Alva Noe

Adrian Bellesguard

Alva Noë is a professor of philosophy at the University of California and author of Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons From the Biology of Consciousness (Hill and Wang, $25).   --Christine Smallwood

What is consciousness?

I use the word "consciousness" in a narrow sense and in a broader sense. In the narrow sense I mean the experience of seeing something, or hearing something, or having a feeling. In the broader sense I just mean the whole colorful life of the mind: our thoughts, our feelings, our hopes, the desires that shape the contours of our lives. I don't think of consciousness as something that happens in us or to us but as something that we achieve or something that we do through our action and interaction with the world around us.

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