Ned Block: 3 ideas worth knowing

3 ideas from Ned Block, each explained in a minute and credited to the original work. Free on Savvy.

Give a billion people phones and you might wire up a brain
Ned Block imagined the entire population of China, each person simulating one neuron by phone call, wired to replicate the exact firing pattern of a human brain in pain. Functional…
— Ned Block, Troubles with Functionalism
A machine with no understanding at all could still talk its way through the Turing Test
Ned Block imagined 'Blockhead', a machine with an unimaginably huge lookup table pairing every possible conversation history with a canned response, able to pass the Turing Test pu…
— Ned Block, Psychologism and Behaviorism
If a billion people each acted as one neuron, would the resulting mind be conscious?
Philosopher Ned Block imagined replacing every neuron in a brain with a person holding a phone, each one calling the people standing in for its neighboring neurons and passing alon…
— Ned Block, Troubles with Functionalism

Five ideas worth knowing, every week