239 - Ned Block: Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence, and the Philosophy of Mind

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.