339 Ned Block on Whether Consciousness Requires Biology

It's become increasingly clear that the Turing Test -- determining whether human interlocutors can tell whether a conversation is being carried out by a human or a machine -- is not a good way to think about consciousness. Modern LLMs can mimic human conversation with extraordinary verisimilitude, but most people would not judge them to be conscious. What would it take? Is it even possible for a computer program to achieve consciousness, or must consciousness be fundamentally "meat-based"? Philosopher Ned Block has long argued that consciousness involves something more than simply the "functional" aspects of inputs and outputs. Blog post with transcript: S upport Mindscape on Patreon . Ned Block received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University. He is currently Silver Professor in the Department of Philosophy at New York University, with secondary appointments in Psychology and Neural Science. He is also co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness . He is Past President of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Web site NYU web page PhilPeople profile Google Scholar publications Wikipedia

You can listen to 339 Ned Block on Whether Consciousness Requires Biology online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

339 Ned Block on Whether Consciousness Requires Biology is an episode from Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas by Sean Carroll.

This episode is 01:11:02 long.

This episode was published on Jan 5, 2026.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.