Ned Block, The Border Between Seeing and Thinking, New York: Oxford University Press, 2023 — DOI-10.1093/oso/9780197622223.001.0001.
Key takeaways
Not read. What follows is what Crossref’s chapter records and Block’s précis say.
- Chapter records Crossref returned to a search (titles, and pages where given; the list may be incomplete): Introduction (1–60); “Two kinds of seeing-as and singular content”; “Perception is constitutively nonpropositional and nonconceptual”; “Perception is iconic; cognition is discursive”; “Nonconceptual color perception”; “Neural evidence that perception is nonconceptual”; “Evidence that is wrongly taken to show that perception is conceptual”; “Cognitive penetration is common but does not challenge the joint”; “Top-down effects that are probably not cases of cognitive penetration”; “Modularity”; “Core cognition and perceptual analogs of concepts”; Consciousness (417–467); Conclusions (468–474). Crossref lists the chapter records without a consistent chapter numbering, so none is given here.
- The thesis, in the précis’s words: “perception is constitutively iconic, non-conceptual and non-propositional while cognition is paradigmatically (but not constitutively) discursive (non-iconic), conceptual and propositional”.
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-03 at the owner’s request, as a Deferred seed under the record’s books practice: the précis (LIT-649) was read in its place. The record would lose something without the book, for two reasons.
- It is already cited. Schwitzgebel’s AI and Consciousness (LIT-191, read in NOTE-104) cites “Block 2023, p. 454-458” for its claim C13 that the neural replacement argument fails, and “Block 2023” again on recurrence; his reference list gives this book. Ivy and Mroczko-Wąsowicz (LIT-099, NOTE-150) cite “Block (2023)” for a perception–cognition border without penetration, very probably this book (their reference list was not checked).
- The précis does not carry the arguments. The case for nonconceptual perception from adaptation, infant colour perception and neural evidence, and the consciousness chapter that NOTE-104 relies on, are only in the book.
Priority for a reading: high for the chapter “Consciousness” (pp. 417–467), whose pp. 454–458 the record already leans on through Schwitzgebel; then the chapters on nonconceptual perception.
No anthology topic holds it, and it carries no instruction for machine-learning practice.