Antonio Damasio

Descartes’ Error Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
Antonio Damasio

Pre Class notes and thoughts

The necessary marriage of emotion and reason in decision making as shown through brain injured patients. An exploration of neurological anatomy and processes and findings and of the implications this has on our understanding of self, of free will, of intellect and of personality. This book is written in relative laymen’s terms as a “discussion” or “conversation” as put by the author.

Introduction
xxii
-he states “I am skeptical of science’s presumption of objectivity and definitiveness”
-the limitations of the human mind prevents us from comprehending our own complexity

4 –“the sand is essential” a description of the story of Phineas Gage and his explosion accident. An obvious metaphor for the book – his theory and explanation of emotion as essential to the intellect or reasoning brain to make a decision – or more importantly the “right” decision. Without the sand or emotion – the blast is misdirected.

10 – “Gage’s example indicated that something in the brain was concerned specifically with unique human properties, amoung them the ability to anticipate the future and plan accordingly within a complex social environment; the sense of responsibility toward the self and others; and the ability to orchestrate one’s survival deliberately, at the command of one’s free will.”

And in damaged or incomplete brains –certain attributes are dissacociated from the other elements, the intellect, memory and otherwise.
A note that points readily to the many connections with previous readings – repeatedly we endeavor to explain free will – will we do so through biology? Damasio writes later in the book that to do so does not reduce the romanticism or authenticity of feelings or personhood – rather it simply provides a platform of understanding of the mechanics of our internal thought processes. What is reality to us is still reality and we are still we.
Essential question: are free will, altruism, love, etc simply properties of the human brain?

Also interesting was the overheard conversation in my favourite reading spot concerning “actual choices” ie. free will. For instance do we choose to have babies because it is genetically predestined to be desired or are we actually weighing the options and making a real choice based on our individual want. Cant think of a better example right now but the premise of being aware of when we make choices rather than being under the influence of some sort of DNA determined urge or even of some sort of brain chemical – makes for a lot of questions to be asked of the self.

12 “When I point, look where I point, not at my finger.” Warren McCulloch a neurophysiologist.

15. What determines the contribution of a given brain unit to the operation of the system to which it belongs is not just the structure of the unit but also its place in the system.

23 an interesting passage on individual topographic variation of the brain – somehow is but shouldn’t be surprising that our brains are as individualized as our faces.

30 “In short, the brain is a supersystem of systems.”

53 KEY –“The goal of the neuropsychological enterprise is thus to explain how certain cognitive operations and their components relate to neural systems and their components. Neuropsychology is not, or should not be, about finding the brain “localization” for a “symptom” or “syndrome”.

88. important “body and brain for an indissociable organism”
95 the integrated mind /time binding

97 -99

“we do not know and it is improbable that we will ever know what “absolute reality” is like.
The fascinating and disturbing notion that our individual perception of the world is not universal.

Subjectivity of consciousness

The “infamous homunculus, a little person inside our brain perceiving and thinking about the images the brain forms. A key indicator of a faulty theory and a creepy little guy.

100 Storing images and Forming images in Recall

a note on the visual imagery section – check out the posted link on the vOICe program that is used by blind persons to translate sound into imagery within the brain. The program translates imagery into variant levels of sound to become a language of sight for the ears. There is a woman who uses this program hooked up to a camera on eyewear and she is able to perceive the world through visual imagery without the use of her eyes.
Amazing! The tests on her brain during this process show that the visual parts of her brain were activated when she was using the device.

“dispositional representations”

118 KEY “It is not only the separation between mind and body that is mythical: the separation between mind and body is probably just as fictional. The mind is embodied, in the full sense of the term, not just embrained.

120 one can die of a broken heart.
123 the pineal gland, inside which Descartes once sought to imprison the nonphysical soul.
124 a powerful connection between social phenomena and biological phenomena
culture and civilization could not have arisen from single individuals and thus cannot be reduced to biological mechanisms – rather the accumulation of collectives of individuals interacting in specific environments.

125 – biology of altruism and free will

129 William James on the body and emotion

136 “what the acquired dispositional representations embody is your unique experience of such relations in your life”

-mounting discussion on selfhood and subjectivity – his explanations of visual imagery, emotional states, and systems of information gathering and processing begin to offer a picture of how we as an organism construct our sense of self and who we understand ourselves to be

140 “the motor control for an emotion related movement sequence is not in the same location as the control for a voluntary act”

142 inability to fake a true smile – physiologically difference between real and fake versions

147 – descriptions of chronic state of depression “positive and active anquish” –James

150 Varieties of Feelings/Feelings of Basic Universal Emotions/Feelings of Subtle Universal Emotions/Background Feelings

155 – “Our individual indentity is anchored on this island of illusory living sameness against which we can be aware of myriad other things that manifestly change around the organism.”

159 “emotions and feelings are considered elusive entities, unfit to share the stage with the tangible contents of the thoughts they nonetheless qualify”

NOTE – repetitive apologetic passages – where he states that these theories do diminish romance/authenticity/value, etc of the feelings, of the individual or the experiences and certainly not the self or the spirit/soul – grande finale.
169 sigh. “We all know creative scientists and artists whose social sense is a disgrace and who regularly harms themselves and others with their behavior.”

188 Intuition theory 189 creative process /art/science

211 “to know does not necessarily mean to feel – literally (skin conductor tests)

226 “a normal mind will happen only if those circuits contain basic representations of the organism, and continue monitoring the states of the organism in action”

I, Organism. So we must have bodily awareness to have a sense of self and we must continually update this awareness – and we are this body, we are “embodied”.

240 “an evanescent reference state”