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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Atheism and science face a real challenge: To frame an account of science, or nature, that leaves room for meaning. Atheists have pinned their flag to Mr. Spock's mast. But they need Captain Kirk. -
News reports this week told of photos of naked celebrities that were stolen and posted online. Separately, we learned that even Neanderthal man made pictures. Why are these images so important? -
What makes some middle-aged men and women act like children at the baseball park? Commentator Alva Noë wonders about that distinct attitude of love and longing that we call "being a fan." -
The power of a particular work of art comes from somewhere. Commentator Alva Noë has one idea about its source, while art historian Alexander Nagel has another. -
The sudden death this past week of the noted scholar Anne Hollander prompts Alva Noë to reflect upon her contributions to how we see ourselves.
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For years the Turing Test has been a gut check for AI researchers. Now, apparently, a computer program imitating a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy has managed to pass the test. What should we make of that? -
A new book by Scott Weems on humor and human nature raises fascinating questions about why we laugh. Commentator Alva Noë cracks up easily and asks for help collecting some more jokes. -
We listen to music. But is music a distinctively auditory phenomenon? Recent work in psychology suggests that we experience music as much by seeing it as by hearing it. This shouldn't surprise us, writes philosopher Alva Noë. Music isn't sound; it's action. -
There's a lot of coughing in audiences at concerts and plays. Why? Commentator Alva Noe suggests that the answer has something to do with the importance of art. -
Can natural science find a place for us in its vision of the cosmos? Thomas Nagel, in a new book, demands we take this question seriously. He is right to do so.
