ICYMI: Watch the Recording of Alva Noë's Lecture

On May 7, the 2025 Presidential Lecture in the Humanities and Arts presented Alva Noë, Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. 

What is love, but the striving for intimacy? And that’s what consciousness is, too, the work, always unfinished, of coming into relationship, and sustaining it. In this talk, I explore the idea that love and value are key to understanding consciousness. And that consciousness, for its part, needs to be put where it belongs, in the midst of feeling, longing, striving, coping. Love and consciousness, as I explore them, are life’s work.

—Alva Noë