Alva Noe, “Varieties of Presence” (Harvard UP, 2012)
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What is the enactive view of perception that Alva Noë introduces at the start of the interview?
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Hello and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdur of the University of Iowa, and I'm co-host of the channel along with Robert Talise. Every fortnight we post interviews with philosophers about their ideas as elaborated in their newly published books. Today's interview is with Alva Noe, Professor of Philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley about his new book Varieties of Presents, just released from Harvard University Press. What do we experience when we look at an object, say a tomato? A traditional view holds that we have or entertain an internal picture or representation of the tomato, and moreover that this internal picture is of the surface of the tomato, what's in our visual field.
It does not include, for example, the side of the tomato that is hidden from view. This general view of experience has been critically scrutinized for some time by numerous scientists and philosophers, knowing among them. In earlier books, Noah has defended the idea that our experiences of the world are grounded in practical knowledge of how things can be manipulated, how they're available to us for use, and how skilled we are in using them. According to his inactive view of perception, Noe argues that the hidden side of the tomato, for example, is also in our experience of it. It is in his words that Present as absent. In his new book Noe elaborates further on the inactive view to explain the nature of presence and the nature of access, of how the world shows up to us in experience, and how the way it shows up depends upon our modes of access to it.
Let's turn to the interview. Hi, Alva. Hello. Hi, welcome to New Books in Philosophy.
I'm delighted to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me.
Yeah, um I'm really excited to talk about uh your new book, Varieties of Presence. Um and this this book um as many of our listeners will will recognize, you know, follows two other books that you've written along the same topic of you know generally um the nature of experience, of conscious experience. Um the first being Action and Perception, which appeared in two thousand four, and then uh which appeared in two thousand nine. Um so it's it's uh it's uh interest of yours that traces back for for a long time. Um so maybe you could start us off by giving us some background on um sort of generally on how you came to write this book, how you came to philosophy perhaps, and then how you um came to focus your philosophical interests in this particular area of philosophy.
That's a great question. Thank thank you. Um But Action and Perception was my first book and I published it you know, um about um Almost ten years after after graduate school, after finishing my PhD in nineteen ninety five,
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the enactive view of perception that Alva Noë introduces at the start of the interview?
0:00–8:55
2
How did Alva Noë’s academic background and early career shape his interest in perception and action?
8:55–17:52
3
What does Noë mean by ‘presence’ and how does he distinguish its two fundamental aspects?
17:52–26:04
4
How does Noë argue that presence is determined by ‘availability’ or ‘access’ rather than internal representations?
26:04–34:17
5
What is Noë’s response to the challenge of explaining offline cognition and imagination within his framework?
34:17–44:04
6
How does Noë address the role of different sensory modalities and the problem of change blindness in his theory of presence?
44:04–50:40
7
Why does Noë consider dreaming a critical test case for his account of presence and access?
50:40–57:39
8
What new directions does Noë plan to explore in his forthcoming book ‘Strange Tools’ about art and human nature?
57:39–1:04:20
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