Podcast appearances and mentions of ned block

Neuroscientist Anil Seth explores how the brain constructs our sense of self and reality in Episode 94 of Brave New World with Vasant Dhar, offering insights on the boundary between perception and consciousness. Useful Resources: 1. Anil Seth2. Being You: A New Science Of Consciousness – Anil Seth. 3. TED Talk: Your Brain Hallucinates Your Conscious Reality – Anil Seth. 4. Predictive Coding5. Hermann Helmhotz and Unconscious Interference. 6. Priming In Psychology. 7. Reality Is A Controlled Hallucination – Anil Seth. 8. Computational Functionalism. 9. How The Mind Works – Steven Pinker. 10. Ned Block, Co-Director, Centre for Mind, Brain and Consciousness, NYU. 11. Thomas Nagel. 12. Claude Shannon and Information Theory. 13. David Chalmers, Co-Director, Centre for Mind, Brain and Consciousness, NYU. 14. Panel Discussion at The World Science Festival, Moderated By Brain Green. 15. Stevan Harnard and the Symbol Grounding Problem. 16. Pippa Ehrlich On The Mysteries of The Sea – Episode 77 Of Brave New World. 17. A Tiger For Malgudi – RK Narayan. 18. Kevin Mitchell Makes A Case For Free Will – Episode 80 Of Brave New World. 19. Marcello Massimini20. Robert Sapolsky. 21. Robert Sapolsky on Free Will. 20. Compatibilism. 21. The Emergent Properties of The Connected Brain. 22. Aaron Schurger. 23. Benjamin Libett. 24. Readiness Potential. Check out Vasant Dhar's newsletter on Substack. The subscription is free!  

Ned Block is Silver Professor at New York University in the Departments of Philosophy and Psychology, where he works on the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of neuroscience, and cognitive science. In this episode, Robinson and Ned discuss some of the titans he studied under, ChatGPT and the nature of artificial intelligence, the Turing Test, androids, consciousness, the connection between seeing and thinking, blindsight, change blindness, and more. Ned's most recent book is The Border Between Seeing and Thinking (OUP, 2023). Ned's Website: https://www.nedblock.us The Border Between Seeing and Thinking: https://a.co/d/fqVb7gj OUTLINE 00:00 Introduction 00:53 Ned's Entry into Philosophy of Mind 02:08 On Hilary Putnam, John Rawls, and Philippa Foot 08:10 Can ChatGPT Do Multiplication? 10:57 Does Noam Chomsky Understand ChatGPT? 13:11 Is the Turing Test Completely Wrong? 17:52 On Daniel Dennett 23:46 On Michael Graziano and the Attention Schema Theory of Consciousness 26:03 Are Animals Conscious? 30:51 Does ChatGPT Pass the Turing Test? 36:53 Mary in the White Room 41:16 The Blockhead Thought Experiment 45:53 How to Show that ChatGPT Is Dumb 48:51 Why Can't ChatGPT Reason About Images? 51:48 How to Create an Android 55:10 What Is Thought? 1:00:13 Susan Carey 1:03:19 Are There Different Kinds of Consciousness? 1:05:10 On Psychoanalysis 1:06:08 What Are Blindsight and Change Blindness? 1:11:38 The Difference Between Seeing and Thinking 1:16:03 Was Helen Keller Conscious? 1:18:39 Are Salmon Conscious? 1:20:58 What Are the Dominant Theories of Consciousness? 1:27:35 Do We Know What Consciousness Is? 1:31:25 Functionalism and Mental Properties Robinson's Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/robinson-erhardt/support

We've all seen those illusions. The dots seem to dance, when in fact they're completely still. The lines look like they bend, but in reality they're perfectly straight. Here's the thing: It doesn't matter that you know the ground truth of these illusions—the dancing and bending won't stop. And that we see the world one way, even though we know it's actually another way, is a fascinating quirk of our minds—and maybe a telling one. It suggests that there's a chasm between perceiving and thinking, that these may be two independent provinces of the mind. But, if so, we're faced with another question: Where does perception end and thinking begin?  My guest today is Dr. Chaz Firestone. Chaz is an Associate Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, and Director of the Perception and Mind lab there. He and his research group study perceiving, thinking, and the interface between the two. Here, Chaz and I talk about his background in philosophy and how it continues to animate his research. We sketch the differences between perception and cognition and why the two are best considered separate faculties. We consider the idea of so-called "top-down" effects on perception. We discuss the fact that, even if perception and cognition are separate, there's much more to perception than meets the eye. We seem to see things like causes and social interactions; we perceive things like silences and absences. Along the way, Chaz and I touch on the modular view mind, skeletal shapes, the El Greco fallacy, stubborn epistemology, birders and radiologists, retinotopy and visual adaptation, adversarial images, human-machine comparisons, and the case of the blue banana.  This is a fun one, friends. But before we get to it, one humble request. If you've been enjoying Many Minds, now would be a great time to leave us a rating or review. You can do this on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify. It would really help us grow and get the word out! It actually looks like our last review on Apple Podcasts is about 10 months old—so, if you have a minute, that could really use some freshening up.   Alright folks, on to my conversation with Chaz Firestone. Enjoy!   A transcript of this episode will be available soon.    Notes and links 3:00 – Dr. Firestone's early paper reporting the Times Square experiment and the “skeletal shape” phenomenon. 8:00 – A visual explanation of the “missing bullet holes” graphic.  13:00 – Dr. Firestone has collaborated intensively with the philosopher Ian Phillips.  15:00 – A recent book by Ned Block, The Border Between Seeing and Thinking. 24:00 – Visual illusions are legion, as are inventories of them. See, for instance, this catalogue on Wikipedia or this Reddit thread. 25:00 – An obituary for Jerry Fodor, who died in 2017. The classic book by Zenon Pylyshyn, Computation and Cognition.  28:00 – A paper by Dr. Firestone about the history of the El Greco fallacy. An empirical paper by Dr. Firestone and Brian Scholl showing the El Greco fallacy at work in perception research.  35:00 – A target article (with commentaries) in Behavioral and Brain Sciences by Dr. Firestone and Dr. Scholl about claims of “top-down” effects on perception. Dr. Firestone has published other work on this theme, e.g., here, here, & here.  41:00 – A paper with discussion (and illustration) of the classic Dalmation Mooney image.  45:00 – A study of rapid visual pattern recognition in expert chess players. 50:30 – A paper by J.J. Valenti and Dr. Firestone about the case of the blue banana. 54:00 – A review paper by Alon Hafri and Dr. Firestone reviewing evidence that people actually perceive high-level relations like causality, support, and social interaction.  56:00 – A study by Martin Rolfs and colleagues about the perception of causality.   1:02:00 – A study by Liuba Papeo and colleagues about the perception of social interactions. A related paper showing an inversion effect. 1:04:00 – A paper by Alon Hafri and colleagues on the perception of roles in an interaction.  1:06:00 – A widely cited paper by J. Kiley Hamlin and colleagues on the recognition of social interactions in preverbal infants. 1:06:30 – A review paper on reading in the brain.  1:10:00 – A paper by Rui Goh, Dr. Phillips, and Dr. Firestone on the perception of silence.  1:18:00 – A recent review paper by Jorge Morales and Dr. Firestone about the dialogue between philosophy of perception and psychology, which discusses the perception of absence (among other case studies).  1:22:00 – A recent perspective piece by Dr. Firestone about human-machine comparisons. 1:25:00 - An empirical paper by Zhenglong Zhou and Dr. Firestone on the deciphering of adversarial images by humans. 1:28:00 – For a review of the mirror self-recognition test, see our earlier audio essay.   1:35:00 – Other interesting work going on in Dr. Firestone's research group has investigated representational momentum, beauty, and epistemic actions, among other topics.   Recommendations The Modularity of Mind, by Jerry Fodor The Contents of Visual Experience, by Susanna Siegel Psych, by Paul Bloom   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.   Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com.    For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

Fact Checking Erik Hoel's Comments on Julian Jaynes's Theory in "The World Behind the World: Consciousness, Free Will, and the Limits of Science." A brief discussion between Marcel Kuijsten and Brian J. McVeigh, fact checking Erik Hoel's recent comments on Julian Jaynes's theory in his book "The World Behind the World: Consciousness, Free Will, and the Limits of Science." They discuss a number of different problems with Erik Hoel's understanding of Julian Jaynes's theory. They also explain the critique of Jaynes's theory raised by Hoel (and originally made by Ned Block) referred to as the "use/mention error," and how that critique was later addressed by Julian Jaynes, Daniel Dennett, and Jan Sleutels. Read the blog post: https://www.julianjaynes.org/blog/fact-checks/fact-checking-erik-hoel/ Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at ⁠⁠⁠https://www.julianjaynes.org⁠⁠⁠​. References from the video: Brian J. McVeigh, "Fact Checking Erik Hoel's “The World Behind the World: Consciousness, Free Will, and the Limits of Science,” August 6, 2023. (https://www.julianjaynes.org/blog/fact-checks/fact-checking-erik-hoel/) Julian Jaynes, "Afterword," in Julian Jaynes, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" (Mariner Books, 1976/1990). (https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072/) Jan Sleutels, "Greek Zombies: On the Alleged Absurdity of Substantially Unconscious Greek Minds," in Marcel Kuijsten (ed.) "Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes's Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited" (Julian Jaynes Society, 2006). (https://www.julianjaynes.org/book/reflections-on-the-dawn-of-consciousness/) Daniel Dennett, "Julian Jaynes' Software Archeology," Canadian Psychology, 1986, 27, 2, 149-154. (https://www.julianjaynes.org/resources/articles/julian-jaynes-software-archeology/) Marcel Kuijsten (ed.), "Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind: Interviews with Leading Thinkers on Julian Jaynes's Theory" (Julian Jaynes Society, 2022). (https://www.julianjaynes.org/book/conversations-on-consciousness-and-the-bicameral-mind/)

Is the Matrix really real? And if so, which pill would David Chalmers take?  Join us for a mind-bending journey through virtual worlds, human consciousness, technology, philosophy, and religion, and find out!  David Chalmers is an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist specializing in the areas of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. He is a Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science at New York University and co-director of NYU's Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness (along with Ned Block).  Key Takeaways:  Intro (00:00) Judging the book by its cover (01:49) Defining the hard problem of consciousness (04:50) Why is there tension between physics and philosophy (07:20) The Chalmers equation for the simulation hypothesis? (11:57) What have we learned about consciousness from computer analogs? (21:24) AI physicists (32:08) What is it from bit? Or is that bit from it? (40:10) What does it take for the maker of the simulation to be god or godlike? (47:50)  Why create the world (or the simulation)? (53:49) Can there be a substrate-free creator (simulator)? (57:43)  Why do you claim we can't know if we are in a simulation? (1:06:32) Would you take the red pill? (1:08:41)  Outro (1:16:43) — Additional resources: 

What links conscious experience of pain, joy, color, and smell to bioelectrical activity in the brain? How can anything physical give rise to nonphysical, subjective, conscious states? Christof Koch has devoted much of his career to bridging the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the physics of the brain and phenomenal experience. Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist --part scientific overview, part memoir, part futurist speculation--describes Koch's search for an empirical explanation for consciousness. Koch recounts not only the birth of the modern science of consciousness but also the subterranean motivation for his quest--his instinctual (if "romantic") belief that life is meaningful. Koch describes his own groundbreaking work with Francis Crick in the 1990s and 2000s and the gradual emergence of consciousness (once considered a "fringy" subject) as a legitimate topic for scientific investigation. Present at this paradigm shift were Koch and a handful of colleagues, including Ned Block, David Chalmers, Stanislas Dehaene, Giulio Tononi, Wolf Singer, and others. Aiding and abetting it were new techniques to listen in on the activity of individual nerve cells, clinical studies, and brain-imaging technologies that allowed safe and noninvasive study of the human brain in action. Koch gives us stories from the front lines of modern research into the neurobiology of consciousness as well as his own reflections on a variety of topics, including the distinction between attention and awareness, the unconscious, how neurons respond to Homer Simpson, the physics and biology of free will, dogs, Der Ring des Nibelungen, sentient machines, the loss of his belief in a personal God, and sadness. All of them are signposts in the pursuit of his life's work--to uncover the roots of consciousness. Christof Koch is Professor of Biology and of Engineering at the California Institute of Technology and Chief Scientific Officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. He is the author of The Quest for Consciousness and other books. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

What links conscious experience of pain, joy, color, and smell to bioelectrical activity in the brain? How can anything physical give rise to nonphysical, subjective, conscious states? Christof Koch has devoted much of his career to bridging the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the physics of the brain and phenomenal experience. Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist --part scientific overview, part memoir, part futurist speculation--describes Koch's search for an empirical explanation for consciousness. Koch recounts not only the birth of the modern science of consciousness but also the subterranean motivation for his quest--his instinctual (if "romantic") belief that life is meaningful. Koch describes his own groundbreaking work with Francis Crick in the 1990s and 2000s and the gradual emergence of consciousness (once considered a "fringy" subject) as a legitimate topic for scientific investigation. Present at this paradigm shift were Koch and a handful of colleagues, including Ned Block, David Chalmers, Stanislas Dehaene, Giulio Tononi, Wolf Singer, and others. Aiding and abetting it were new techniques to listen in on the activity of individual nerve cells, clinical studies, and brain-imaging technologies that allowed safe and noninvasive study of the human brain in action. Koch gives us stories from the front lines of modern research into the neurobiology of consciousness as well as his own reflections on a variety of topics, including the distinction between attention and awareness, the unconscious, how neurons respond to Homer Simpson, the physics and biology of free will, dogs, Der Ring des Nibelungen, sentient machines, the loss of his belief in a personal God, and sadness. All of them are signposts in the pursuit of his life's work--to uncover the roots of consciousness. Christof Koch is Professor of Biology and of Engineering at the California Institute of Technology and Chief Scientific Officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. He is the author of The Quest for Consciousness and other books. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/neuroscience

Why do we care for others? Why did morality evolve? Is unselfish behaviour possible in a Darwinian world? Patricia Churchland joins to discuss these topics with your host, Ilari Mäkelä. Author of Conscience: Origins of Moral Intuition, Patricia Churchland is an emerita professor of Philosophy at UC San Diego. Ilari and Professor Churchland discuss topics such as: Warm-bloodedness and morality Psychological egoism vs unselfish behaviour Neurobiology of care: Oxytocin, cannabinoids, opioids Elements of morality: How much of morality is about care, vs problem-solving, cooperation, and social learning? Churchland's criticism of Western moral philosophy Neurophilosophy: is studying the brain all that useful? Free will: does studying the brain show that free will does not exist? Technical terms mentioned: Endothermy (i.e. warm-bloodedness) Cortex Oxytocin, vasopressin Endogenous opioids and cannabinoids Utilitarian ethics Kantian ethics (i.e. deontology) Metta meditation Vitalism Names mentioned: Christophe Boesch (chimpanzee adoption) Peggy Mason (helping behaviour in rats) Sue Carter (oxytocin and stress) David Hume & Adam Smith Mencius (early Confucian philosopher) [For Ilari's article on Mencius, see An Empirical Argument for Mencius' Theory of Human Nature] The Dalai Lama (H.H. the 14th) Simon Blackburn (contemporary Cambridge philosopher) Dan Bowling (placebo and oxytocin) Olivia Goldhill (review of Conscience for the New York Times) Lidija Haas (review of Conscience for the Harper Magazine) Other scholars to follow (Churchland's recommendations) Topics in this interview Frans de Waal Owen Flanagan Philosophy & neuroscience more generally Nick Lane (genetics and evolution) Ann-Sophie Barwich (neurophilosophy of smell) Gregory Berns (soon to appear on the podcast) Ned Block (philosophy of cognition)

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Announcing the NYU Mind, Ethics, and Policy Program, published by Sofia Fogel on September 19, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. We are thrilled to share that the NYU Mind, Ethics, and Policy (MEP) Program has now launched! MEP will conduct and support foundational research about the nature and intrinsic value of nonhuman minds, including biological and artificial minds. In particular, this program aims to advance understanding of the consciousness, sentience, sapience, moral status, legal status, and political status of nonhumans – with special focus on invertebrates and AIs – via research and outreach. The team will include Jeff Sebo as director, me (Sofia) as coordinator, and Ned Block, Samuel Bowman, David Chalmers, Becca Franks, Joshua Lewis, S. Matthew Liao, Claudia Passos-Ferreira, Luke Roelofs, Katrina Wyman, and others as faculty affiliates. MEP has a variety of projects underway; you can find information about two of them below. David Chalmers Public Talk On October 13 2022 at 5:00pm ET, MEP will host a public talk by David Chalmers (University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and Co-Director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness, NYU; author, The Conscious Mind, Constructing the World, and Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy) on whether large language models are sentient. This talk, which will be co-sponsored by the NYU Center for Bioethics, the NYU Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness, and the NYU Minds, Brains, and Machines Initiative, will be free and open to the public, in person and online. You can register to attend here. Early-Career Award and Workshop MEP is announcing an Early-Career Award and Workshop on Animal and AI Consciousness. PhD students and early-career faculty (PhD 2017 or later) in any field are invited to submit current or recent (published 2021 or later) work on this topic. Selected authors will receive a $500 award and an all-expenses paid trip to the Association of Scientific Studies of Consciousness Conference at NYU in June 2023. They will also be invited to speak at a Workshop on Animal and AI Consciousness associated with this conference. You can find more information about this award and workshop, including how to submit, here. Finally, if you have interest in receiving updates from MEP, you can visit our website or sign up for our email list. If you have interest in participating in our work, please contact Jeff or me to discuss. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

The Lebowitz Award is presented each year to a pair of outstanding philosophers who hold contrasting views on a topic of current interest in the field. The 2021 winners, New York University's Ned Block and Johns Hopkins University's Ian Phillips, speak with Fred about how they approach philosophy of mind – specifically, our powers of perception and how that affects our consciousness.

What does it even mean to be aware of something, to be conscious? Why do the vast majority of people only have one consciousness? Will computers ever experience consciousness? On this Bingecast, Dr. Robert J. Marks and Dr. Angus Menuge discuss these questions and more. Show Notes 00:01:36 | Introducing Dr. Angus Menuge 00:07:02 | Near-death experiences 00:10:32 | The… Source

David Chalmers is an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist specializing in the areas of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. He is a Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science at New York University, as well as co-director of NYU's Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness (along with Ned Block). In 2006, he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. In 2013, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. David Chalmers first formulated the problem in his paper Facing up to the problem of consciousness (1995) and expanded upon it in his book The Conscious Mind (1996). His works have proven to be provocative. Some, such as David Lewis and Steven Pinker, have praised Chalmers for his argumentative rigor and "impeccable clarity." Others, such as Daniel Dennett and Patricia Churchland, believe that hard problem is really more of a collection of easy problems, and will be solved through further analysis of the brain and behavior. Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy https://amzn.to/3oqp0Cz Virtual reality is genuine reality; that's the central thesis of Reality+. In a highly original work of “technophilosophy,” David J. Chalmers gives a compelling analysis of our technological future. He argues that virtual worlds are not second-class worlds, and that we can live a meaningful life in virtual reality. We may even be in a virtual world already. Along the way, Chalmers conducts a grand tour of big ideas in philosophy and science. He uses virtual reality technology to offer a new perspective on long-established philosophical questions. How do we know that there's an external world? Is there a god? What is the nature of reality? What's the relation between mind and body? How can we lead a good life? All of these questions are illuminated or transformed by Chalmers' mind-bending analysis. Visit our Sponsor LinkedIn.com/impossible to post a job for FREESearch for The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts, or go to jordanharbinger.com/subscribe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learning is not about the outcome, like getting a good grade on your final. Learning is about the journey, the feeling you get when something finally makes sense, the moments of connection you have when studying with friends, the thrill of teaching a concept to another person. Learning is not a perfect process, it's messy and challenging, but it's necessary to adapt to failure or adversity.Mattan Griffel is an expert on the importance of learning as a journey, not an outcome.In his new book, "Python for MBA's", Mattan instills the mental models needed not only to code, but to look at the world with an artist's eye and a craftsman's heart.Mattan is an award-winning faculty member at Columbia Business School, author of Python for MBAs, and two-time Y Combinator-backed entrepreneur. He is co-founder and COO of Ophelia, a company that helps people quit opioids without having to go to rehab. Mattan is also an Innovation Fellow at the Lang Center for Entrepreneurship and was selected as one of Forbes' 30 Under 30 in Education. Mattan advises companies on innovation and technology and has worked with companies like Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg, Condé Nast, American Express, NYSE, and JPMorgan. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, BusinessWeek, and the MIT Technology Review. Mattan studied Philosophy and Finance at New York University and wrote his thesis on the metaphysics of consciousness under David Chalmers and Ned Block.In this episode, Mattan and Chris dive philosophically deep into Python, life, and learning.Listen to this episode and learn about:Mattan giving credit and thanks to his middle school teacher (3:22)Teaching things you love (6:54)Developing critical thinking (11:01)Approaches to learning (17:57)Why coding is so essential (23:25)The technological revolution that is coming (27:18)Putting feelings first with code (29:41)Giving people the permission to fail (33:29)Python helping people have more integrity (35:14)What's next for Mattan (42:10)Links:Connect with Mattan on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattangriffel/Python for MBAs - https://www.amazon.com/Python-MBAs-Mattan-Griffel/dp/0231193939Ophelia - https://ophelia.com

What is it like to see a red rose? To smell a red rose? To feel pain? In this week’s podcast, Dr. Robert J. Marks and Dr. Angus Menuge continue their discussion on philosophies of the mind, delving into competing definitions of consciousness. Show Notes 00:26 | Introducing Dr. Angus Menuge 01:01 | Phenomenal consciousness and qualia 07:25 | Experiencing… Source

What is it like to see a red rose? To smell a red rose? To feel pain? In this week’s podcast, Dr. Robert J. Marks and Dr. Angus Menuge continue their discussion on philosophies of the mind, delving into competing definitions of consciousness. Show Notes 00:26 | Introducing Dr. Angus Menuge 01:01 | Phenomenal consciousness and qualia 07:25 | Experiencing… Source

CONSCIOUSNESS - How is it possible that mushy masses of brain cells, passing chemicals and shooting sparks literally are mental sensations and subjective feelings? They seem so radically different. Featuring John Searle, Ned Block, J.P. Moreland, Marvin Minsky, and Colin McGinn.

We talk with Ned about a second Blockheads (2019) article, Michael Tyle's “Homunculi Heads and Silicon Chips: The Importance of History to Phenomenology," which provides a variation off of the David Chalmers fading qualia argument, and then Mark, Seth, Dylan, and Wes continue exploring the details uncovered by our interview after Ned leaves. Listen to part one first, or get the ad-free, unbroken Citizen Edition. Please support PEL! End song: "Your So Dark Sleep/Goodbye" by The Black Watch, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #102. Sponsors: Visit thegreatcoursesplus.com/PEL for a free trial of The Great Courses Plus Video Learning Service and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.  

The climax and denouement of our summer philosophy of mind series: Ned Block visits to fill in the gaps about functionalism and attributing consciousness to machines and discuss essays from Blockheads (2019), focusing here on Brian McLaughlin’s “Could an Android be Sentient?” Don't wait for part 2! Get the ad-free, unbroken Citizen Edition now. Please support PEL! Please go check out Modern Day Philosophers at moderndayphilosophers.net and See You On The Other Side at othersidepodcast.com. Also, subscribe to Mark's Pretty Much Pop at prettymuchpop.com.

In this episode we interview Ned Block, professor of philosophy at New York University, on his paper: “What is Functionalism?” For more on this topic see: Philosophy and Science of Mind Encyclopedia Entry (English) Philosophy and Science of Mind Encyclopedia Entry (Chinese) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry

Neuroscience and philosophy meet in the arena of consciousness when neuroscientist guest Bernard Baars joins philosopher hosts Richard Brown and Pete Mandik on the SpaceTimeMind podcast. Topics we tackle include (1) the interface between science and philosophy, (2) the Global Workspace Theory of Consciousness, (3) the relevance of quantum mechanics for phenomenal consciousness, (4) the possibility of machine consciousness, and (5) Ned Block’s thesis that perceptual consciousness overflows cognitive access. We’ve saved you a seat in the theater of consciousness, so pop open an ice cold can of qualia and enjoy the show.

Ned Block talks to Nigel Warburton about some phenomena of consciousness in the latest episode of the podcast Philosophy Bites. Philosophy Bites is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy (www.philosophy.sas.ac.uk).