Cheap The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (Book) (Antonio R. Damasio) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness

Excellent Attempt by Damasio to Explain Us to Ourselves
Damasio breaks down into minute, qualitative descriptive detail how the boby/brain functions in humans, and ergo, de facto, many mammals. This book's strength is that Damasio backs up his claims regarding neural anatomy, physiology, and function with specific examples from comparative neuropathology. The book's weakness is that he goes on at length with qualitative descriptions for non-intuitive notions like how the body and brain function as a singular unit, and how emotions and feelings are integral along with body/brain physiology. I say this is the book's weakness because Damasio often bogs down and even tries to describe phenomena that are possibly ineffable, but these attempts at qualitative description are also one of the strengths of this book. This may seem contradictory, but possibly the book would have read differently if the author had stuck to purely quantitative case studies. However he did not, so we get through Damasio's several qualitative, alternate descriptions of singular phenomena an attempt to flesh out and make organic the dry clinical data. On the one hand the book could have been more concise without the extended descriptive sections, on the other hand the book possibly becomes richer and more meaningful because of them; this is up to the reader to decide.

Having said this, the book itself endeavors to demonstrate how consciousness emerges from gross neuroanatomy and physiology. In this Damasio is successful in using neuropathology to define terms such as: homeostasis, consciousness, language, mental images, neuronal maps, cathexis, and hedonic tone (although he does not use these two latter terms explicitly). In all honesty Damasio is very strict about defining his terms. Even though the author writes to a popular audience some knowledge of neuroanatomy and physiology is helpful in reading this book for maximum effect; although this book would be a good beginning for those interested in neurology. In General, the appendix, 'Notes on Mind and Brain,' should probably be read prior to reading the main body of text, especially if the reader is weak in basic neurology. In any event, Damasio is big on forming neologisms although he spends adequate time defining and explaining them. As a neurologist, he always couches his arguments in materialist, Darwinistic terms.

A good way to describe the structure of this often rambling, inchoate book, is to briefly compare it to Dr. Paul McLean's triune brain model. The triune brain posits the reptilian brain (brain stem) as primary, the mammal brain (thalamus, limbic, etc.) as secondary, and the primate brain (cortex) emerging evolutionarily later as tertiary. Damasio uses a similar foundation in positing the proto-self, the core self, and the autobiographical self (I told you there were a lot of neologisms), but he does so in a way that has them all hang together as a synchronous, functioning unit. The proto-self is rather the sense of homeostatic organism state, where the core self is the 'transcient but conscious reference to the individual organism in which events are happening' (to get a taste of Damasio's descriptive effluence), and the autobiographical self is the more cortical, temporal sense of self derived from transcendental yet highly efficacious ideas about past and future. It can all get pretty incoherent, but a complete reading of the book supplies numerous neural correlates which shore up the author's assertions.

In the end it is hard not to recommend this book because, in the reading of it, the author lights upon accurate though transitory descriptions of what it means to have a brain and be conscious. He places emotions and feelings (better see his definitions of these two terms) in their proper place in neural events. Indeed Damasio does well in defining a neural basis for epistemology [p. 130, 137, 138, 296, 305, 316] and idealism [p. 320, 322]. In closing Damasio admits that 'we cannot characterize yet all the biological phenomena that take place between (a) our current description of a neural pattern, at varied neural levels, and (b) our experience of the image that originated in the activity within the neural maps.' Indeed we may never be able accomplish such a correlation absolutely, but in the reading of a book such as this one, and say, Edelman's "A Universe of Consciousness," we see we are not very far off either.

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Remarkable Ideas
I am not a neurologist or a philosopher. The book was in the 'new books' rack at our library and I picked it up out of curiosity. Except for the technical descriptions of different parts of the brain (which were way beyond my ability to absorb) I found the book fascinating!

Within the first few chapters I wanted to write Dr. Damasio and complement him on several of his insights. Having read the book I am dying to find someone to discuss some of the ideas he introduces.

There are dozens of exciting implications to his work. For instance, he talks about consciousness making consciences possible. On a strickly biological level it may be difficult for an organism to have more than one 'self' and survive, but could consciences be the result of a 'self' feeling that more than one organism 'belongs' to it? If we could get past DNA and draw parallels between families or societies and biological organism, a human's self would take on multiple dimensions.

Another tantalizing question - could the 'search for truth' Dr Damasio mentions also be rooted in the homeostatic mechanism? The mind appears to be a very complex information system. It must have 'diagnostic' capabilities to sort out and deal with failing components (we all get hurt, become ill and grow old). Perhaps the search for truth, the process of ferreting out contradictions, is a 'diagnostic' grown to a new level.

It is a very though provoking book.

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Tony tumbles temples
Damasio is not one to let traditional concepts restrain expression of good research. This book overturns many long-held ideas, replacing them with fresh insights on how our minds and bodies interact. Not afraid to tackle the big questions, Damasio offers a rich, substantial analysis of how our brains and bodies interact. That interaction is called our "mind". It's not always easy to see how these two aspects of ourselves are so intimately merged, but Damasio makes it all clear in this book. Why does consciousness feel to us in the manner it does?

Essential to Damasio's analysis of consciousness is his division of it. "Core" consciousness is the brain's "automatic" processes - breathing, heartbeat and the countless other biological functions. "Extended" consciousness is the realm of memory, conception, "thinking" and other aspects we generally associate with the mind. The latter are those featured in most cognitive studies, which he argues are inadequate. Damasio stresses repeatedly that the "core" - "extended" distinction isn't absolute. The links between core and extended consciousness are multiple and varied. They occur in many places in the brain and its association with the rest of the body. He calls for further studies on those interactions as the foundation for a better understanding of full consciousness.

Damasio has particularly fine presentation skills. He puts us at ease in describing his patients, his theories and how they fit together. His patients, after all, are only us with some brain disturbance. Many are people we could encounter daily. They have, however, suffered some malady that disconnects essential parts of their brains' mechanism. Damasio explains in an intimate conversational style what they are suffering. Consciousness in these people has been impaired. The impairment is in the realm of emotion and feeling.

Those two terms are the core of Damasio's thesis. Unlike mainstream cognitive scientists, he separates them, with one being the "public" expression and the other private. Feelings belong to us, where emotions are shared with the world. He is breaking new ground in cognitive studies with his work. The result is a highly detailed book, with intense examination of brain operations. A reader unfamiliar with these topics may find the book increasingly challenging as you progress through the topics. The rewards for persistence, however, are rich. Damasio has provided an innovative scenario of how consciousness is structured. This book deserves serious attention and will remain fundamental for some time.[stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]