claims that executing certain computations is sufficient for consciousness, regardless of the physical mechanisms implementing those computations. This view neglects a compelling alternative: that subcomputational biological mechanisms, which realize computational processes, are necessary for consciousness. By contrasting computational roles with their...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences September 1, 2024 Ned Block
Disputes between rival theories of consciousness have often centered on whether perceptual contents can be decoded from the prefrontal cortex (PFC). Failures to decode from the PFC are taken to challenge 'cognitive' theories of consciousness such as the global workspace theory and higher-order monitoring theories, and decoding successes have been taken to confirm these theories. However, PFC...
Journal of Neuroscience March 10, 2021 Omri Raccah, Ned Block, K. Fox
A central debate in philosophy and neuroscience pertains to whether PFC activity plays an essential role in the neural basis of consciousness. Neuroimaging and electrophysiology studies have revealed that the contents of conscious perceptual experience can be successfully decoded from PFC activity, but these findings might be confounded by postperceptual cognitive processes, such as thinking,...
Nature Human Behaviour February 1, 2019 M. Michel, Diane M Beck, Ned Block et al.
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.
Science January 25, 2018 Olivia Carter, Jakob Hohwy, Jeroen J A Van Boxtel et al. 86 citations
In their Review “What is consciousness, and could machines have it?” (27 October 2017, p. [486][1]), S. Dehaene et al. argue that the science of consciousness indicates that we are not on the verge of creating conscious machines. However, Dehaene et al. ask and answer the wrong questions. To
Neuroscience of Consciousness September 6, 2017 Megan A. K. Peters, Robert W. Kentridge, I. Phillips et al.
In our ASSC20 symposium, “Does unconscious perception really exist?”, the four of us asked some difficult questions about the purported phenomenon of unconscious perception, disagreeing on a number of points. This disagreement reflected the objective of the symposium: not only to come together to discuss a single topic of keen interest to the ASSC community, but to do so in a way that would...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences September 1, 2014 Ned Block 125 citations
Can we consciously see more items at once than can be held in visual working memory? This question has eluded resolution because the ultimate evidence is subjects' reports in which phenomenal consciousness is filtered through working memory. However, a new technique makes use of the fact that unattended 'ensemble properties' can be detected 'for free' without decreasing working memory capacity.
Neuropsychoanalysis 2011 Ned Block 25 citations
The Anna Karenina theory says: all conscious states are alike; each unconscious state is unconscious in its own way. This paper argues that many components have to function properly to produce consciousness, but failure in any one of many different ones can yield an unconscious state in different ways. In that sense the Anna Karenina theory is true. But in another respect it is false: kinds of...
Philosophical Issues October 1, 2010 Ned Block 132 citations
Abstract 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...
Cambridge University Press eBooks June 1, 2010 Ned Block, Anthony O’Hear 3 citations
There are two concepts of consciousness that are easy to confuse with one another, access-consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. However, just as the concepts of water and H 2 O are different concepts of the same thing, so the two concepts of consciousness may come to the same thing in the brain. The focus of this paper is on the problems that arise when these two concepts of consciousness...
The Behavioral and brain sciences December 1, 2007 Ned Block 1,123 citations
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...
The Yale Philosophy Review 2007 Ned Block
Professor Block has written extensively on a number of topics in the philosophy of mind, from consciousness to cognitive science, and is particularly known for his work on Functionalism. Many of his papers are collected in Consciousness, Functionalism, and Representation (2007). This interview was conducted in New Haven on March 6th, 2007.
Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science January 15, 2006 Ned Block
AbstractThere are many problems of consciousness, but the most significant of them is: how is it possible to explain consciousness in terms of its neural basis?
Trends in Cognitive Sciences January 13, 2005 Ned Block 715 citations
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...
The Foundations of Cognitive Science July 26, 2001 Ned Block
Abstract The concept of H2O and the concept of water are two concepts of the same thing, as are the concepts of temperature and mean molecular kinetic energy. But something like the converse case is also common. In the seventeenth century, there were two concepts whose referents did not coincide, both denoted by the ambiguous phrase now translated as ‘degree of heat’. When they measured “degree...
Philosophical Issues 1996 Ned Block 434 citations
The greatest chasm in the philosophy of mind -maybe even all of philosophydivides 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 qualia. Those who think that the...
Behavioral and Brain Sciences June 1, 1995 Ned Block 3,267 citations
Abstract 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...
Behavioral and Brain Sciences June 1, 1995 Ned Block
AbstractWith some help from the commentators, a few adjustments to the characterizations of A-consciousness and P-consciousness can avoid some trivial cases of one without the other. But it still seems that the case for the existence of P without A is stronger than that for A without P. If indeed there can be P without A, but not A without P, this would be a remarkable result that would need...
If consciousness depends on biology rather than computation, could machines ever truly feel—and might simple animals already do so?