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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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