Ned Block - The Border Between Seeing and Thinking

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The Border Between Seeing and Thinking

Ned Block

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CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

Names: Block, Ned, 1942- author.

Title: The border between seeing and thinking / Ned Block.

Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2022] | Series:

Philosophy of mind series | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022006336 (print) | LCCN 2022006337 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780197622223 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197622247 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Cognition. | Perception. | Thought and thinking. | Senses

and sensation.

Classification: LCC BF311 .B554 2022 (print) | LCC BF311 (ebook) |

DDC 153dc23/eng/20220504

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022006336

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022006337

ISBN 9780197622223

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197622223.001.0001

The publisher gratefully acknowledges support from New York University for providing funding for this Open Access publication.

For my grandchildren, Ada, Mae, and Felix.

This book is about the border between perception and cognitionwhat it is and why it is important. I was drawn to this subject because of the realization that the difference between what I called access consciousness (cognitive access to phenomenally conscious states) and what I called phenomenal consciousness (what it is like to experience) was rooted in a difference between perceptionwhether conscious or unconsciousand cognitive access to perception.

A bit of the material in this book appeared in one of my four Jean Nicod Lectures in Paris in 2014 (though those lectures were on consciousness rather than the perception/cognition border). I am very grateful to Pierre Jacob and Frdrique de Vignemont for their warm hospitality and wonderful intellectual stimulation.

I am grateful to Jake Beck, Philip John Bold, Tyler Burge, Susan Carey, David Chalmers, Rachel Denison, Santiago Echeverri, Chaz Firestone, E. J. Green, Steven Gross, Chris Hill, Zoe Jenkin, Leonard Katz, Geoff Lee, Bria Long, Eric Mandelbaum, Jessie Munton, Albert Newen, Adam Pautz, Mary Peterson, Ian Phillips, Chris Peacocke, Jake Quilty-Dunn, Susanna Siegel, Barry Smith, and anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier draft. I am also indebted to discussion groups at Berkeley and NYU that discussed an earlier draft. I am grateful to Templeton World Charities for their support and to Rebecca Keller for preparing both indexes.

My indebtedness to my wife, Susan Carey, and to her book, The Origin of Concepts, is visible at many points in the book. The issue I have struggled with most is how to fit core cognition into my picture of the joint in nature between cognition and perception.

Ned Block

Cambridge, MA, November 2021

What is the difference between seeing and thinking? Is the border between seeing and thinking a joint in nature in the sense of a fundamental explanatory difference? Is it a difference of degree? Does thinking affect seeing, or, rather, is seeing cognitively penetrable? Are we aware of faces, causation, numerosity, and other high-level properties or only of the colors, shapes, and textures thataccording to the advocate of high-level perceptionare the low-level basis on which we see them? How can we distinguish between low-level and high-level perception, and how can we distinguish between high-level perception and perceptual judgment? Is there evaluative perception or is evaluation a matter of emotion and perceptual judgment? Is perception conceptual and propositional? Is perception iconic or more akin to language in being discursive? Is seeing singular? Which is more fundamental, visual attribution or visual discrimination? Is all seeing seeing-as? What is the difference between the format and content of perception, and do perception and cognition have different formats? Is perception probabilistic and, if so, why are we not normally aware of this probabilistic nature of perception? Does perception require perceptual constancies? Are the basic features of mind known as core cognition a third category in between perception and cognition? Are there perceptual categories that are not concepts? Where does consciousness fit in with regard to the difference between seeing and thinking? What is the best theory of consciousness and does the perception/cognition border have any relevance to which theories of consciousness are best? These are the questions I will be exploring in this book. I will be exploring them not mainly by appeals to intuitions, as is common in philosophy of perception, but by appeal to empirical evidence, including experiments in neuroscience and psychology.