Learning to Look

Alva Noë is a writer and a philosopher living in Berkeley and New York. He works on the nature of mind and human experience. He is the author of Action in Perception (2004); Out of Our Heads (2009); Varieties of Presence (2012); and Strange Tools (2015). His latest book is Infinite Baseball: Notes from a Philosopher at the Ballpark (2019). Alva received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1995 and is 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 also collaborated creatively with dance artists Deborah Hay, Nicole Peisl, Jess Curtis, Claire Cunningham, Katye Coe, and Charlie Morrissey. Alva is a 2012 recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and a former fellow of theWissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. He is a 2018 recipient of the Judd/Hume Prize in Advanced Visual Studies.

• Preface Encounters1 Soup is an anagram of opus2 I am sitting in a room3 40 speakers in a room4 Two left hands5 Rock art6 The power of performance7 Cheap thrills at the Whitney8 Whaling with Turner9 Take my breath away10 Speak, draw, dance11 Beach beasts on the move11 Making the work work13 Irrational man14 RoboCop's philosophers15 Pointing the way to liberation, in Star Trek: Voyager16 An Awkward Synthesis Pictures17 The anatomy lesson 18 The importance of being dressed19 The art of the brain20 Faces and masks21 The philosophical eye22 The camera and the dance23 Why are 3-D movies so bad?24 The myth of 3-D immersion25 Storying telling and the <"uncanny valley> "26 Peering into Rembrandt's eyes27 This is no zoo Art's Nature28 Coughing and the meaning of art29 Is it okay if art is boring?30 The opportunity of boredom31 Art placebo32 Are works of art relics?33 Reproductions in the age of originality34 Who is Vermeer? 35 How to love a fake36 Monuments37 Mind in the natural world: Can physics explain it? Nature's art38 Aesthetic evolution39 Bowie, cheesecake, sex, and the meaning of music40 Dylan's literature41 What's new is old42 The performance art of David Bowie, a remembrance43 All Things Shining44 You say 'tomato'45 What is a fact?46 Streams of memes47 Adele in the goldilocks zone48 Art at the limits of neuroscience Acknowledgements