Alva Noë, Art and Vision Therapy

Abstract

What a delight to read philosopher Alva Noë’s latest book, THE ENTANGLEMENT: How Art and Philosophy Make Us What We Are.1 We first met Alva Noë as a speaker at our 2012, Ft. Worth, COVD meeting. Since what we do is an art thoroughly entangled with philosophy and life, Noë’s insights are especially valuable. Many of us imagine that behavior and vision share an intimate relationship. As for the nature of the relationship, there are probably as many perspectives as there are practitioners who have thought about vision for a professional lifetime. Our disagreements are a testament to the elusiveness of the visual process. Our persistent diversity of thought, however, agrees with Noë’s observation that philosophers aim at “not agreement, but persuasion, that is to say, conversion. They seek to see the world anew. And this is an aesthetic project.”