The publication of this book is an event in the making. All over the world scientists, psychologists, and philosophers are waiting to read Antonio Damasio's new theory of the nature of consciousness and the construction of the self.
A renowned and revered scientist and clinician, Damasio has spent decades following amnesiacs down hospital corridors, waiting for comatose patients to awaken, and devising ingenious research using PET scans to piece together the great puzzle of consciousness.
In his bestselling Descartes' Error, Damasio revealed the critical importance of emotion in the making of reason.
Building on this foundation, he now shows how consciousness is created. Consciousness is the feeling of what happens-our mind noticing the body's reaction to the world and responding to that experience. Without our bodies there can be no consciousness, which is at heart a mechanism for survival that engages body, emotion, and mind in the glorious spiral of human life.
A hymn to the possibilities of human existence, a magnificent work of ingenious science, a gorgeously written book, The Feeling of What Happens is already being hailed as a classic.
Product description
Review
Antonio Damasio has done it again! Writing for the layman as well as the scientist, he constructs a compelling solution to the problem of consciousness.--Victoria Fromkin, UCLA
This is an extraordinary book. I know of nothing like it.--Jerome Kagan, Harvard University
There is no simpler way to say this: read the book to learn who you are.--Jorie Graham, Poet and Pulitzer Prize Winner
Everyone will be talking about it; everyone will have to read it.--Patricia and Paul Churchland, UCSD
About the Author
ANTONIO DAMASIO is the David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. He is also an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla. He is a member of both the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Descartes' Error was an international bestseller.
The Feeling of What Happens is being translated into seventeen languages.
Product details
Publisher : Mariner Books; First edition (10 October 2000)
Paperback : 400 pages
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Top reviews from other countries
neville clay
5.0 out of 5 stars Paradigm-changing classic
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 June 2019
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Hardly an accessible read, though more so than Descartes' Error, yet worth persevering with - for me, a densely detailed yet revelatory model of the arising and maintenance of the felt sense of self, and the most persuasive such model yet, which has (unspoken) parallels with much early Buddhist thought. That being the case, it's surprising that Damasio was so resistant to considering the effect of meditation on self-states.
3 people found this helpful
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Tasha
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 November 2019
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Amazing book, no further explanation needed. If you're interested in the science and theories of consciousness you're going to enjoy Damasio's theory.
One person found this helpful
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Euphemia
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 April 2018
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Well worth reading and thinking about!
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Andrew E Johnson
4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 February 2013
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A very interesting hypothesis about how the conscious mind arises out of the brain. At times it felt too much like reading something from one of the old-school philosophers. Indeed Damasio even references some of them as if their non-scientific musings provide additional weight to his arguments, this a shame, but he does bring his work back to provide solid evidence for his hypothesis and suggests questions that other researchers could test in the future.
3 people found this helpful
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Batmon
5.0 out of 5 stars would def recommend
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 October 2017
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This is master piece written in simple language. so interesting!would def recommend it
One person found this helpful
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The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness
by António R. Damásio
really liked it 4.00 · Rating details · 3,645 ratings · 93 reviews
Ahmad Sharabiani
Dec 09, 2019Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it
Shelves: 20th-century, science, biology, philosophy, literature, non-fiction, portuguese, psychology
The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, António R. Damásio
There have been many ambitious and important books on the problem of consciousness in the past few years. None has quite the philosophical sophistication and neurophysical knowledge of this one. One of the world's leading experts on the neurophysiology of emotion, professor Damasio shows how our consciousness developed out of the development of emotion brilliantly wide ranging, with fascinating case-studies, the book presents a humane and subtle view of the facility that makes us most profoundly human.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز نهم ماه اکتبر سال 2015 میلادی
عنوان: احساس یک اتفاق؛ نویسنده: آنتونیو داماسیو؛ مترجم: محمدتقی کیمیایی؛ تهران : نگاه معاصر، 1393؛ در 400 ص؛ شابک: 9789649940205؛ فروست: نگرش فلسفی؛ موضوع: آگاهی - هیجان ها - جسم و جان - از نویسندگان پرتقالی - سده 20 م
ا. شربیانی (less)
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Manuel Antão
Dec 21, 2018Manuel Antão rated it really liked it
Shelves: 2000
If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.
Universal Machine: "The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness" by António R. Damásio
(Original Review, 2000-10-15)
I don't agree that it is as big mystery as pointed out elsewhere in another review I’ve read...I think we do know a great deal about consciousness. The problem lays also in our willingness to explore altered states of consciousness. This must be included in any theory...Some examples of books dedicated to this subject of consciousness. I have been reading lately: “Complete works of Freud and Carl Jung”, “The Tibet Book Of The Dead”, “Tao Te Ching”, R. D. Laing’s “The Politics Of experience (Birds Of Paradise)”, “The Tao Of Physics” by Fritjof Capra, Works Of Richard Feynman, Works of Spinoza, “Altered States Of Consciousness” by Charles T. Tart, “The Conscious Mind” by David J. Chalmers, and Anthropological Studies on Shamanism and so on, indicate that the human animal has not progressed much physiologically over the past two or three thousand years. However we have progressed massively technologically...Plenty of food for thought in this area. (less)
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Joshua Stein
Jun 11, 2011Joshua Stein rated it really liked it
Shelves: mind, philosophy, science
Damasio is a terrific writer, and this is a fantastic assessment of the neurophysiology of consciousness. I strongly recommend it for those who are interested in neuroscience.
There are some concerns I have about the philosophical underpinnings, but Damasio isn't a philosopher. He doesn't grasp the philosophical literature quite as well as, say, Pinker, but he's still a terrific mind and he has a great understanding of neurophysiological involvement in cognitive functions. It's not really that Damasio is presenting a theory of consciousness. Really, Damasio is just presenting some data and some considerations for a potential theory of consciousness, and then referring to several philosophical theories in order to try to see which best reflects his data. That is a totally reasonable approach, and actually much less audacious than what many of his colleagues are attempting to do.
Damasio is very good at equivocating, but being clear about what his views are. He is willing to acknowledge the limits of the data that he has access to, while at the same time asserting that his conclusions are definitive when he means them to be. In that sense, Damasio is a very lucid writer, and is an excellent resource for those who aren't that confident that they can tell real neurophysiological data from bullcrap.
I strongly recommend the book for laymen. I am not sure how much someone with a professional knowledge of the material would get out of this. Some of the more technical details are really interesting, but I am sure that they can be found in other places in the professional literature, where there is far more depth. (less)
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Rory
Jul 07, 2011Rory rated it really liked it
This book is heavier on the neuroanatomy than other books on consciousness, so won't be to everyone's taste.
However, Damasio is an excellent writer and it is very interesting to get a neurologists take on consciousness, particularly as his focus has been on human emotion (finally emerging from the taboo that it has suffered for too long) and he has a long history with clinical patients that he can refer to when discussing the different parts of his anatomy.
Damasio's model of consciousness is intriguing and well worth exploring. He builds it up in three stages; (i) our proto-consciousness, that us based on the basic regulatory functions for governing the body, (ii) our core-consciousness, aware of stimuli as they arrive and finally (iii) the extended-consciousness that involves the auto-biography, the self generated by referring to memory and future plans.
Damasio backs this up with positive and negative examples, referring to clinical patients who have suffered different insults to their CNS.
Recommended - but remember that you will need to be able to tell your hypothalamus from your pre-frontal cortex, if you wish to get the most out of it. (less)
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Kent
Jun 20, 2009Kent rated it liked it
Damasio takes a very difficult subject and makes it a little less difficult.
Something I (re)learned: "The net result is that as you think about an object, reconstructing part of the accommodations required to perceive it in the past as well as the emotive responses to it in the past is enough to change the proto-self in much the same manner that I have described for when an external object confronts you directly....In all likelihood, even the plans for future perceptuo-motor accommodations are effective modifiers of the proto-self and thus originators of second-order accounts."
In laymen's terms (as I understand it): Just as recalling an object or event (the memory of, say, an illicit love affair) produces neural patterns in the brain not unlike those produced when the object or event was originally perceived (engaging in an illicit love affair), it's likely that the neural patterns produced by an intention (plans to dip your pen in another man's inkwell, so to speak) are also similar.
In Catholic nuns' terms: Just thinking about the sin is tantamount to committing the sin. (less)
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Samir Rawas Sarayji
Jun 04, 2018Samir Rawas Sarayji rated it liked it
Shelves: non-fiction, psychology
There are interesting aspects to this book that I, as a non-scientist, enjoyed. The focus on the neurological to explain consciousness is the paramount focus, and it’s a new way of looking at the subject of consciousness for me. The material requires concentrated reading particularly because of the new jargon (proto-self, extended consciousness, and other scientific jargon), but mostly because Damasio uses an academic register to argue much of his ideas. This is where I became a bit confused, is the book written for the masses or for the scientific community, because I thought for the former, and if I'm right, then Damasio is one of those writers (at least till that point) who can't simplify and communicate his ideas with analogies and diagrams. When reading a field I've not studied or intend to study, I prefer the layman's approach because I want to get the gist of it and an over-arching view, and not get bogged down rereading a paragraph 3 times to finally say 'ah'. I felt much of the sentences were dense and run-on, there were many instances where a comma or a new sentence would have clarified his thoughts better. There were too few diagrams to illustrate his ideas and explanations. There were also instances where bullet points or lists would have made me absorb the facts much faster and more clearly, rather than convoluted paragraphs. I'm left with a feeling that this is someone who knows much about his field but sucks at bringing it across (unless you're studying his stuff).
My other main concern is the lack of large samples on which he bases his hypotheses. Some of his arguments in this book are presented through case studies (which are always super-interesting) but are not followed up with larger data samples, so the analysis comes across as based on a small sample. I don't know if this is the case in his research or not, but that is how it reads here, and that too left me with an odd feeling. Anyone who has read Freud knows that that is one of his fallacies.
Having said all that, for those who enjoy scientific arguments, and those interested in neurology and consciousness, I'm sure there is much to find here that is of interest. Bear in mind, the book was published in 1999, so things may have changed or even be outdated. (less)
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Nicholas
Nov 15, 2011Nicholas rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: neuroscience
For me this was not an easy read all the way through. I had to keep putting it down every several pages, sometimes to avoid automatically reading it and not understanding it fully....having said that I was rubbish at Biology in school. Surprisingly for the most part, it is not that hard going, and at the end of it you get a good idea where your sense of self comes from and the constituent parts of the Brain and Brain stem that are involved in the processes of consciousness. There are helpful diagrams and a good appendix which make the going a bit easier for the layman, and the author has the impressive ability to impart knowledge without baffling, or presupposing excessive medical training. I'd recommend it to anyone with a curiosity in perception and how emotions are generated and perceived. (less)
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John Turlockton
Apr 05, 2019John Turlockton rated it it was ok
Definitely not for a general audience, he regularly talks about things like parabrachial network or thalamic nuclei without explaining it. At the end there's an appendix where he goes through all the terms he was using throughout the book. I didn't see that part so completely missed it and had to just try figure it out based on what I already knew about the brain structure. Who would explain all the technical terms at the end of a book?
Despite not explaining those things properly, he manages to sometimes over-explain things, like when he spend almost a chapter explaining what an organism is, repeating really obvious things that everyone will know about what makes an object distinct from its surroundings. Even on other parts he talks around in circles sometimes never just saying directly what he's talking about. Generally, throughout the book, the issue is that things aren't explained clearly, it's not like the guys argument is so difficult to understand, it's just never laid out simply like 'this is what I think, 1, 2, 3 and here is my evidence for it.' He also never clearly goes through what I thought what his key point. that consciousness can't exist without emotion, he seems to hint at this throughout the book but never actually goes into it. Maybe this was explained in a previous book? If so, it's certainly not an advertisement for this book.
On evidence, he spends big chunks of the book laying out his argument without giving any evidence, it's only at the start when he's explaining what consciousness is not, and then later in the book at like chapters 8 and 9 that he starts going through evidence for things. Even then he never explains the evidence in an easy-to-read manner (this is part of why I say it's not for a general audience), he basically just says 'yes we have evidence for this' and leaves a footnote number, though in my version there were no footnotes, maybe I have to go online to get them.
Overall I don't know if this is a good argument or not for what consciousness is, because his argument is not clearly laid out nor is his evidence for that argument. If I had the footnotes it might be a good compilation of the studies that support his argument if I was going to read all of them, which I'm not. I'll look for another book on the subject, maybe Edelman or Koch. Stay away from this version unless you just want to read every possible theory of consciousness, even then, I'd advise looking for someone else writing about this theory if you can find it. (less)
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Broodingferret
Apr 18, 2012Broodingferret rated it really liked it
Shelves: biology, psychology, neuroscience
Provocative and well-writen, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness is, in many ways, the logical continuation of Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. Moving beyond "simple" decision making, Damásio posits in this work that the whole of consciousness is first initiated by basic regulatory processes, augmented by sensory input, and finally made fully manifest in the moment-by-moment reference of said data to the memories that are represented in the brain as patterns of synaptic connectivity and neuronal activity. Calling on years of experience working with brain trauma patients, Damásio puts both positive and negative evidence to good use in backing up his hypothesis. Though fascinating, this work is highly detailed and dense, and likely to be a challenging read if one doesn't have at least a basic (though more than passing) familiarity with neuoanatomy; in fact, Damásio (and many other scientists) could benefit from a writing class focusing on making science writing more accessible to the layman. Nevertheless, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness is enjoyable, thought-provoking, and well worth reading, especially to those with a strong interest in neuroscience and psychology. (less)
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Greg Collver
Apr 02, 2011Greg Collver rated it it was amazing
Very interesting book! I plan to read this book again when I can study it more thoroughly and learn some basic neuroanatomy.
"Perhaps the most startling idea in this book is that, in the end, consciousness begins as a feeling, a special kind of feeling, to be sure, but a feeling nonetheless. I still remember why I began thinking of consciousness as feeling and it seems like a sensible reason: consciousness feels like a feeling, and if it feels like a feeling, it may well be a feeling.
"The seventeenth century French philosopher Malebranche wrote:
It is through light and through a clear idea that the mind sees the essence of things, numbers, and extensions. It is through a vague idea or through feeling that the mind judges the existence of creatures and that it knows its own existence."
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Michael Vagnetti
May 02, 2012Michael Vagnetti rated it it was amazing
A description of how we feel consciousness, written with authority but also lyricism. For me, this was a remarkable account because it gives the underpinning of why human experience is so transient and elusive. Second, it uses the concept of a wordless brain "narrative" to describe consciousness, undermining language, and thus demonstrates why "subverbal" concepts have such massive weight. For me, language has always been in the shadow of the specter of what Damasio calls the "proto-self." Put another way, in simile, this account exposes consciousness like a giant glacier underneath the ocean, while we sit on a tip above water and think it a profound continent. The most profound passages for me can be found via findings: http://goo.gl/XWY32. (less)
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Carol
Sep 21, 2008Carol rated it it was amazing
This was the first book that gave me the insight into what psycho-physical-whole means.Damasio taught me how our neuro pathways deliver the information we are constantly receiving, to our brain, that then sorts the information and --well--- that is when we know what we know. This understanding has completely transformed my life. I love Damasio, have fantasized for years about inviting him to dinner with a small group of people to talk, laugh, trade stories. I know it would be fun because he quotes playrights, poets etc. in explaining his concepts. (less)
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