What Scientists and Philosophers Get Wrong about Art

The construction of sophisticated tools has long distinguished the human species from those still content with sticks and rock —or nothing at all. We are creators of things in our essence, says UC Berkeley philosophy professor Alva Noë. But artists are a category of creator apart. They do not make tools useful in the sense that a hammer is useful; nor are their works subject to scientific investigation —insofar as science, and philosophy, strictly distinguish between the observer and that wh...