: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness : Damasio, Antonio

Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness : Damasio, Antonio: Amazon.com.au: Books

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

Verified Purchase

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

Verified Purchase

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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Reading THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE Part 1-2

 Bessel Van Der Kolk

THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE Content table [total pages 421]

PROLOGUE: FACING TRAUMA

PART ONE: THE REDISCOVERY OF TRAUMA
1. LESSONS FROM VIETNAM VETERANS
2. REVOLUTIONS IN UNDERSTANDING MIND AND BRAIN
3. LOOKING INTO THE BRAIN: THE NEUROSCIENCE REVOLUTION

PART TWO: THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON TRAUMA
4. RUNNING FOR YOUR LIFE: THE ANATOMY OF SURVIVAL
5. BODY-BRAIN CONNECTIONS
6. LOSING YOUR BODY, LOSING YOUR SELF

===
PART THREE: THE MINDS OF CHILDREN [22%, 102]
7. GETTING ON THE SAME WAVELENGTH: ATTACHMENT AND ATTUNEMENT
8. TRAPPED IN RELATIONSHIPS: THE COST OF ABUSE AND NEGLECT
9. WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?
10. DEVELOPMENTAL TRAUMA: THE HIDDEN EPIDEMIC

PART FOUR: THE IMPRINT OF TRAUMA [37%, 168]
11. UNCOVERING SECRETS: THE PROBLEM OF TRAUMATIC MEMORY
12. THE UNBEARABLE HEAVINESS OF REMEMBERING

===
PART FIVE: PATHS TO RECOVERY [44%, 203]
13. HEALING FROM TRAUMA: OWNING YOUR SELF
14. LANGUAGE: MIRACLE AND TYRANNY
15. LETTING GO OF THE PAST: EMDR
16. LEARNING TO INHABIT YOUR BODY: YOGA
17. PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER: SELF-LEADERSHIP [61%, 277]

=====
18. FILLING IN THE HOLES: CREATING STRUCTURES [65,296]
19. REWIRING THE BRAIN: NEUROFEEDBACK
20. FINDING YOUR VOICE: COMMUNAL RHYTHMS AND THEATER
EPILOGUE: CHOICES TO BE MADE

APPENDIX: CONSENSUS PROPOSED CRITERIA FOR DEVELOPMENTAL TRAUMA DISORDER[79%,356]
====
RESOURCES [80%, 363]
FURTHER READING
NOTES
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1부 트라우마의 재발견
1장 베트남전 참전 군인들이 알게 해 준 교훈
2장 마음과 뇌의 이해, 그 혁신적 변화
3장 뇌 속을 들여다보다: 신경과학의 혁명

2부 트라우마 상태의 뇌
4장 필사적인 도주: 생존의 해부
5장 신체와 뇌의 유대
6장 몸을 잃으면 자기self를 잃는다
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3부 아이들의 마음
7장 애착과 조율: 동일한 파장을 일으키다
8장 관계의 덫: 학대와 방임의 대가
9장 사랑과는 거리가 먼
10장 발달 과정의 트라우마: 숨겨진 유행병

4부 트라우마의 흔적
11장 비밀의 발견: 트라우마 기억의 문제점
12장 참을 수 없는 기억의 무거움

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5부 회복으로 가는 길
13장 트라우마로부터의 회복: 트라우마의 치유
14장 언어, 기적이자 고통
15장 과거를 떠나보내는 방법: 안구 운동 민감소실 및 재처리 요법EMDR
16장 내 몸에서 살아가는 법을 배우다: 요가
17장 조각 맞추기: 나를 리드하는 기술

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18장 틈새 메우기: 새로운 구조 만들기
19장 뇌 회로의 재연결: 뉴로피드백
20장 잃어버린 목소리 찾기: 공동체의 리듬, 연극 치료

닫는 글 | 선택 앞에서
감사의 글
부록 | 트라우마 발달 장애 진단 기준에 관한 합의안
참고 자료
더 읽을거리
주석
======

PROLOGUE: FACING TRAUMA

PART ONE: THE REDISCOVERY OF TRAUMA

1. LESSONS FROM VIETNAM VETERANS

- Almost a third of couples engage in violence at some point durin their relationship.

Trauma and loss of self

Numbing

The reorganization of perception

Stuck in trauma

Diagnosing postramautic stress

Framework of PTSD emerges

the biology of traumatic memories of VA

female depression pationts - experience of sexual abuse as children

incest statistics wrong

12 million women ictims of rape. before 15.

ten times the veerans number

A new understanding

trauma results in a fundamental reorganisation of the way mind and brain manage perceptions.

For real change to take place, the body needs to lean that the danger has passed.

===
2. REVOLUTIONS IN UNDERSTANDING MIND AND BRAIN

Trauma before dawn.

sylvia case - helping or gang rape

Making sense of suffering

---

저자의 선생, Elvin Samrad 교수가 말하기를

---

치료사의 임무는 사람들이 즐거움과 비탄을 다 포함한 삶의 현실을 인정하고, 경험하고, 견디게 도아주는 것이다.  

"우리 고통의 가장 큰 원인은 우리가 스스로에게 하는 거짓말"이다. 우리는 우리 경험의 모든 측면에 대해 스스로에게 정직해야 한다고 

그가 종종 말한다: 사람들은 그들이 아는 것과 그들이 느끼는 것을 모르면 절대 나아질 수 없다.

저명한 하버드 교수의 이런 고백을 듣고 놀랐던 기억이 있다. 그가 밤에 잠들을 때 아내의 엉덩이를 만지고 얼마나 위안을 받았지.

자신의 그런 단순한 인간의 욕구를 스스로 공개함으로서 그는 우리가 그것들이 얼마나 인간에게 기본적인지 인식하도록 도왔주었다.

존재라도 우리의 생각이나 세상적인 성취가 아무리 고상하더라도 이런 것들에 주의를 기울이지 않으면 우리의 삶은 정체된 존재가 될 것이다. 

---

development of chemical - emoton approach

chemical imbalance

use of antipsychotic drugs result in reduction of people living in mental hospitals

from 500,000 in 1955, to 100,000 in 1966

Inescapable shock

Animal studies

Adicted to trauma

Soothing the brain

The triaumph of pharmacology

the drug revolution may have done as much harm as good

deflect attention from dealing with the underlying issues.

One in ten Americans now take antidepressants.

Adaptation or desease?

The brain dsease model overlooks four fundamental truths:

our abiity

--

===
3. LOOKING INTO THE BRAIN: THE NEUROSCIENCE REVOLUTION
Speechless horror

Shifting to one side of the brain

Stuck in fight or flight

===
PART TWO: THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON TRAUMA

4. RUNNING FOR YOUR LIFE: THE ANATOMY OF SURVIVAL

2011 5 year old Noam Saul

During disasters young children usually take their cues from thei parents.

Taking an active role

Organised to survive

<cognitive brain> vs <animal brain> (more primitive)

psychological  related to physical

emotion

neuroplasticity

If you feel safe and loved, your brain becmes specialised in exploration, play, and coopation;

if you are frightened and unwanted, it specialises in managing feelings of fear and abandonement.

<emotional brain> vs <rational brain>

emotional brain: programmed

Nerve-chemicals-brain-body

The brain from bottom to top

Mirrorring each other: interpersonal neurobiology

Emphathy - our aility to feel into someone else.

mirror neurons - neural wifi

emphasy, imitation, development of language

trauma almost invariably involved not being see,

not being mirrored, and not being taken into account.

harmonious relationship with other human beings

relaising that other people think and fell differnetly from us is a huge developmental step for 2-3 year olds. 

Indentifying dager: the cook and the smoke detector

trauma increasses the risk of misinterpreting whether a particular situation is dangerous or safe.

Controlling the stress response: The watch tower

IN PTSD the critical balance between the amygdala (smoke detector) and the MPFC (watchtower) shifts radically, which makes it much harder to control emotions and impulases.

The rider and the horse

rational brain  and emotional brain

competent rider and unruly horse

이성적인 두뇌와 감성적인 두뇌 

유능한 기수와 제멋대로인 말

Stan and Ute's brain on trauma.

Dissociation and reliving

The smoke detector goes on overdrive

The timekeeper collapses

The thalamus shuts down

Depersonalisation: split off the self

Learning to live in the present

===
5. BODY-BRAIN CONNECTIONS

A window into the nervous system

The neural love code

Polivagal theory - biology of safety and danger

interplay betweenthe visceral experiences of our body and the voices and faces of people around us.

Kowing that we are seen and heardby the important people in our lives can make us feel calm and safe.

socal relationships important to trauma.

New approaches to healing.

Safety and reciprocity

Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health.

Neuroception - capacity to evaluate relative danger and safety in one's environment.

The levels of safety

1.

2.

3.

Fight or flight versus collapse

How we become human

Defend or relax?

New approaches to treatment

===
6. LOSING YOUR BODY, LOSING YOUR SELF

Losing your body

How do we know we are alive?

The self sensing system

The feeling of what happens  Damasio

The self under threat

Agency: Owning your life

Alexithymia: No wonder for feelings

Depersonalisation

Befriending the body

Connecting with yourself, Connecting with others

===

Living Earth Community - Introduction

Living Earth Community - Introduction



Introduction: Ways of Knowing, Ways of Valuing Nature

John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker


© John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0186.22

The contemporary market-driven worldview relies upon and legitimates rational, analytical ways of knowing, often to the exclusion of other ways of knowing. Support for a consumerist ideology depends upon and simultaneously contributes to a worldview based on the instrumental rationality of the human. In this worldview, rational choice is seen as that realm of common sense in which both the world and human demands on the world are laid out as commensurate, equal realities that confront decision-makers. That is, in this rational scheme, the assumption for decision-making is that all choices are equally clear and measurable. According to that perspective, the challenge is to find a common metric for evaluating the quantitative differences among the relevant factors. Different values are integrated into this metric by assuming that all values are relative and that trade-offs are made between these values in order to arrive at a choice.

The metrics used may vary, but in the current market-driven worldview, metrics such as price, utility, and efficiency dominate. This can result in highly diverse views of a forest, for example, as a certain amount of board-feet (a unit for measuring lumber-volume), or as a mechanistic complex of ecological systems that provide previously unmeasured services to the human. In environmental policy, ecosystem services and cost-benefit analysis have been used as metrics to determine how a plant or animal species contributes to human welfare in a quantifiable way. These modes of commensuration may provide invaluable bridges into the business community for bringing environmental issues to their attention for serious consideration. Moreover, ecosystem services analysis certainly manifests a form of the transformation of consciousness urgently needed at this time. However, it is also important to ask if such rational perspectives that transform reality into information — namely, manageable, quantifiable data — alter or eliminate other significant ways of knowing reality in relation to decision-making.

One long-term effect is that the individual human decision-maker is distanced from nature because nature is reduced to measurable entities. From this perspective, humans become isolated in our perceived uniqueness as something separate from the biological web of life. In this context, humans do not seek identity and meaning in the numinous beauty of the world, or experience themselves as dependent on a complex of life-supporting interactions of air, water, and soil. Rather, this logic sees humans as independent, rational decision-makers, who find their meaning and identity in systems of management, that now attempt to co-opt the language of conservation and environmental concern. It is a short step within this commensurate worldview to psychological reflection on happiness as personal power derived from simply managing or having more ‘stuff’.

This modern, mechanistic, utilitarian view of matter as material for human use and benefit arises in part from a dualistic Western philosophical view of mind and matter. Adapted into Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religious perspectives, this dualism associates mind with the soul as a transcendent spiritual entity given sovereignty and absolute control over wild matter. Many traditional values embedded in religions, such as the sacred, the placement of the sacred in particular geographical locations, the spiritual dimension of the human, and care for future generations, are incommensurate with an objectified reality, and are not quantifiable. Thus, they are often ignored as externalities, or overridden by more pragmatic, profit-driven, bottom line considerations.

Yet, even within the realm of scientific, rational thought, there is not a uniform approach. Resistance to the easy marriage of applied science and instrumental rationality comes from what we might call ‘science-that-sees-the-whole.’ By this we refer to a lineage embedded in the world of empirical, experimental science of valuing wonder, beauty, elegance, and imagination as crucial components of knowing the world. Knowing, within these perspectives, stresses both analysis and synthesis — the reductive act of observation, as well as placement of the focus of study within the context of a larger whole. ‘Science-that-sees-the-whole’ resists the temptation to take the micro, empirical, reductive act as the complete description of a thing, but opens analysis to the history of a large interactive web of life. It helps to illustrate the radical interdependence of life that characterizes all ecosystems.

From the Enlightenment period in Western Europe some three centuries ago, the human community has increasingly gravitated towards rational, scientific ways of knowing the world. Modern mechanistic worldviews engender value orientations that separate humans from the Earth. Simultaneously, modernity encourages the primacy of human extractive use and dominion over material reality. The Enlightenment legacy emphasizes knowing the world rationally and scientifically, not religiously or ethically. Rather, religion in modernity orients one away from the immanent and towards the transcendent; whereas ethics examines behavior between humans or between humans and the divine. Moreover, in its economic dimensions, modern worldviews rationalize nature. In this sense, the world at large is without intrinsic value, unless it is calibrated in a metric based on its use value for humans.

This human capacity to imagine and implement a utilitarian-based worldview regarding nature has undermined many insights from the ancient wisdom of the world’s religions by segmenting any meaningful religious values as psychological choices or subjective interests. More insidiously, some religions, allured by the individualistic orientations of market rationalism and short-term benefits of social improvement, seized upon wealth and material accumulation as containing divine approval. Thus, early in the nineteenth century, Max Weber identified the rise of Protestant Christianity in Northern Europe with an ethos of inspirited work and accumulated capital. Interestingly, Weber also articulated a disenchantment from the world as this rational, analytical, profit-driven worldview became dominant as global capitalism.

The prior enchantments of the old creation stories were burned away in the critical fires of rationality. Wonder, beauty, and imagination as ways of knowing were gradually superseded in a turn from the organic wisdom of traditional worldviews to the analytical reductionism of modernity. A mercantile mindset sought to shift the play and sport of the world in ways that accorded with modern industrial productivity as the epitome of progress.
Ways of Knowing the World

Certainly, the insights of scientific, analytical, and rational modes of knowing are indispensable for understanding and responding to our contemporary environmental crisis. So also, we will not bring ourselves out of our current impasse without the technologies that brought us into it. Indeed, these technologies are being reshaped in more ecological directions as witnessed in such developments as industrial ecology and green chemistry. But it seems important also to recall that other ways of knowing are manifest in culturally diverse cognitive pathways that treasure emotional intelligence and affective insight. These are evident in the arts — music, painting, literature, poetry, drama — that celebrate human experience in a more than rational mode. Moreover, in their explorations of embodied experience of humans and nature, many aspects of Western culture, such as visual aesthetics, literary arts, narrative poetry, and cinema are far from dormant in modern consciousness.

What is especially striking in this regard are the versions of empirical observation found among Indigenous, or aboriginal, peoples that have both rational and affective components. This involves knowledge of lands and ocean, animals and fish, plants and trees. These many ways of knowing appear in an amazing variety of human interactions with the natural world that include: the development of traditional herbal knowledge, proto-chemical understandings, healing practices, philosophical reflection in oral-narrative traditions, and agricultural cultivation. These diverse ways of knowing-dialogues are evident in the domestication of various crops such as rice, millet, wheat, corn, and tobacco. Much of modern science was built upon these foundational insights. Such understandings must have come through a wide range of careful observation and attention to seasonal changes and animal interactions. Similar observational knowledge of the migratory patterns of plants, animals, birds, and fish is evident among many native cultures. Almost uniformly, the remaining Indigenous oral narratives describe this trial and error in experimental usage along with inspired reflection on the beauty and profundity of an in-spirited world. One insight is that many modes of Indigenous knowledge often refer to these connections with the world as kin relationships.

Thus, it is becoming clearer that new modes of integrating traditional environmental knowledge and science are emerging.

Bridging multiple knowledge systems requires drawing on natural and social sciences’ methodologies and constant consideration for the value systems of all knowledge holders, a process that is based on ongoing iteration and feedback. The Mi’kmaq principle of ‘Etuaptmumk’ or ‘two-eyed seeing’ captures the concept of bringing different knowledge systems together to increase our collective bread and depth of understanding: ‘learning to see from one eye with the strengths of indigenous knowledges…and from the other eye with the strengths of western knowledges…and learning to use both these eyes together, for the benefit of all’.1

Science-that-sees-the-whole is beginning to appreciate these other ways of knowing without giving over its foundational analytical approach. In recent years, science has returned to study Indigenous knowledge not simply as idiosyncratic experiences, but as connected to larger social and ecological phenomena. Increasingly, these connections are understood as creative entanglements of the senses and the cognitive faculties. Over the last century, new ways of understanding reality have moved from the periphery of our knowledge into more common usage that increasingly tip us toward creative engagement with cosmology. For example, ways of seeing reality at the quantum level as simultaneously particle and wave, as multicentered, and as foaming into and out of existence are beginning to challenge creatively our articulation of everyday life. Our mental horizon now embraces the comprehensible and the intuitive in ways that formerly would have been dismissed as contradictory or logically incompatible.

In addition, there is a growing appreciation for the multiple ‘intelligences’ in the world. This book aims to explore some of those intelligences from plants and animals, to trees and forests. It recognizes both Indigenous ways of knowing and modern ecological ways of knowing. In both cases, organic interconnectivity is acknowledged and affirmed. Those participating in this book bring an appreciation for multiple ways of knowing and multiple intelligences in the world. Their work reflects the careful attempt to ‘see the whole’. Our work collaboratively aims to bring that sensibility toward an embodied ethic for nature.
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Cordova, V. F., How It Is: The Native American Philosophy of V. F. Cordova, ed. by Kathleen Dean Moore, Kurt Peters, Ted Jojola, and Amber Lacy (Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press, 2007).

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Denny, Shelly K., and Lucia M. Fanning, ‘A Mi’kmaw Perspective on Advancing Salmon Governance in Nova Scotia, Canada: Setting the Stage for Collaborative Co-Existence’, International Indigenous Policy Journal, 7.3 (2016), 1–25, https://doi.org/10.18584/iipj.2016.7.3.4

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Grim, John, and Mary Evelyn Tucker, Ecology and Religion (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2014).

Grim, John., ed., Indigenous Traditions and Ecology: The Interbeing of Cosmology and Community (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Divinity School Center for the Study of World Religions, 2001).

Grim, John, The Shaman: Patterns of Religious Healing Among the Ojibway Indians (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983).

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Ingold, Tim, The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (London: Routledge, 2000).

Jenkins, Willis, Mary Evelyn Tucker, and John Grim, eds, Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology (New York, NY: Routledge, 2016), https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315764788

Johnson, Mark, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason (Chicago, IL, and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987).

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Tucker, Mary Evelyn, Worldly Wonder: Religions Enter their Ecological Phase (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2002).

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ahandfulofleaves | Essentials of Buddha Dhamma

ahandfulofleaves | Essentials of Buddha Dhamma

SUTTA READINGS

• Ajitamāṇavapucchā – Questions of the Youth Ajita
• Atthinukhopariyāyasuttaṃ – Is There a Method?
• Avijjāsuttaṃ – Discourse on the Abandoning of Ignorance
• Dvayatānupassanāsuttaṃ – Discourse on Dual Realizations
• Kalahavivādasuttaṃ – Discourse on Quarrels and Disputes
• Kāḷakārāmasuttaṃ – Discourse at Kāḷakārāma
• Lokasuttaṃ – Discourse on The World (of conditions)
• Puṇṇakamāṇavapucchā – Questions of the Youth Puṇṇaka
• Sallasuttaṃ – Discourse on the Dart (The Simile of the Dart)
• Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta: Discourse on the Progressions of Mindfulness
• Suññalokasuttaṃ – Discourse on ‘Empty is the World’
• Sīla Sutta
• Ānāpānasati Sutta: The Discourse on Mindfulness of In and Out Breathing

BOOKSHELF

• A Note on Attā in the Aladaddūpama Sutta, K.R. Norman – 1981
• A Philological Approach to Buddhism, K.R. Norman
• Absorption Two Studies of Human Nature, by Johannes Bronkhorst
• Aspects of Early Buddhism, K.R. Norman – 1990
• Books & Papers by Antonio Damasio
• Buddhism: Critical Concepts in Religious Studies Series
• Citta, Mano, Viññāṇa – A psychosemantic Investigation, By Rune E.A. Johansson
• CLARIFICATION ON FEELINGS IN BUDDHIST DHYANA_JHANA MEDITATION by Tse-fu Kuan
• Concept and Reality in Early Buddhist Thought, by Bhikkhu Ñāṇananda
• Disputed Dharmas: Early Buddhist Theories on Existence – An Annotated Translation of the Section on Factors Dissociated from Thought from the Saṅghabhadra’s Nyāyānusāra, by Collett Cox
• Early Buddhist Metaphysics: The Making Of A Philosophical Tradition By Noa Ronkin
• Gandhāran Buddhism: Archaeology, Art, Texts – Pia Brancaccio and Kurt Behrendt (Editors) – Asian Religions and Society Series IV
• History of Theravāda Buddhism in South-East Asia, by Kanai Lal Hazra
• How Buddhism Began by R.F. Gombrich
• Identity and Experience: The Consitiution of the Human Being According to Early Buddhism, by Sue Hamilton
• Inspired Speech in Early Mahāyāna Buddhism, by Graeme MacQueen
• Metaphor and Literalism in Buddhism: The Doctrinal History of Nirvana, by Soonil Hwang
• Mindfulness in Early Buddhism, Tse Fu-kuan
• Mindfulness of Breathing in the Dhyāna Sūtras – By Blorin Deleanu, 1992
• Pali Philology and the Study of Buddhism, K.R. Norman – 1990
• Pudgalavāda Buddhism: The Reality of the Indeterminate Self – Leonard C.D.C. Peiestley
• Pāli Literature: Including the Canonical Literature in Prakrit and Sanskrit of All the Hīnayāna Schools of Buddhism, by K.R. Norman
• Recovering The Buddha's Message, Gombrich – 1988
• Religious Motivation and the Origins of Buddhism: A SocialPsychological Exploration of the Origins of A World Religion, by Torkel Brekke
• Satipaṭṭhāna: The Direct Path to Realization, by Anālayo
• Studies in the Origins of Buddhism, by Govind Chandra Pande
• Text as Father: Paternal Seductions in Early Mahāyāna Buddhist Literature, by Alan Cole
• The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist Sanskrit Literature, by Har Dayal
• The Buddhist Caves at Aurangabad: The Impact of the Laity, by Pia Brancaccio
• The Buddhist Deconstruction and Reconstruction: Their Sūtra Orgin, by David J. Kalupahana
• The Buddhist Doctrine of Momentariness – von Rospatt
• The Buddhist Religion: A Historical Introduction, by Richard H. Robinson
• The Character of Self in Ancient India Priests, Kings and Women in the Early Upaniṣads, by Brian Black
• The Early Buddhist Notion of the Middle Way – David J. Kalupahana
• The Experience of Samādhi, by Richard Shankman
• The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism, Choong Mun-keat
• The Ideas and Meditative Practices of Early Buddhism, by Tilmann Vetter
• The Origin and Development of Early Indian Contemplative Practices, by Edward Fitzpatrick Crangle
• Two Traditions of Meditation in Ancient India, by Johannes Bronkhorst

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain eBook: Damasio, Antonio: Amazon.com.au: Books

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain eBook: Damasio, Antonio: Amazon.com.au: Books

In the centuries since Descartes famously proclaimed, 'I think, therefore I am,' science has often overlooked emotions as the source of a person's true being. Even modern neuroscience has tended until recently to concentrate on the cognitive aspects of brain function, disregarding emotions. This attitude began to change with the publication of Descartes' Error. Antonio Damasio challenged traditional ideas about the connection between emotions and rationality. In this wonderfully engaging book, Damasio takes the reader on a journey of scientific discovery through a series of case studies, demonstrating what many of us have long suspected: emotions are not a luxury, they are essential to rational thinking and to normal social behaviour.

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Crucial reading ― New York Times Book Review

A thought-provoking account ― New Scientist

idiosyncratic and engaging ― The Times

Rich in provocative concepts about intelligence, memory, creativity and passion ― Los Angeles Times

Damasio is a profound thinker and an elegant writer...Descartes' Error is a fascinating exploration of the biology of reason and its inseparable dependence on emotion -- Oliver Sacks --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

--This text refers to the paperback edition.

From the Back Cover

"Although I cannot tell for certain what sparked my interest in the neural underpinnings of reason, I do know when I became convinced that the traditional views on the nature of rationality could not be correct". Thus begins a book that takes the reader on a journey of discovery, from the story of Phineas Gage, the famous nineteenth-century case of behavioral change that followed brain damage, to the contemporary recreation of Gage's brain; and from the doubts of a young neurologist to a testable hypothesis concerning the emotions and their fundamental role in rational human behavior. Drawing on his experiences with neurological patients affected by brain damage (his laboratory is recognized worldwide as the foremost center for the study of such patients), Antonio Damasio shows how the absence of emotion and feeling can break down rationality. In the course of explaining how emotions and feelings contribute to reason and to adaptive social behavior, Damasio also offers a novel perspective on what emotions and feelings actually are: a direct sensing of our own body states, a link between the body and its survival-oriented regulations, on the one hand, and consciousness, on the other. Descartes' Error leads us to conclude that human organisms are endowed from the very beginning with a spirited passion for making choices, which the social mind can use to build rational behavior. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

About the Author

Antonio Damasio, a neurologist and neuroscientist, is at the University of Southern California, where he directs a new brain research institute dedicated to the study of emotion and creativity. He is also an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute. The recipient of numerous awards (several shared with his wife Hanna Damasio, also a neurologist and neuroscientist), he is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of two other widely acclaimed books, The Feeling of What Happens and Looking for Spinoza. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Book Description

'Crucial reading' - New York Times Book Review --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

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ASIN : B0031RS9I4

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Language : English

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Print length : 225 pages

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Adam Johnson

5.0 out of 5 stars An important foundational book for so much of contemporary thinking

Reviewed in Australia on 7 March 2019

Descartes Error opens with a story that has surely gained a life of its own by now. The story of the most unfortunate Phineas Gage who sustained a horrific injury from a steel tamping rod passing through his brain. The story is compelling because, not only did Gage survive, but he seemed to survive without harm. He could walk, talk, think and all of the things you’d expect.

Except he wasn’t without harm. To steal the punchline, he sustained an injury that left him unable to function properly in society. Damasio hypothesizes, based on similar cases with similar injuries, that Gage lost his ability to connect emotion into reasoning, and ultimately lost his ability to make judgements about preferred future states.

This book is now over 20 years old, and it remains a classic in neuroscience. Its central hypothesis is the “somatic marker” hypothesis, which essentially states that reason is connected to embodied emotion. That decision making isn’t just rational and disembodied, but it is also connected deeply into feelings across the body.

These feelings, or somatic markers, enable certain options to be prioritised over others. Somatic markers are informed by the continual, day to day senses, decisions and consequences. The are, in this sense, emergent. They can be conscious or unconscious, but what they do is facilitate “rational” decision making in the complex world that makes up human society. So much so that, without them (as demonstrated by Damasio’s case studies), people are paralysed in their decision making.

Emotions are vital for rational thought. And that fact that this statement is relatively uncontroversial is sign of how significant this book has become. Its subject matter has led to a vast array of writing around the neuroscience of decision making, the self, and how to potentially overcome these embodied emotions. It has led to the recognition that the body and how it processes emotion is critical for how to enhance the performance of the mind, and similarly how the mind is vitally important for how the body functions.

A fascinating book that provides the baseline for so much of what is out in the marketplace of ideas around decision making and emotion. A book that is at times heavy reading, but is for the most part a ripping yarn that rearranges a number of pieces of the human puzzle to derive a compelling hypothesis for how we think.

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nicholas hargreaves

4.0 out of 5 stars Organismic Feedback Loop Theory

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After having read "The Feeling of What Happens" I thought I'd give this earlier work by the same author a read,as I have recently come across numerous references to it that elevate it to somewhat of a classic in its field.

The first one hundred pages read like a dream and I mistakenly thought that the author had saved his verbose and prolix style for his later works,but then I found I had been lulled into a false sense of security,by which time I was in too deep.The rest of the book took a considerable effort to finish,as to understand a great deal of it requires one to read then re-read a sentence,then deliberate on it until its meaning becomes apparent in your own linguistic terms.This method is taxing to say the least and a vast amount of concentration was required for reading anymore than 10 pages at a time,but due to the interesting nature of the material one remains motivated to proceed further,and by the end of the book you are in no doubt as to the information that has been imparted.

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Marius Francu

5.0 out of 5 stars Glad that I read it

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 January 2019

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I am working in IT business. Is time to cross the corridors of the other disciplines and see how these handled/discovered/managed stuff we are struggling with. Is a neuroscience book, don't expect to be an easy read. I decided to read all books written by Antonio Damasio because of risk related work. But soon I discovered that his books and the other of his books are a good trigger, at least for me, for other useful ideas regarding programming, testing, management.

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Jordan

5.0 out of 5 stars a classic!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 July 2017

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a great book, very interesting read.

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JL

5.0 out of 5 stars Good quality

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 May 2020

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This is a good read very informative

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christina s

5.0 out of 5 stars Easy to read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 July 2020

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Very interesting and well written

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Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain: Damasio, Antonio: 9780156028714: Amazon.com: Books

Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain: Damasio, Antonio: 9780156028714: Amazon.com: Books

Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain Paperback – December 1, 2003

by Antonio Damasio (Author)

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English

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Harvest

Publication date

December 1, 2003

The last in a trilogy of books that investigates the philosophical and scientific foundations of human life

 

Joy, sorrow, jealousy, and awe—these and other feelings are the stuff of our daily lives. In the seventeenth century, the philosopher Spinoza devoted much of his life's work examining how these emotions supported human survival, yet hundreds of years later the biological roots of what we feel remain a mystery. Leading neuroscientist Antonio Damasio—whose earlier books explore rational behavior and the notion of the self—rediscovers a man whose work ran counter to all the thinking of his day, pairing Spinoza's insights with his own innovative scientific research to help us understand what we're made of, and what we're here for.

Editorial Reviews

Review

PRAISE FOR LOOKING FOR SPINOZA

"Clear, accessible and at times eloquent . . . Nothing less than a new vision of the human soul."-San Francisco Chronicle

"Compelling."-Scientific American

"Exceptionally engaging and profoundly gratifying."-Nature

"Damasio has the rare talent of rendering science intelligible while also being gifted in philosophy, literature and wit."

-- Margaret Jacob, Los Angeles Times

"Looking for Spinoza is exceptionally engaging and profoundly gratifying."

-- Ray Dolan, Nature

"In clear, accessible and eloquent prose, Damasio is outlining a new vision of the human soul."

-- William Kowinski, San Francisco Chronicle

"Compelling."

, Scientific American

From the Inside Flap

Joy, sorrow, jealousy, and awe--these and other feelings are the stuff of our daily lives. Thought to be too private for science to explain and not essential for understanding cognition, they have largely been ignored. But not by Spinoza, and not by Antonio Damasio. Here, in a humane work of science, Damasio draws on his innovative research and on his experience with neurological patients to examine how feelings and the emotions that underlie them support human survival and enable the spirit's greatest creations.

Looking for Spinoza reveals the biology of our sophisticated survival mechanisms. It rediscovers a thinker whose work prefigures modern neuroscience, not only in his emphasis on emotions and feelings, but also in his refusal to separate mind and body. Together, the scientist and the philosopher help us understand what we're made of, and what we're here for. Based on laboratory investigations but moving beyond those to society and culture, "Looking for Spinoza" is a master work of science and writing.

Antonio Damasio, widely recognized as one of the world's leading neuroscientists, has for decades been investigating the neurobiological foundations of human life. In "Descartes' Error" he explored the importance of emotion in rational behavior, and in "The Feeling of What Happens" he developed the neurobiology of the self. Damasio's new book on feeling and emotion offers unexpected grounds for optimism about our survival and the human condition.

From the Back Cover

"In clear, accessible and at times eloquent prose, Damasio is outlining nothing less than a new vision of the human soul, integrating body and mind, thought and feeling, individual survival and altruism, humanity and nature, ethics and evolution." -SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

JOY, SORROW, JEALOUSY, AND AWE-these and other feelings are the stuff of our daily lives. Thought to be too private for science to explain and not essential for understanding cognition, they have largely been ignored. But not by Spinoza, and not by Antonio Damasio. In Looking for Spinoza, Damasio, one of the world's leading neuroscientists, draws on his innovative research and on his experience with neurological patients to examine how feelings and the emotions that underlie them support human survival and enable the spirit's greatest creations. Looking for Spinoza rediscovers a thinker whose work prefigures modern neuroscience, not only in his emphasis on emotions and feelings, but in his refusal to separate mind and body. Together, the scientist and the philosopher help us understand what we're made of, and what we're here for.

"Exceptionally engaging and profoundly gratifying . . . Achieves a unique combination of scientific exposition, historical discovery and deep personal statement regarding the human condition." -NATURE

Antonio Damasio is the Van Allen Distinguished Professor and head of the department of neurology at the University of Iowa Medical Center and is an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. The recipient of numerous awards, he is a member

of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Damasio's books are read and taught in universities worldwide.

About the Author

Antonio Damasio is the Van Allen Professor and head of the department of neurology at the University of Iowa Medical Center and is an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute in San Diego. Descartes' Error was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and has been translated into twenty-three languages. He lives in Iowa City and Chicago.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 1

Enter Feelings

Enter Feelings

Feelings of pain or pleasure or some quality in between are the bedrock of our minds. We often fail to notice this simple reality because the mental images of the objects and events that surround us, along with the images of the words and sentences that describe them, use up so much of our overburdened attention. But there they are, feelings of myriad emotions and related states, the continuous musical line of our minds, the unstoppable humming of the most universal of melodies that only dies down when we go to sleep, a humming that turns into all-out singing when we are occupied by joy, or a mournful requiem when sorrow takes over.*

Given the ubiquity of feelings, one would have thought that their science would have been elucidated long ago-what feelings are, how they work, what they mean-but that is hardly the case. Of all the mental phenomena we can describe, feelings and their essential ingredients-pain and pleasure-are the least understood in biological and specifically neurobiological terms. This is all the more puzzling considering that advanced societies cultivate feelings shamelessly and dedicate so many resources and efforts to manipulating those feelings with alcohol, drugs of abuse, medical drugs, food, real sex, virtual sex, all manner of feel-good consumption, and all manner of feel-good social and religious practices. We doctor our feelings with pills, drinks, health spas, workouts, and spiritual exercises, but neither the public nor science have yet come to grips with what feelings are, biologically speaking.

I am not really surprised at this state of affairs, considering what I grew up believing about feelings. Most of it simply was not true. For example, I thought that feelings were impossible to define with specificity, unlike objects you could see, hear, or touch. Unlike those concrete entities, feelings were intangible. When I started musing about how the brain managed to create the mind, I accepted the established advice that feelings were out of the scientific picture. One could study how the brain makes us move. One could study sensory processes, visual and otherwise, and understand how thoughts are put together. One could study how the brain learns and memorizes thoughts. One could even study the emotional reactions with which we respond to varied objects and events. But feelings-which can be distinguished from emotions, as we shall see in the next chapter-remained elusive. Feelings were to stay forever mysterious. They were private and inaccessible. It was not possible to explain how feelings happened or where they happened. One simply could not get "behind" feelings.

As was the case with consciousness, feelings were beyond the bounds of science, thrown outside the door not just by the naysayers who worry that anything mental might actually be explained by neuroscience, but by card-carrying neuroscientists themselves, proclaiming allegedly insurmountable limitations. My own willingness to accept this belief as fact is evidenced by the many years I spent studying anything but feelings. It took me awhile to see the degree to which the injunction was unjustified and to realize that the neurobiology of feelings was no less viable than the neurobiology of vision or memory. But eventually I did, mostly, as it turns out, because I was confronted by the reality of neurological patients whose symptoms literally forced me to investigate their conditions.

Imagine, for example, meeting someone who, as a result of damage to a certain location of his brain, became unable to feel compassion or embarrassment-when compassion or embarrassment were due-yet could feel happy, or sad, or fearful just as normally as before brain disease had set in. Would that not give you pause? Or picture a person who, as a result of damage located elsewhere in the brain, became unable to experience fear when fear was the appropriate reaction to the situation and yet still could feel compassion. The cruelty of neurological disease may be a bottomless pit for its victims-the patients and those of us who are called to watch. But the scalpel of disease also is responsible for its single redeeming feature: By teasing apart the normal operations of the human brain, often with uncanny precision, neurological disease provides a unique entry into the fortified citadel of the human brain and mind.

Reflection on the situation of these patients and of others with comparable conditions raised intriguing hypotheses. First, individual feelings could be prevented through damage to a discrete part of the brain; the loss of a specific sector of brain circuitry brought with it the loss of a specific kind of mental event. Second, it seemed clear that different brain systems controlled different feelings; damage to one area of the brain anatomy did not cause all types of feelings to disappear at once. Third, and most surprising, when patients lost the ability to express a certain emotion, they also lost the ability to experience the corresponding feeling. But the opposite was not true: Some patients who lost their ability to experience certain feelings still could express the corresponding emotions. Could it be that while emotion and feeling were twins, emotion was born first and feeling second, with feeling forever following emotion like a shadow? In spite of their close kinship and seeming simultaneity, it seemed that emotion preceded feeling. Knowledge of this specific relationship, as we shall see, provided a window into the investigation of feelings.

Such hypotheses could be tested with the help of scanning techniques that allow us to create images of the anatomy and activity of the human brain. Step by step, initially in patients and then in both patients and people without neurological disease, my colleagues and I began to map the geography of the feeling brain. We aimed at elucidating the web of mechanisms that allow our thoughts to trigger emotional states and engender feelings.1

Emotion and feeling played an important but very different part in two of my previous books. Descartes' Error addressed the role of emotion and feeling in decision-making. The Feeling of What Happens outlined the role of emotion and feeling in the construction of the self. In the present book, however, the focus is on feelings themselves, what they are and what they provide. Most of the evidence I discuss was not available when I wrote the previous books, and a more solid platform for the understanding of feelings has now emerged. The main purpose of this book, then, is to present a progress report on the nature and human significance of feelings and related phenomena, as I see them now, as neurologist, neuroscientist, and regular user.

The gist of my current view is that feelings are the expression of human flourishing or human distress, as they occur in mind and body. Feelings are not a mere decoration added on to the emotions, something one might keep or discard. Feelings can be and often are revelations of the state of life within the entire organism-a lifting of the veil in the literal sense of the term. Life being a high-wire act, most feelings are expressions of the struggle for balance, ideas of the exquisite adjustments and corrections without which, one mistake too many, the whole act collapses. If anything in our existence can be revelatory of our simultaneous smallness and greatness, feelings are.

How that revelation comes to mind is itself beginning to be revealed. The brain uses a number of dedicated regions working in concert to portray myriad aspects of the body's activities in the form of neural maps. This portrait is a composite, an ever-changing picture of life on the fly. The chemical and neural channels that bring into the brain the signals with which this life portrait can be painted are just as dedicated as the canvas that receives them. The mystery of how we feel is a little less mysterious now.

It is reasonable to wonder if the attempt to understand feelings is of any value beyond the satisfaction of one's curiosity. For a number of reasons, I believe it is. Elucidating the neurobiology of feelings and their antecedent emotions contributes to our views on the mind-body problem, a problem central to the understanding of who we are. Emotion and related reactions are aligned with the body, feelings with the mind. The investigation of how thoughts trigger emotions and of how bodily emotions become the kind of thoughts we call feelings provides a privileged view into mind and body, the overtly disparate manifestations of a single and seamlessly interwoven human organism.

The effort has more practical payoffs, however. Explaining the biology of feelings and their closely related emotions is likely to contribute to the effective treatment of some major causes of human suffering, among them depression, pain, and drug addiction. Moreover, understanding what feelings are, how they work, and what they mean is indispensable to the future construction of a view of human beings more accurate than the one currently available, a view that would take into account advances in the social sciences, cognitive science, and biology. Why is such a construction of any practical use? Because the success or failure of humanity depends in large measure on how the public and the institutions charged with the governance of public life incorporate that revised view of human beings in principles and policies. An understanding of the neurobiology of emotion and feelings is a key to the formulation of principles and policies capable of reducing human distress and enhancing human flourishing. In effect, the new knowledge even speaks to the manner in which humans deal with unresolved tensions between sacred and secular interpretations of their own existence.

Now that I have sketched my main purpose, it is time to explain why a book dedicated to new ideas on the nature and significance of human feeling should invoke Spinoza in the title. Since I am not a philosopher and this book is not about Spinoza's philosophy, it is sensible to ask: why Spinoza? The sho...

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ASIN : 0156028719

Publisher : Harvest; First edition (December 1, 2003)

Language : English

Paperback : 368 pages

ISBN-10 : 9780156028714

ISBN-13 : 978-0156028714

Item Weight : 12.3 ounces

Dimensions : 5.31 x 0.95 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #369,331 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

#639 in Medical Neuropsychology

#834 in Psychiatry (Books)

#836 in Consciousness & Thought Philosophy

Customer Reviews: 4.5 out of 5 stars    83 ratings

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William E. Baumzweiger, M.D.

5.0 out of 5 stars Looking For Spinoza-an important book that relates to brain-science, human nature and humanity's needs

Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2016

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Antonio Damasio has written a book that is not only the definitive biography of Baruch / Benedict Spinoza but is also an important discussion of how Spinoza, utilizing mostly his own mind, elucidated the beginnings of biology, neurology, democratic forms of government and ideal forms of society. I understand why the Jewish-Orthodox community was forced to expel him-what he was writing was heresy to Christian Europe-but believe that Judaism would have been enriched by enthusiastically embracing his ideas.

How did Antonio Damasio, who came from a Portuguese Catholic background know so much about Bento/Baruch/Benedict Spinoza? Well, the Portuguese Inquisition brutally forced all of its Jews to convert to Catholicism, and perhaps his ancestors were among those Jews. Perhaps in writing this book Dr. Damasio, who is now at USC, is letting us in on a bit of his own underlying thought processes.

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Mike D.

5.0 out of 5 stars Brain Science and Philosophy

Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2020

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What's the difference between emotions and feelings? How is a good life achieved? The author finds answers based on work in cognitive brain science and then a consideration of philosophical systems, particularly Spinoza's salvation in nature's god and rigorous understanding of a moral life. An in-depth examination of brain structures and their roles in human emotions and the feelings that are generated by them followed by an approach to managing them. He follows this weaving in the story of Spinoza, the leading Enlightenment thinker of an ethical and moral approach to science. A thoughtful and substantial read.

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Wayne Weiss

5.0 out of 5 stars Understanding the mind through feeling and emotion

Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2015

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Damasio's books offer deep insight into our emotions and feelings and defines them in a unique way by tracing their evolution in the body and the brain. He also takes a fascinating side trip into Spinoza's philosophy which got me reading "The Ethics," to my eternal benefit. A foundational book on understanding the mind.

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4.0 out of 5 stars A light in the darkness

Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2010

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Much like the Astronomer on the cover of Damasio's book, I often feel that learning about neurobiology is like studying in the dark with only the flickering of a single candle to guide me; the philosophy intrigues me and piques my interest, but somewhere along the line, the intimidation of the neurological lingo darkens the room until I can barely make out what I am reading. Damasio was inspired by the philosophical musings of Spinoza, whom he believed had a conceptualization of human feelings and emotions that was predictive of current neurobiological theories regarding human experiences of feelings and emotions. Damasio then utilizes other pioneers in the sciences such as Charles Darwin and begins to make his case for an evolutionary base for the development of emotions as well as the differentiation between emotions and feelings. Damasio begins to shift our understanding of emotions following feelings, to "feelings [as] mostly shadows of the external manner of emotions" (p.29).

This transition in historical thinking has some interesting clinical applications. By considering feeling as a result of emotions experienced in response to environmental stimuli we can break down client's experience into two categories; what is happening to them and what they experience as a result of this. Similar ideas are put forth in Cognitive Behavioral Therapies (CBT) that attempt to separate and understand how thoughts can lead to emotions. Newer waves of CBT such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy advance this idea further by acknowledging that we can be observers of our own experience and choose the level at which we will either attend to or feel the stimulus we receive. Damasio's differentiation of emotion and feeling can be applied in a similar way to a client who has been the victim of trauma, or suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This client may have a natural emotional reaction of fear to certain environments or stimulus that are similar to the one where the trauma was initiated. The client may have learned from their prior trauma that following their natural fear response they are overcome with shame or guilt. Working with this client you can begin to separate their shame from their fear response and bring awareness to them that their feelings are a result of an external emotional reaction and not the result of internal unchangeable characteristics. This distancing of the emotion and the feeling can be helpful as the client and therapist work to learn and develop a new feeling to utilize in response to same emotional reaction (fear). This is beneficial for the client as they may realistically be unable to avoid the stimulus causing their fear response.

Damasio blends his ideas of philosophy and neurobiology in a manner that is accessible to more advanced readers who have a basic understanding of neurobiological and philosophical concepts. Damasio's conversational style of writing was a refreshing break from more dense texts, although the more relaxed writing style did not make the more philosophical and advanced ideas easier to grasp. Given the strong philosophical bent of Damasio's writings, discussion on the concept of consciousness itself was mysteriously absent. Although this is currently may be out of the reach of current neuroscience, it would have been nice to cut off some of the more rambling chapters to include one dedicated the direction of future research beyond the current cutting edge. Overall, this book was a welcome break from the monotonous other cognition texts and a breath of fresh air for those looking to expand their integration of philosophy and science. After reading this book, I may not be reading as clearly as the astronomer on the cover in the daylight, but perhaps I have managed to light a few more candles.

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Jennifer Margolian

4.0 out of 5 stars 🤓👍

Reviewed in Canada on November 6, 2018

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It did not come with a cover... but aside from that it 👍

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sarah

3.0 out of 5 stars Looking for Spinoza

Reviewed in Germany on March 19, 2006

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In this book the author discusses a historic theory of emotion in the context of his own research and ideas. According to the theory, known as the James-Lang theory of emotion, our emotions derive from the perception of our body's response to an emotionally charged stimulus. The classical argument ran as follows. We see a bear and our heart starts to beat fast, our breathing becomes shallow and fast and we run away, we then feel fear. The other theory of emotion; dismissed by the author of this book, agues the opposite. We see the bear, feel fear, and then have then our body reacts.

In the book Damasio presents some convincing evidence for the James-Lang theory of emotion. He makes a distinction between emotions on the one hand and feelings on the other. He defines emotions as the person's response to some emotional situation that can be observed by an outsider, and feelings as the person's subjective reaction that cannot be seen by an outsider. He then goes on to argue that feelings are the perception of our body's responses to internal and external stimuli. We feel happy when we are balanced physiologically. We feel frightened when our body shows a physiological response to, say the bear. The evidence that he presents comes mostly from his own research, and it is convincing. He expands on the theory, arguing that feelings play an important role in our lives, that they enable us to interact with others smoothly and that they are crucial for decision making. Here he draws his evidence from his work with his patients who have suffered brain damage to specific brain regions.

I bought this book because I enjoyed his book 'Dascartes Error' so much. However, I found 'Looking for Spinoza' long-winded in parts and sometimes boring. The sections devoted to Damasio's own research were very interesting, though I suspect one would have to have a background knowledge of brain and behaviour to fully appreciate them. He mentions brain regions as if he is discussing the pub next door with a neighbour. I also had difficulties in seeing the relevance of Spinoza to his arguments, and the penultimate chapter body brain and mind was frankly dull.

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Jon Stout

Nov 29, 2008Jon Stout rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: idealists and reductive materialists

Shelves: philosophy

Inspired by Descartes' Error, and interested in a neurologist's interest in philosophers, I sought out Looking for Spinoza. It rewarded me in several ways, first by extending my understanding of how emotions as a biological concept are continuous with feelings as a conscious, mental phenomenon, and second by providing a guided, personal investigation into the life of Bento-Baruch-Benedict Spinoza.

Damasio has a lot to say about emotions and the structure of the brain, some of it exhaustingly detailed. But the key area for me was in matching what I might introspectively think and feel, with Damasio's experimentally substantiated knowledge of the routes through the neural pathways that electrical and chemical signals follow.

One example would lie in Damasio's distinction between emotions and feelings, which I had previously taken to be roughly synonomous. Damasio says that emotions are instinctual reactions that all animals have as a way of coping with environmental stimuli. They are not necessarily conscious. But feelings, according to Damasio, are our conscious perceptions of our bodily states as we are having emotions. Thus a worm can react with alarm, but we conscious beings feel our bodies change when we are alarmed, and we can be alerted to consider why we are alarmed and what we want to do about it.

The less theoretical and more personally appealing part of the book is Damasio's personal quest to trace out the life of Spinoza, whose philosophy, Damasio believes, anticipates many of his own findings and conclusions. I love Damasio's drive to fit his scientific work into a philosophical overview, which is both theoretical and personal.

Damasio is originally Portuguese, and I can't help feeling that he is driven in part by a sense of kinship with a man who might have shared some of his cultural experiences, albeit separated by centuries. Much of the research on Spinoza is in Portuguese, showing some intensive effort. Spinoza was a Portuguese Jew whose family fled the inquisition for a relatively tolerant Holland.

There Spinoza participated in the Jewish community, but eventually was alienated from it, because he had attained views of his own, characteristic of the Enlightenment. Thus he moved from the Portuguese "Bento" to the Hebrew "Baruch" to the Latin "Benedictus" (all meaning "blessed", like "Barack" from Swahili and Arabic, I can't help adding).

Spinoza's odyssey is inspiring, as is Damasio's obvious admiration of it, and his own efforts to model his own life as a scientist on a comparable philosophical framework. As I get older (smile), I love it when science and philosophy get personal. (less)

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Stephen

Nov 12, 2009Stephen rated it it was ok

This book is, by turns, interesting and frustrating. Damasio knows his stuff when it comes to the details of neuroscience (which is to be expected because this is his field) and the details he supplies are fascinating. However, he overreaches himself when he tries to fit all these separate details into his one-size-fits-all model of how emotions and feelings interact together in a living brain; everything becomes ‘evidence’ for his overarching theory. Just because we have the one word ‘feelings’ does not necessarily mean that joy, sorrow, envy, hate, happiness and the like all work the same way or have the same origins. Also he is often unclear as to whether the processes he describes are operating at a conscious or unconscious level. Then at one point in the book he almost implies that cells themselves are conscious. When it comes to evolution he again takes things too far with the equivalent of ‘just so’ stories to describe how emotions and feelings arose.

The parallel thread in the book concerns the seventeenth century Dutch philosopher Spinoza. Many interesting and fascinating details of his life and work are presented, but Damasio again tries to shoehorn these ideas into his own overblown model of brain function. Spinoza’s thoughts are fascinating but of course he knew nothing of neurobiology, his ideas need to be understood in relation to his own time, in context with the philosophers that came before him and those writing alongside him.

Overall, the book’s language is also rather dense and too flowery. On the whole, if you have time to spare, you will find some interesting facts here, both about how the brain works and about Spinoza. However, be prepared to wade through pages of overblown pet theories that the evidence just doesn’t support. You may well find the same information more clearly presented elsewhere.

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Melinda Olivas

Nov 08, 2010Melinda Olivas rated it liked it  ·  review of another edition

I found the book “Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain” by Antonio Damasio an interesting look at the relationship between emotions, feelings, and the brain. I enjoyed reading about Damasio’s almost obsession-like fascination with the philosopher Spinoza. Damasio found Spinoza’s beliefs about feelings, passions, and emotions influential and relevant to his work as a neurologist. I also enjoyed that Damasio included a bit of philosophical flavor throughout the whole of this book.

As a current doctoral student in clinical psychology, I found Damasio’s unique perspective on emotions and feelings interesting, though debatable. I read the book with an open mind yet could not help but think of my clients as their difficulties with feelings, affect, and emotion regulation are relevant to the topic. Damasio believes that emotions are a person’s external or observable expressions of feelings, and that feelings are the hidden, in-the-mind, non-observable experiences. He believes that emotions come before feelings which implies ideas such as one making a facial expression that typically implies “happiness”, then their internal state will also be happy. I find this idea hard to grasp because of the simplicity it suggests regarding emotion regulation. If being “happy” was this easy there would be little need for therapists or clinicians in general. On the other hand, some psychotherapy orientations, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, lend themselves to the idea that one’s internal experience of feelings are inter-dependent on one’s behaviors and thoughts. If one agrees with Damasio’s perspective, it would be interesting to see how a depressed client is affected by “pretending” to be happy.

A section that I also enjoyed reading and find applicable to my work as a clinician is that of joy and sorrow. Although Damasio breaks down these two feelings into neurological processes, he does talk about how a person’s choices are influenced by their past experience of the joy or sorrow feeling that they associate it with. Damasio wrote, “A gut feeling can suggest that you refrain from a choice that, in the past, has led to negative consequences, and it can do so ahead of your own regular reasoning telling you precisely the same ‘do not’ ” (147). Many clients seek therapy for problems they have related to attachment or interpersonal skills. These problems can be explained and understood in light of Damasio’s belief because they have dealt with similar situations and had negative consequences in their past. For example, if a person has been hurt as a result of an unfaithful partner and finds they can no longer trust people, it is their “gut feeling” that reminds them not to make the same bad choice and they find themselves alone and uhappy. Damasio suggests that this “gut feeling” or “hunches…steer our behavior in the proper direction” (150). Psychotherapy is a very beneficial and helpful resource for exploring, processing, and challenging the negative “gut feelings”.

I found this book to be interesting, applicable to clinical psychology, and, for the most part, easy to read. I liked his style of writing, was entertained with his fascination with Spinoza, and inspired by his passion for neuroscience.

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Randal Samstag

Oct 28, 2012Randal Samstag rated it did not like it

Shelves: philosophy

For a devastating critique of this book see: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/23/boo....

Quoted from the review, by philosopher of mind, Colin McGinn:

"I have two things to say about this theory: it is unoriginal, and it is false. As anyone even remotely familiar with this topic is aware, what Damasio presents here is known as the ''James-Lange'' theory of emotion, after the two psychologists, William James and Carl G. Lange, who thought of it independently in the 1880's. Not once does Damasio refer to it by this name, and he makes only very cursory reference to James's version of the theory. He generally writes as if he were advancing a startling discovery, mere hints of which, with the benefit of hindsight, can be extracted from Spinoza and James. In fact, the theory is a standard chestnut of psychology textbooks, a staple of old-style behaviorist psychology, with its emphasis on outer behavior at the expense of inner feeling.

The errors of the theory are chiefly those of exaggeration. While it is a truism that whistling a happy tune can improve your mood so that external actions can initiate a change of emotional state, it by no means follows that feelings play no causal role in the production of behavior. And it is quite clear that an emotion can shape the course of a person's actions over time, as when someone stays in bed all day because he feels depressed. We do often cry because we are sad -- even though the crying can work to augment the feeling. There is causal interplay between feelings and their bodily expression, rather than a one-way dependence. The fact, cited by Damasio, that a bodily fear response can precede a conscious feeling of fear does not show that once the feeling is present it has no causal control over behavior -- and it clearly does, as with fleeing and hiding.

What about the idea that an emotion is a bodily perception? Suppose I am delighted that my son has become a doctor. I may have various sensations in my body that express this emotion -- say, lightness in my limbs and a warm feeling in my viscera. But the object of my delight is not my body; it is my son's success. My bodily sensations are directed to my body and my emotion is directed to my son. Therefore my emotion cannot be identical to my bodily sensations -- for the two have different objects. This refutes the James-Lange theory.

As Wittgenstein remarks in his classic discussion of this theory, the horribleness of my grief when someone I love dies cannot be explained as the horribleness of the sensations I feel in my body. It results, rather, from the horribleness of what my grief is about; my bodily sensations may not be particularly horrible in themselves. Nor do we try to assuage someone's grief by attending to her bodily sensations; instead we talk about what she is grieving over. The James-Lange theory fails because it ignores what philosophers call the intentionality of emotion -- that is, what emotions are about, their representational content, which are generally things outside the body. The theory tries to reduce an emotion to its sensory bodily symptoms, but these symptoms have the wrong kind of intentionality: the state of the body, not the state of the external world."

I would never take this guy (Damasio) seriously. (less)

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Elizabeth

Nov 10, 2010Elizabeth rated it really liked it

In Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain Antonio Damasio uses neurological and physiological markers to delineate the process of emotions and feelings. Then, he further integrates these scientific findings with social studies. This in and of itself was quite impressive and perhaps demonstrates the fields (e.g., what individuals call the soft sciences and hard sciences) coming together and taking a different integrative perspective of how mental health can be conceptualized.

Of particular interest to me was when Damasio indicated that problems in the environment prompt self-preserving behavior. This perspective is very much in line with behaviorist thinking. However, on a more psychodynamic note, it makes me think about how personality becomes engrained, especially in the case of individuals with personality disorders. It makes me think about how crucial early relationships with significant others are. For example, an individual with antisocial personality disorder lacks empathy for others, because the individual more than likely experienced abuse, neglect, modeling of antisocial behavior in early relationships with significant others, and/or had a parent with an inability to set healthy boundaries (e.g., overindulgent parent). Conceptualizing psychopathology from the perspective that most behavior is aimed at self-preservation helps me conceptualize clients that may be difficult to work with from a different, perhaps more empathic, perspective. Additionally, conceptualizing all behavior as self-preserving behavior also makes one aware of the behaviors that our client’s pull from us and how therapy can serve as a problem or change in the environment that may prompt our clients to change their behaviors.

Also of clinical relevance was Damasio’s conceptualization that feelings serve as information about internal states of what is happening within the individual. This reminds me of client’s that wish that uncomfortable feelings would dissipate and go through quite a number of measures to ignore, avoid, and not feel unwanted feelings. The amount of energy that they expend in that process at times is significant. In the avoidance of unwanted feelings sometimes more emotional damage emanates rather than in accepting feelings as indicators that something in going on within. Perhaps, offering a metaphor of an unpleasant feeling being akin to a physical marker of pain (e.g., a person cutting their finger and blood the pain resulting from the experience) would help our clients come to accept some of their unpleasant feelings. The conceptualizing of the emotional healing process within the framework of a physical injury may also help our clients more holistically integrate and accept their feelings.

Overall, the book was full of food for thought. It was filled with clinical relevance and is worthy of keeping on a shelf as a book that could be re-visited for varying purposes (e.g., a clearer understanding of how neurology and psychopathology emanate in different cases, in helping conceptualizing certain clients, and so forth).

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cole

Jan 13, 2010cole rated it did not like it

If you buy the Enlightenment belief that scientific truth can be obtained and man made better for it, then take my review with a grain of salt. If you are convinced of the fact that using the terms "bad" and "human nature" in the same sentence is pretty acceptable, you won't like this too much.

Damasio's science seems interesting enough and does pose some engaging questions. However, there are far too many condescending logical leaps for me to stomach. The low point came with the rather absurd statement that placing self-preservation and it's biological mechanisms at the center of human ethical systems was in no way problematic, as if that hadn't been the ostensible justification for a horde of repugnant choices, national efforts and reform programs throughout history. This was far too much Nietzsche in sheeps clothing and far too little virtue.

As a classmate noted, the parts about Spinoza are interesting. (less)

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Michael

Dec 04, 2017Michael rated it it was ok

Looking for Spinoza is essentially two books wishing it could be one. The first half covers the neurobiology of emotional life. Damasio lays out an interesting overview for a lay reader of how the brain operates as a self regulatory system, connecting this self-regulation to emotions and feelings. The second half is essentially a slim biography of Spinoza. Unfortunately, for a man whose major life events consisted of excommunication, writing philosophy and grinding lenses until he died, there isn't much that Damasio could add to our knowledge of Spinoza. Damasio clearly wants to do more with Spinoza's philosophy and Neurobiology, he just does not have the command of the philosophy to pull it off. (less)

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Divya Palevski

Jan 26, 2016Divya Palevski rated it liked it

I liked this book but found some parts weary to read. When Damasio writes about the neurology of the feeling brain , it is easy to assemble the author's love for his subject. However, found his sentence structuring elaborately wounded ( I had to read some sentences twice) and repetitive.

But that being said, his monolistic view of mind/ brain and body and his reverence towards Baruch Spinoza is admirable. I believe in Monolism and the idea of feelings variably related to the homeostasis of the body makes great sense. (less)

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Charles Daney

Feb 15, 2018Charles Daney rated it liked it

Shelves: neuroscience, reviewed, psychology, biography, philosophy

The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio writes pleasant, elegant prose. Unfortunately, aside from that, this book, first published in 2003, is somewhat of a disappointment. The main concern of his scientific career has been to understand the mechanisms underlying "emotions" and "feelings". He has given good accounts of this subject in two previous books: Descartes' Error (1994) and The Feeling of What Happens (1999). What is good about Damasio's writing, especially in the earlier books, is that he doesn't do much dumbing down of the material, by avoiding technical terms, to appeal to the "general reader", as too many "science writers" do.

The book reviewed here, however, doesn't cover the subject in as much depth as the previous books, and in particular it doesn't very well illuminate the distinction - which the author insists upon - between "emotion" and "feeling". It appears that Damasio wanted to write on what interested him about Spinoza, but didn't have enough to fill a whole book. So the first five chapters (about 3/4 of the total text) are devoted mostly to the neuropsychological issues, while the final two chapters are on Spinoza, and are connected only tenuously with the rest of the book.

Damasio has championed the idea that human consciousness and other psychological phenomena - emotions and feelings especially - aren't rooted primarily in the brain, but instead are shaped by physiological processes going on throughout the whole body. This may be surprising to some, but it's not an especially radical idea. It makes good evolutionary sense. An animal's main evolutionary objective is to be good at survival and reproduction. Emotions (at least in animals with more than a rudimentary nervous system) exist to motivate an individual to seek things that favor survival and reproduction (shelter, food, sex), and to avoid threatening things (excessive heat or cold, predators, reproductive rivals). They seem to form a bridge between the sensory and motor systems. In animals with a developed cerebral cortex, like humans, emotions work partly through cognition.

Note that the words "emotion" and "motivation" share the same linguistic root: the Indo-European MEUh-. Emotions, whether conscious or not, are what motivates animal behavior. Emotions in general and feelings in particular allow humans to make critical decisions quickly, when the situation requires that. It seems unlikely that inhabitants of the planet Vulcan, like Mr. Spock of Star Trek, could have successfully evolved without the help of emotions. (Though perhaps they became able to suppress them at a later stage.)

I wish Damasio had been clearer in this book about his distinction between emotions and feelings. Are things like "fear", "pleasure", "shame", etc. emotions or feelings? Most people, I think, might use either term for them. But for Damasio, it seems, an emotion is represented in the brain only in certain specific regions, and may or may not appear in consciousness. For instance, a person (who is capable of consciousness) may have a "je ne sais quoi" sensation of fear on encountering an animal or object or situation with which the individual has had a negative experience in the past, even if that has been forgotten. The person will still avoid the particular stimulus without giving much thought as to why. A feeling, on the other hand, enters consciousness and additionally involves parts of the brain related to deliberate behavior. ("I like (or don't like) this whatever and want to remain (or not remain) exposed to it.") Naturally, if an animal doesn't have "consciousness" in the human sense - a worm, say - the animal can still be said to have "emotions" if it is motivated to approach or avoid certain things, for its own benefit. At any rate, that's how I interpret Damasio's thesis, and if I've misinterpreted it, a lack of clarity may be the reason.

As far as the two chapters on Spinoza are concerned, they may be the most interesting part of the book in spite of their brevity. He lived from 1632 to 1677, entirely in Holland. This was mostly before what historians consider the "Age of Enlightenment", which flowered in the 18th century. Spinoza, however, is generally considered one of its earliest avatars. He was born into a moderately prosperous Jewish family, but eventually renounced both his material and religious heritage. Temperamentally he was reclusive, yet congenial with others in his limited social sphere. He came to reject both Judaism and Christianity, evidently for both philosophical reasons (of which see below) as well as revulsion at the irrationality and cruelty of both religious traditions. Fortunately for Spinoza, he lived in Holland, which at the time featured the least intolerant variety of Christianity. Nevertheless, his main philosophical work, the Ethics, was published only posthumously - and was almost immediately banned by both secular and religious (Jewish, Catholic, and Calvinist) authorities because of its "heretical" philosophy. Later leading philosophers of the Enlightenment (e. g. Locke, Hume, Leibniz, and Kant) apparently studied the Ethics - but were fearful of acknowledging its influence on them. At least Spinoza managed to escape the fates of other "heretics" like Giordano Bruno and Galileo.

If you're interested in much discussion of Spinoza's philosophy, the present book is disappointing on this too, for at least three reasons. First, Damasio alludes in passing only to a few places in Spinoza's writing that deal with the psychology of emotions and feelings. Although he suggests that Spinoza foreshadowed current research findings, Spinoza's musings on these issues, however prescient, can't be much more than lucky guesses about what neuroscience now knows. Second, Damasio is wise not to deal at length with Spinoza's take on philosophical questions like "free will" and the "mind-body" problem. That's because the occupation of philosophers is to argue endlessly about issues that can only be satisfactorily resolved by scientific investigation. Third, Spinoza's opinions on religion aren't crystal clear. It's true that Spinoza was perhaps the most noteworthy Western philosopher of the preceding 1500 or so years to flatly reject dogma of the polluted swamp of traditional religion. However, arguments (among philosophers who care about such things) are still going on as to whether Spinoza's opinions actually represented atheism, agnosticism, "panentheism", or "pantheism" (which has generally been attributed to Spinoza). (less)

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Jorge Hurtado

Aug 06, 2020Jorge Hurtado rated it it was amazing

I didn't know the author before, but now I admire him.

Antonio Damasio is not just a scientist, he is also a humanist; he is a philosopher. He understands the deep of what he talks about and never claims to have the truth (as others claim) of difficult issues

such as feelings, consciousness, moral values,...

As the tittle suggests, the author talks about how emotions work, from a neurobiological perspective, and admires the evolutionary process that had to take place in order to reach a point of complexity able to host those feelings. He let you see how emotions are the key component of humanity, the main thing which makes us do something, instead of nothing.

A scientist of today would stop there, and limit himself, but he goes further. He speculates about a moral system based on those feelings, a moral system which should optimize survival and well-being of humanity. That's when he talks about Spinoza, interpreting his philosophy and ethic with the scientific knowledge of today, realising the level of truth that Spinoza reached thanks to his life, culture, family, friends, introspection, intelligence,...

Full of biography and references, this is a masterpiece, not just because the truth it holds, but because the humility and bravery with which the author tackle difficult problems with the knowledge of today, in order to motivate the search of tomorrow. (less)

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Dennis Littrell

Jul 19, 2019Dennis Littrell rated it it was amazing

Humanism from a neurobiologist

Part of this is a celebration of the 17th century Rationalist philosopher Baruch Spinosa whose world view is very much in concert with that of Antonio Damasio. Spinosa's demolition of Descartes' mind/body duality is the thread that Damasio takes up and weaves into this graceful and agreeable narrative. Furthermore, it is Spinosa's recognition that we are part of, and contained within, nature and not materially different from nature (another of Descartes' errors) that attracts Damasio's admiration for Spinosa.

Leaving aside this framing device I want to concentrate on Damasio's argument about the nature of humans based on his experience as a neurobiologist, which is really the core of this book.

Damasio recognizes that feelings, like consciousness itself, are perceptions, not states of mind. What is being perceived is the state of the body itself, and what is doing the perceiving is the brain. In this understanding--and I think it is a felicitous one--the brain operates as a sixth sense, something like the so-called third eye of the Hindus. It is not, of course, a supernatural sixth sense, but a sense organ in addition to the other five whose job it is to perceive the homeostasis of the organism, a sense organ that looks within instead of without. Instead of the sensation of color or sound, the sixth sense perceives emotions.

Of course the Van Allen Distinguished Professor of Neurology at the University of Iowa Medical Center does not use such a term as "sixth sense" nor would he allude to the third eye of the Hindus. He is a neurologist, a scientist and (despite his demurral) a philosopher. I mention these other ways of "knowing" in an attempt to provide a larger context for Damasio's argument.

This argument is not original with Damasio (and I don't think he would claim it is). In one sense it is derivative from the growing understanding that consciousness itself, a kind of meta-awareness, is actually a perception. Damasio's "feelings" are part of this consciousness.

A further part of Damasio's argument is that emotions are prior to feelings. First there is an emotionally competent stimulus (ECS). Then there is an "appraisal" of that stimulus which results in appropriate and automatic emotion, followed by feelings based on a perception of the emotion and the external situation. This is on-going, and we usually don't notice it. In extreme cases, such as danger, our feelings are more pronounced. In Damasio's scheme, an ECS might be a grizzly bear come upon suddenly while hiking. The "appraisal" would be the recognition that this is a bear, that it is big and it is potentially dangerous. The "emotion" would be all the systemic glandular, chemical and muscular responses in preparation for the flight or fight response. The "feeling" itself would be what we call fear.

Damasio attempts to explain the experience of feelings in anticipation of "naysayers" who contend that such things are eternal mysteries. He makes a distinction between what, say, a Boeing 777 with all its sensing devices might "feel" and how humans feel. The crux of Damasio's distinction is the enormously greater complexity of the biological organism. But this argument, beginning on page 126, is not satisfactory because it does not explain the subjective experience of pain, which is what the "naysayers" are really talking about.

What I think Damasio should say is that we can never know what the Boeing 777 is feeling (or if it is "feeling") since feelings are subjective experiences. They can only be recognized in ourselves (if we have them) and identified with in the report of others. It is the same as trying to explain what the color red looks like to a blind person or how strawberries taste to someone who has never tasted one. Analogies and comparisons may be drawn, but there is no way that I can ever be sure that I feel what you feel or that the subjective nature of any sensuous experience between one entity and another is the same.

In the fourth chapter, "Ever Since Feelings," Damasio attempts to account for how feelings arose in an evolutionary sense. He believes they help complex organisms solve complex problems. (p. 177) "Body-state maps" work automatically for most organisms, but, Damasio argues, with emotions made conscious through the experience of feeling, humans are able to achieve not only a "concern for the individual self" but with "sufficient integration of the now, the past, and the anticipated future" a more effective game plan for survival and well-being. (p. 178) Feelings signal the conscious mind to become involved and this has proven adaptive.

What I think is profound about this argument is how naturally it would have arisen from the evolutionary experience. Before humans and other sophisticated animals arose, most creatures probably made little or no distinction between themselves and their environment. Their responses were mostly automatic and they had no sense of self. Along comes this great leap forward called consciousness and it works because it makes us more effective at protecting ourselves. It also makes us more fearful of death, of course, which is part of the human predicament.

Despite some difficulties, I am very much impressed with Damasio's effort, and I think that his approach from neuroscience and biological evolution, and through the use of scientific experiment, is eons ahead of the old schools in psychology which attempted to understand human beings based on arbitrary models such as psychoanalytic theory or on limited approaches such as behaviorism. But it must be realized (as I'm sure Damasio does) that we are at a tentative stage of understanding. Some even say that we will never be able to completely understand how our brain works. Some even cite Russell's paradox and Godel's proof about the limitations of self-referential systems (the brain/body is such a system) and deny that it is even theoretically possible for us to completely understand ourselves. Maybe only our artifacts, our computers will be able to understand us.

--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”

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