Why Consciousness does not Extend Outside the Brain

30 June 2009

Professor Ned Block

There are good reasons for thinking that the physical basis of cognition can be reasonably taken to extend outside the brain to the body and the world.    But not so for consciousness.  This lecture goes into the logic of experiments that show that even if cognition is extended, consciousness is not.  Smart was right: if consciousness is physical, it is a brain process.

JACK SMART LECTURE

Professor J J C Smart was Professor and Head of Philosophy at the Research School of Social Sciences, ANU from 1979 until 1986. A Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, in 1990 he was made a Companion in the General Division of the Order of Australia for services to philosophy and education. The Jack Smart Lecture is held annually in his honour.

Broad Topics: Arts and Social Sciences

Sub-topics: Philosophy & Religion

Areas: ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences

Professor Ned Block, PhD, Harvard, is Silver Professor of Philosophy, Psychology and Neural Science at New York University. He was Chair of the Philosophy Program at MIT. He works in philosophy of mind and foundations of neuroscience and cognitive science and is currently writing a book on consciousness. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Senior Fellow of the Center for the Study of Language and Information, a Sloan Foundation Fellow, a faculty member at two National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institutes and two Summer Seminars, the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Science Foundation; and a recipient of the Robert A Muh Alumni Award in Humanities and Social Science from MIT.