Ideas of Ned Block, by Theme

[American, b.1942, Professor at MIT until 1996, then at New York University.]

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15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 5. Qualia / a. Nature of qualia
Lobotomised patients can cease to care about a pain
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 5. Qualia / b. Qualia and intentionality
The Inverted Earth example shows that phenomenal properties are not representational [Rowlands]
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 5. Qualia / c. Explaining qualia
A brain looks no more likely than anything else to cause qualia
17. Mind and Body / B. Behaviourism / 2. Potential Behaviour
Behaviour requires knowledge as well as dispositions
17. Mind and Body / C. Functionalism / 1. Functionalism
Functionalism is behaviourism, but with mental states as intermediaries
You might invert colours, but you can't invert beliefs
In functionalism, desires are internal states with causal relations
17. Mind and Body / C. Functionalism / 8. Functionalism critique
Could a creature without a brain be in the right functional state for pain?
Not just any old functional network will have mental states
In functionalism, what are the special inputs and outputs of conscious creatures?
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 7. Anti-Physicalism / b. Multiple realisability
Physicalism is prejudiced in favour of our neurology, when other systems might have minds
18. Thought / B. Mechanics of Thought / 6. Artificial Thought / b. Turing Machines
Simple machine-functionalism says mind just is a Turing machine
A Turing machine, given a state and input, specifies an output and the next state
18. Thought / B. Mechanics of Thought / 6. Artificial Thought / c. Turing Test
A fast machine could pass all behavioural tests with a vast lookup table [Rey]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 7. Meaning Holism / c. Meaning by Role
The meaning of a representation is its role in thought, perception or decisions
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 1. Syntax
Intuition may say that a complex sentence is ungrammatical, but linguistics can show that it is not