Editing Ned Block

{{Short description|American philosopher}}
{{Infobox philosopher
| region           = [[Western philosophy]]
| era              = [[20th-century philosophy]]
| name             = Ned Block
| image            = Large ned.block.jpg
| birth_date       = 1942
| birth_place      = [[Chicago]], U.S.
| school_tradition = [[Analytic philosophy]]
| main_interests   = [[Philosophy of mind]]
| 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>
}}
'''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.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Silver Professors |url=https://as.nyu.edu/people/silverprofessors.html |access-date=2025-02-26 |website=as.nyu.edu}}</ref>

==Education and career==
Block obtained his [[Doctor of Philosophy|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,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/john-locke-lectures#collapse1-3|title=The John Locke Lectures - Faculty of Philosophy|website=www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk}}</ref> 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.<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>

==Philosophical work==

===Philosophy of artificial intelligence===
Block is noted for presenting the [[Blockhead argument]] against the [[Turing test]] as a test of [[Intelligence (trait)|intelligence]] in a paper titled "Psychologism and Behaviorism" (1981). He is also known for his criticism of [[Functionalism (philosophy of mind)|functionalism]], arguing that a [[system]] with the same [[Functionalism (philosophy of mind)|functional state]]s as a human is not necessarily conscious.<ref>Ritchie, S. L., ''Divine Action and the Human Mind'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), [https://books.google.com/books?id=himhDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA174 p. 174.]</ref>{{rp|174}}

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.<ref>van de Gevel, Ad J. W., & Noussair, C. N., ''The Nexus between Artificial Intelligence and Economics'' ([[Berlin]]/[[Heidelberg]]: [[Springer Science+Business Media|Springer]], 2013), [https://books.google.com/books?id=uek_AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA14 pp. 14–15].</ref>{{rp|14–15}}

===Consciousness===
In his more recent work on [[consciousness]], he has made a distinction between [[phenomenal consciousness]] and [[Phenomenal consciousness#Types of consciousness|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.<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>

==See also==
*[[American philosophy]]
*[[List of American philosophers]]
*[[New York University Department of Philosophy]]
*[[Philosophy of artificial intelligence]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
*[http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/ NYU Department of Philosophy home page]
*[[Wikibooks:Consciousness Studies/Nineteenth To Twenty First Century Philosophy#Ned Block .281942- .29|Discussion of Block in a Wikibook about consciousness]]
*[http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/mindsandmachines/ Minds and Machines course by Ned Block]

{{Authority control}}

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[[Category:1942 births]]
[[Category:20th-century American male writers]]
[[Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:20th-century American philosophers]]
[[Category:21st-century American male writers]]
[[Category:21st-century American non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:21st-century American philosophers]]
[[Category:American consciousness researchers and theorists]]
[[Category:American male non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:American philosophers of mind]]
[[Category:Analytic philosophers]]
[[Category:Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society]]
[[Category:Harvard University alumni]]
[[Category:Jewish philosophers]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:New York University faculty]]
[[Category:Philosophers from New York (state)]]
[[Category:Philosophers of psychology]]
[[Category:Silver professors]]