Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature

by Alva Noë

A philosopher makes the case for thinking of works of art as tools for investigating ourselves

In Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature , the philosopher and cognitive scientist Alva Noë argues that our obsession with works of art has gotten in the way of understanding how art works on us. For Noë, art isn't a phenomenon in need of an explanation but a mode of research, a method of investigating what makes us human--a strange tool. Art isn't just something to look at or listen to--it is a challenge, a dare to try to make sense of what it is all about. Art aims not for satisfaction but for confrontation, intervention, and subversion. Through diverse and provocative examples from the history of art-making, Noë reveals the transformative power of artistic production. By staging a dance, choreographers cast light on the way bodily movement organizes us. Painting goes beyond depiction and representation to call into question the role of pictures in our lives. Accordingly, we cannot reduce art to some natural aesthetic sense or trigger; recent efforts to frame questions of art in terms of neurobiology and evolutionary theory alone are doomed to fail.

By engaging with art, we are able to study ourselves in profoundly novel ways. In fact, art and philosophy have much more in common than we might think. Reframing the conversation around artists and their craft, Strange Tools is a daring and stimulating intervention in contemporary thought.

Genres: Philosophy, Art, Nonfiction, Science, Psychology, Audiobook, Cultural

304 pages, Paperback

First published September 22, 2015

About the author

Alva Noë (born 1964) is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. The focus of his work is the theory of perception and consciousness. In addition to these problems in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind, he is interested in phenomenology, the theory of art, Wittgenstein, and the origins of analytic philosophy.

Reviews

[Phillip · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I did enjoy much of Strange Tools as its viewpoint is sympathetic with my goals as an artist and of a particular type of artistic practice that I value highly, I would disagree with the author that this one branch of artistic pursuit is the only one worthy of being defined as art.

One of the chief weakness in his framework is a lack of a consideration of the historical evolution and cross cultural manifestations of art to favor the western pursuit of the avant-garde and the subsequent research modalities of modernism and postmodernism. The weakness in the author's framework and in past critical perspectives that either share this valuation or defining parameters, is that it delimits and eliminates a broad expanse of phenomena that I would consider semantically as art. Often, as is the case here, this favoring strikes me as potentially classiest in its valuation. So it is no surprise to me that Roger Scruton makes an appearance or two here, and does so in section that I thought was particularly wrong headed (music).

That said, there is much to like here, as Mr. Noe is lucid writer and has a great deal of phenomenal insight. It is in his reflective phenomenology that I find the most benefits. And if you value art that seeks to reorganize and challenge the ways in which we engage with and organize our experiences of the world there is much of value here and many apt descriptions and examples...

[Zivile · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading this book I was released from a strict European idea that artists are not the ones who proclaim themselves as artists but the ones that are officially institutionalized. Somehow our society likes to think that some institution has a power to tell who's artist and who's not. And then few special people decide that this art is good and this is not. Absurdity!
This book suggests how art creation has developed alongside with other survival behavioral patterns. The only difference is that the art acts oppositely than the rest of conventional patterns: it confuses us and therefore it is a good art.
I like the thought that such criteria - puzzlement, not understanding, irritation etc - should be the real recognition tool for art.

[Jen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book sucks

[Wayne Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Art starts when things get strange.” P. 100

Alva Noe, In Strange Tools, brings us through the semiotics of writing (“Art is writing ourselves” p. 206)), a strange tool (not merely functional) of Noe’s creativity (“Art looks like technology. It is useless technology; works of art are strange tools” p. 64), putting on display the aesthetical and philosophical engagement with the problem of what is art, what is philosophy, what is human nature. He presents this problem as a kind of solution, not as product or as a goal reached, but as a reorganizational experience of what we have known as true about ourselves and the world, toward a new creation of understanding ourselves differently from before, more richly and meaningfully as experiencing a new reality of ourselves and our world. He expresses how this creative process is the domain not only of art (not just as aesthetics), but also of philosophy (not just as intellect).

Art and philosophy at their core both put our known selves on display from a new, previously unknown perspective to a greater creative capacity of appreciation, understanding and richness of ourselves and our world. This is the Kantian beautiful (sublime) of Alva Noe’s display of the similar resonance and power of art and philosophy to transform our lives. “Art is disruptive and destabilizing, and also . . . a mode of investigation, a form of research aiming at transformation and reorganization . . . a philosophical practice” (p. 73) Art in John Dewey’s image is “a transaction of doing and undergoing.” (p. 78)

“Consciousness is not a neural event inside us . . . experiences are temporally extended patterns of active engagement between whole living being and their worlds (including, I might add, their social world). As Francisco Varela and Evan Thompson write: brain, body and world make consciousness happen.” (p. 124) “Dewey said: art is experience . . . it’s about what we do with the art objects . . . the work of art.” (p. 133) “Art stands forth for you—as Heidegger might say, it shines –as exemplary . . . it affords you an experience.” (p. 205).

To progress to deeper levels of Noe’s project is to pay even greater attention to the prodigious notes at the end of his work, Strange Tools 2.0, where we find his interactions with Heidegger, Kant and deeper philosophical and aesthetic issues.

He refers to Heidegger’s classical expression of his phenomenological position in “The Origin of the Work of Art” as how we encounter Van Gogh’s painting of the pair of shoes: “The painting spoke. In the vicinity of the work we were suddenly somewhere else than we usually tend to be . . . the art work lets us know what shoes [a piece of equipment] are in truth . . . the equipmentality of equipment first genuinely arrives at its appearance through the work and only in the work.” (pp.34-35) Heidegger brings us to phenomenology of experience of the work as objective equipment which also has an effect on our experience—“somewhere else than we usually tend to be.” However he still does not articulate the full process of how work is primarily a singularity, a unique nonrepresentational event of becoming based not on the equivocity of the identity of Being which privileges the anthropocentric, but on the univocity of difference as being based on immanence, multiplicity, virtuality, and the creation of nonrepresentational concepts.

There is a similar problem with Kant regarding the aesthetic in “The Critique of Judgment” which Noe affirmatively quotes: “When he puts a thing on a pedestal and calls it beautiful, he demands the same delight from others. He judges not merely for himself but for all men and then speaks of beauty as if it were a property of things.” (S212) Noe says about this, “If you try to deny the claims to universality implied in our aesthetic judgments, the you lose a grip on the phenomenal itself. This is Kant’s fundamental insight.” (p. 261) Again uniqueness of experience is subjugated to the universal and the representational, the claim of truth of aesthetic judgment, at the expense of the singular and the creative power of nonrepresentational experiences and concepts.

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Noe argues art has a single form: it’s an interrogative 2nd order activity. I like his views on naturalism and culture, but not this limited, reified view of art.

[Suzanne Conboy-Hill · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've met a number of philosophers in the course of my professional life as a clinician and researcher. Some are incredibly valuable as stimulators of thought around ethics, rights, responsibilities and so forth, but others are opinionated obfuscators presenting their own world view as fact. From this book, I have to say Noe seems to be one of the latter. He's multi-qualified, held or holds posts in prestigious universities, and has been associated with an institute of cognitive and neurosciences, so I expected balance, evidenced argument and an ability to give space to disciplines whose key focus is probing meaning from perspectives that have considerable value but aren't his own. Instead, he is scathing about science, disparaging about key individuals (Steven Pinker comes in for a bit of a patronising pasting), and almost grandiose in the scope of his supposed authority whilst simultaneously showing remarkable ignorance about people and behaviours outside his circumscribed circles. Listening to the audio book (and I commend the narrator's supreme efforts in putting life into this eight hour lecture), there was barely an utterance that didn't have me shouting at my screen or laughing out loud. When Noe says 'We' he means 'I' but draws us into collusion with his speculations delivered as fact. When 'we' don't know something, it means he doesn't (but many other people do); and when 'we' believe/behave/do/don't do something, it means he does or doesn't (and whole populations from different cultures, different social groups, different levels of intellectual capacity or (dis)ability don't or do). At one point he says, "Adults don't get bored, the preconditions for boredom don't exist in the adult world", then
"Why is art boring? Because that's its purpose." This kind of arrogant insularity of thinking, uncontended and unchallengable, pervades this book. It will certainly make you think, so if that's the intent, it will succeed, but only if it doesn't enrage you with its complete dismissal of every other avenue of intellectual effort and the evidence of your own social and cultural experience. I wanted to enjoy this. Maybe he's not like this at all in real life. Maybe his other work is more collaborative and considered. Maybe, maybe.

[Raul · Rating 4 out of 5]

A difficult book to read, unless you skip parts (some points are repeated at different places). The main premise, I would have to say, is that one cannot explain human interest in and understanding of art by studying it as a phenomenon of the brain. Rather, it involves us as entire human beings, of which the brain is one a part. Another recurring point is that human beings engage in a wide variety of activities "naturally," that is, things we just do, most often for functional reasons, or just for the exercise of it, without giving it much thought, like walking, singing, drawing, etc. These he calls Level I activities, but as human beings we soon discover we can engage in these same activities at another level, (Level II) were we are now consciously exploring the full range of the potential these activities present, such as walking to dancing, to choreography, the latter being an exercise of the full potential of the body in motion. That is when it becomes "art". It is not something that engages just our brain but our whole being, and the get there because humans have an innate interest in discovery and exploration. Finally he points out that for art to have meaning, it has to have context, usually cultural context, devoid of which we often cannot understand it -- in that sense, he tells us, "art" is very much like a joke: either you get it or you don't. To fully appreciate Alva Noe's ideas about art it is helpful to link it to other views on art, Also, Alva being a Professor of Philosophy at Berekeley, he devotes a whole chapter to what other important western philosophers have said about art, and his point of departure is Plato's famous statement that artists are a waste of time, because images are not real. This book is a "must" for anyone interested in the subject, but if I don't rate it tops ti is because Alva has such a discursive way of writing, one that wanders all over the place.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engaging exploration of what makes art art, and less self-conscious activity (taking snapshots, dancing at a wedding, penning a thank-you note) something else. I'm not sure I would draw lines in all the same places as Alva Noë, but he makes thoughtful, precise arguments for his proposals. I especially appreciated Noë's nuanced arguments -- his own and others' that he cited -- against what I consider the delusion that consciousness is something that occurs as neurochemical events in people's brains -- in favor of a far more integrated conception. Paraphrasing Daniel Dennet, Noë writes: We shift back and forth from what the animal does and achieves to what happens in the brain, and so we tell a story about how what is going on in the brain belongs to and is part of the story of the animal's life. Importantly, we don't reduce that life to the brain. In the notes to the chapter in which his explanation of Dennet's ideas appears, he writes: "Brain, body, and world make consciousness happen" is the central idea of Evan Thompson and Fracisco Varela's article "Radical Embodiment: Neural Dynamics and Consciousness." (which I plan to read, that link is for my benefit as much as for reference).

It's philosophy, written by a philosopher, and so the book requires careful attention. I had to read a couple of the chapters twice. But Noë's voice is clear, genuine and warm even at its most exacting, and the book is pitched to a far wider audience than the academic philosophers with whom the author sits through departmental meetings at UC Berkeley. Well done, and thank you!

[M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didactic, a bit repetitive, but interesting ideas. Could have been a good essay, seems stretched thin to be a book.

[Janne Aukia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tämä oli aivan kiinnostava.

Perusajatuksena kirjassa on, että taide käyttää tekniikan menetelmiä, mutta sen sijaan, että siitä syntyisi jotakin hyödyllisiä, konkreettisia työkaluja, syntyykin omituisia työkaluja jotka määrittyvät taiteeksi juuri sen kautta että niitä ei ensisijaisesti käytetä mihinkään. ”Ja jos on pornografista taidetta, niin pätee siihen mikä muu tahansa, se ei kelpaa masturboimiseen.”

Noën mukaan taiteen tekemisen prosessit ovat aina itseensä viittaavia ja myös vaikuttavat ajattelutapoihin niin, että taideteokset osallistuvat käsitteelliseen keskusteluun esimerkiksi filosofian tavoin. Ja kiinnostavasti Noën mielestä taide on subjektiivisen ja objektiivisen välillä (vaikka Noë ei aivan näin sitä esittänyt) siten, että subjektiiviset mielipiteet taiteesta ovat sellaisia, joista on tarve väitellä ja että väittely ja kritiikki kuuluvat taiteen perusolemukseen. Vaan poikkeaako tai eroaako taide näiltä osin siis muista arvokysymyksistä?

Ehkä kiinnostavimpia polkuja kirjassa oli ensimmäiset viisi lukua. Ehkä siksi, että ne olisivat lähimpänä Noën omaa filosofiaa? Sitä miten inhimillisen toiminnan ja tekniikan ytimessä on organisoituminen ja miten taide voidaan myös nähdä organisoitumisena — ja erityisesti organisoitumisten tutkimisena (organisoitumisen omin välinein).

Aivan kiinnostavaa oli myös se, miten asioiden merkitseminen ja sen analyyttiset kerrokset heijastuvat takaisin välittömän tason toimintaan. Kuten kieliopin vaikutus siihen, miten puhutaan (tai koreografian tanssiin).

Kirjan rakenne oli polveileva, mihin syynä ehkä se, että osa teksteistä oli alun perin kirjoitettu muuhun käyttöön ja sovitettu sitten osaksi tätä kirjaa.

Teksti oli helppolukuista — vielä filosofiseksi teokseksi — mutta joissakin kohdissa suomennos ja amerikkalaistyylinen alkuteksti tuntuivat vähän rasittavilta. Esimerkiksi "Antakaapa minun selittää." tuntuu suomeksi vähän turhalta täytteeltä, kun ehkä englanniksi "Let me explain." voisi vielä olla helpommin siedettävissä. Mutta Noe on kalifornialainen professori ja ehkä voin hyväksyä sen että se näkyy myös tekstissä.

Aika paljon kirjassa oli myös ”neurotaideohjelmaa" kritisoivaa sisältöä. Neurotaideohjelmassa, Noen näkökulmasta — jos oikein ymmärsin — on kyse pelkistävästä ajatuksesta, jossa taide ajatellaan yksinkertaistaen esimerkiksi visuaalisten- tai äänistimulaatioiden kautta. Ja perustellusti Noe selittää miksi tämä ei ole hedelmällinen tapa tutkia taidetta tai ehkä esteettistä ilmaisua laajemminkin.

Isoin kysymys kirjan osalta on, kuinka paljon tästä on itsestäänselvyyksiä? Ja sellaista mitä esimerkiksi estetiikan tutkimuksessa pidettäisiin perusasioina. Kirjan lopussa on "Erittäin tiivis ja hyvin puolueellinen estetiikan historia", jossa viitattiin suurten filosofien ajatuksiin taiteesta: Platon, Aristoteles, Heidegger, Kant, Dewey. Mutta olisin olettanut, että taiteen tutkimuksen puolella — ja erityisesti modernismin ja postmodernismin aikana — olisi jo käsitelty Noen esittämiä ajatuksia, samoin 1900-luvun lopun filosofiassa.

Onko esimerkiksi sen sanomisessa, että taiteen pitää olla tylsää että se haastaa ajatuksia tai että taide irroittaa normaalista elämästä, mitään kovin yllättävää?

Noë kävi myös Suomessa muutama viikko sitten ja oli kiinnostavaa nähdä mies itse livenä.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my second Alva Noe book. I like him. He's very smart. He has good ideas and writes very clearly. It's remarkable for a philosopher to be able to express complex ideas that I can understand without having to reread them three or four times.

For a while I have been toying with the idea that the essence of art is to show us a different way of looking at the world. Mr. Noe has a very similar idea in seeing art as a tool that we use to build our worldview. In my version of this, I look at people doing an interesting dance, and as a result I develop a new way of looking at human movement. His version is sort of the same thing, except he goes a step further in suggesting that I can't understand human movement at all without looking at various models of human movement and that our art is a high form of the model making that is essential to our ability to comprehend the world. Art says "see me," and when it is doing its job, it stands out from the background so that we can take the model into our understanding and thereby allow the thing it represents to fade into the background again, now associated with a new set of characteristics. Maybe. I like it. It's certainly at least thought provoking. It has some explanatory power. And he has spent a lot more time thinking through the implications of his idea than I have with mine.

There are a lot interesting corollaries to the basic idea. One of them that I liked is the idea that pop music is not really music, because what it is about is not the music itself so much as the emotional and fashion statement around the performance. It's still art, but not musical art. It's art as style.

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy Alva Noe's embodied view of consciousness/mind and the effort in Strange Tools to illustrate the organizing principles of our mind against the re-organizing principles of our technologies. The re-organizing technologies "makes manifest something about ourselves that is hidden from view because it is the spontaneous structure of our engaged activity" (p.16). It is dialectical.

"The basic argument of this book is this: Our lives are structured by organization. Art is a practice for bringing our organization into view; in doing this, art reorganizes us" (p.29).

Art (dance, philosophy, etc.) is always subversive of function (of technology). And it is this subversion that converts discovery into understanding or aesthetics - it is liberating. Without these 'strange tools' we have only ideology.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

My reactions to this book have been quite conflicted. I enjoyed the author's fresh perspective and many of his ideas proved thought-provoking, such as art as an activity and art objects as philosophical tools. Yet for a book so preoccupied with organization it felt oddly disorganized; chapters jump from one idea to another without ever bringing the whole framework into focus. The book's main points are summarized at the beginning, before the reader has any context with which to make sense of them. All of which leads me to a strange conclusion: glad to have read something that I would in most cases not recommend.

[Javier Ormeno · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been some years since last time I read something from Noe. It was quite refreshing to go through some ideas as life (and mind) is not in our heads; consciousness arises from the interaction of beings and environment; art pieces are devices that draw our attention to ourselves; for enjoying art, one has to engage in the experience arising of that turn of gaze; also it usually requires certain background proficiency in art appreciation or making art. The book relies on the Noe's pairing of perception and action to explain art.

[Cheryl]

Because Sue Blackmore referred to his work w/ O'Regan on vision in Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction, q.v.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a point about halfway through where a distinction was made of art's ability to expire, becoming just a picture, comes into play. Which made me skeptical. There was a lot that I agreed with and a lot I didn't. A good read none the less. 3.5*

[E.V. Legters · Rating 5 out of 5]

This isn't really a book one 'finishes.' I find myself going back to it over and over to discover and redefine tools of art and human nature. A permanent resident on my writing desk.

[Milad · Rating 4 out of 5]

What is art? Why does it matter to us? What does it tell us about ourselves?

Art is a strange tool, a means of research for investigating ourselves. Art is not just a phenomenon to observe, it is a challenge. Art invites all its observers to question the meaning and existential state of itself. Art does not intend to satisfy, art is all about encounter, where observer confronts a thing and starts questioning the art, the human and this philosophical relationship between the two.

Alva Noe in his book introduced to me a new way of looking at art. Art not only as a result but also as a process. A process of thinking, as he explains, a philosophical practice.

I found his analogies helpful and engaging. The first chapter on organized activity with baseball example and mother and child harmonized activity argues that we are by nature organized. We are organisms. In this sense, as an architect I define architecture as a tool of organizing human activities. Architecture provides a platform for structuring human activities in a sane and organized way. Noe says we make art out of organized activities which inspires me to say we make architecture to organize activities. Art and philosophy, I would add architecture, are practices for investigating modes of our organization. Art happens through depiction and manufacture which are activities of our organized nature.

We as humans have an aesthetic attitude.

Art acts like ecstasy, as it frees ourselves from the situations we are captive of. And why is art so boring? Because art has nothing to do with entertainment, art is like an education process. Same as philosophy, art is not here to solve big problems of our time. Art cannot cure diseases, cannot resolve climate change, art cannot even stop wars. What art does, which I name it as its utility, is changing the way we see the world and ourselves. Art helps us see differently by making a different person than one we used to be.

Art in medicine. There is a quote from Plato in the text which describes an ideal world, a kind of world where there would be no need for art and philosophy, just as in the same world there would be no need for medicine.

Noe closes the book with this statement that we are all artists because the need for art, the need for philosophy and the for understanding are there as long as we as human beings are there. Art is a try, a try to manifest our true nature. Art is writing ourselves.

[Nicole Marble · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh Dear - lots of words to explain why people make art. If there was a point, I missed it.

[Ola Hol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informative - refers to many works of art, some new to me. An interesting thesis exposing the link between art and philosophy. Reads well - gripping and inspiring.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (Hardcover)
by Alva Noë

[Steen Ledet · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting ideas but his “discussion” of pop music is so bad the project crumbles.

[Nina]

“Read” this in a day because I forgot I had an assignment due

[Brian Kovesci · Rating 3 out of 5]

Half of the Philosophy of Visual Arts class was spent reading and discussing this book.

I'm not big into philosophy. There is a certain way of writing that is expected in philosophy. That way of writing makes no sense to me. Why do philosophers need to speak in metaphors? Why do philosophers need to anticipate counterarguments, acknowledge those counterarguments and pre-respond to them? Why do philosophers need to undermine works of other modern philosophers while at the same time paying homage to classical philosophers? It's all exhausting an unnecessarily difficult all for the sake of tradition and academia.

IMHO, GTFO.

Having said that, Noë makes some interesting arguments about the nature of artwork, the aesthetic experience and the relationships between art, science and philosophy.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Noë presents a persuasive, holistic argument for the importance and meaning of art: that it is one of a class of human activities that comment on what he calls “organized” activities, and in so doing change the way those activities are organized. Dancing is a natural, spontaneous, organized activity, and choreography is the artistic comment that changes what dancing can be.

While some of his examples and analogies are enlightening -- for instance, the idea that keeping score in a baseball game contributes meaning to the game (p. 39) -- his chapters on music are less persuasive. Agreed, pop music is much about the shared experience of the performing personality, but surely jazz music (which the author places on a different plane) is, too.

To snip out just a bit of the book's closing argument:

In making the painting, [the painter] recapitulates the very circular processes of experience making and life itself. And when you view the painting, ... you yourself must now make your own experience of the artwork. You don't do that by seeing it. You need to activate it by activating yourself.
(p. 205)

[. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I still can't believe I paid close to 30 dollars for this book. It's one of the most unfortunate things I've ever spent money on. This book, although talks about organization, is actually very disorganized and all over the place. Noe really doesn't have much to share. His ideas are summarized in the first chapter of the book, but he goes on and on with so much writing but nothing much to say.

[Pat · Rating 2 out of 5]

Terrible writing.

[Heather]

On a bit of an Alva Noë kick atm.

[Mills College Library]

700.1 N763 2015

[Andrew Feist · Rating 5 out of 5]

very thought provoking. sufficiently boring. at times very intriguing. worthwhile.