1. Text seminar on Strange Tools – Art and Human Nature 4 cr
Teacher in charge: University lecturer Taneli Tuovinen
with Prof. (emerita) Riitta Hari and Prof. Helena Sederholm
4. period , room 5010 Wednesdays

2. We will read and discuss the book Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (2015) by philosopher and cognitive scientist Alva Noë. ISBN:

3. Learning outcomes:
The student will be able to deal with various levels of contemporary discourse on the technique and technology based artistic reality and its outcomes, argue for and against the theoretical approaches and standings.
The course will deal with a variety of problems in relationship of art and cognition (in neuroscience, art history, cultural theory, artistic research, philosophy) and their place in the everyday life, popular culture and in public debate.

4. The program of the seminar
1.3. Introduction
8.3. Part I (pages 3 – 77)
15.3. Part II (pages 93 – 134)
22.3. Part III (pages 145 – 182)
29.3. Part IV (pages 193 – 206)

9. Alva Noë (1964-)
Writer and philosopher living in Berkeley and New York. He is the author of
Action in Perception (MIT 2004)
Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness (FSG 2009),
Varieties of Presence (Harvard 2012), and, most recently,
Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (FSG, 2015).
He is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also a member of the Center for New Media and the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences. Noë is a weekly contributor to National Public Radio’s science and culture blog 13.7 Cosmos and Culture.

10. To understand why Noë calls art-works “strange tools” we should know a little bit about the debates and arenas of his argumentations.
In his early publications Noë has called his approach as
enactivist or sensori-motor or senso-motor
“consciousness is not something that just happens to us, it is something we do”

11. Enactivism
The introduction of the term enaction in this context is attributed to Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch,who proposed the name to
"emphasize the growing conviction that cognition is not the representation of a pre-given world by a pre-given mind but is rather the enactment of a world and a mind on the basis of a history of the variety of actions that a being in the world performs”
Francisco J Varela; Evan Thompson; Eleanor Rosch (1992). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press. p. 9.

12. Enactment of a world = techniques/technologies of access
This is how Alva debates in scientific discourse:
This is how Alva talks to dancers on his approach:

13. Biology: a common genus of art and philosophical practice?
Difference between inorganic and organic: organism has capacity to self/re-organisation
“art provides us an opportunity to catch ourselves in the act of achieving our conscious lives (enacting a world, organizing ourselves with everything else, performing our skills and technoloques of access)”
What is our nature?
(13:00 – 22:21)
(6:40 – 10:20)

14. We meet 4 times in March on Wednesdays (9.30 – 12)
Each session will begin with short introduction of the themes of the text we have read.
Who wants to give a short intro next week?