Alva Noë
Alva Noë is a contributor to the NPR blog 13.7: Cosmos and Culture. He is writer and a philosopher who works on the nature of mind and human experience.
Noë received his PhD from Harvard in 1995 and is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also a member of the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences and the Center for New Media. He previously was a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He has been philosopher-in-residence with The Forsythe Company and has recently begun a performative-lecture collaboration with Deborah Hay. Noë is a 2012 recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship.
He is the author of Action in Perception (MIT Press, 2004); Out of Our Heads (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2009); and most recently, Varieties of Presence(Harvard University Press, 2012). He is now at work on a book about art and human nature.
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At the end of the day, even the smartest computers are tools, our tools, and their intentions are our intentions — to the extent that we can speak of their intentions at all, says blogger Alva Noë. -
There's generally a pane of glass separating viewers from museum diorama scenes, providing a frame, allowing us to peer, as if by magic, into a world remote in space and time, says blogger Alva Noë. -
Alva Noë says a new book by David Papineau places the value of sport on our love for cultivating our skillfulness — and because it is joyous and thrilling and hard to develop our physical capacities. -
The brain evolved over evolutionary time scales of millions of years. So what's the likelihood that modern experience could have had an impact? Alva Noë says a new study might give the topic light. -
Philosophical skepticism, in part coming from Decartes, considers the idea that it's impossible to know another person's reality. Alva Noë ponders this in relation to debates in today's world. -
Experts and beginners approach their tasks differently. Blogger Alva Noë weighs in on new video research that uses an eye-tracking device to show where expert and novice pianists diverge. -
An exhibition looking at the remarkable friendship and artistic collaboration between Michelangelo and Sebastiano sheds light on important questions concerning original art and copies, says Alva Noë. -
As museum curators continue to search for ways to make art accessible to the viewing public — and to engage individual interests — blogger Alva Noë says turning to neuroscience is not the answer. -
Major League Baseball is considering ways to shorten the game. But the problem baseball faces isn't the speed of the game: Players and spectators alike need to slow down, says blogger Alva Noë. -
Behavioral addiction, especially to the new technologies so prevalent today, is the topic of Adam Alter's book Irresistible.Alva Noë proposes two criteria that may determine addiction to technology.
