Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain

Recomiendo su lectura.

Our information processing modes--fast and slow--as Daniel Kahneman would have it, are visualised by Antonio Damasio in Descartes' Error as dialogues in the upper and lower compartments of brain profusely looped. Upstairs in the cortices, especially the frontal lobes, images come marked from body or soma; and downstairs, in the brainstem the emotions raise passions. As the situation requires, if there is emergency, the dialogue at downstairs takes action, in other cases the slow and rational decision making occurs upstairs.It is Somatic Marker Hypothesis--images that constitute thoughts of our mind have origins in body, and in addition emotions enter into this process. It is a challenge to Descartes' "thinking stuff"--located in soul.Over three decades, this idea of Antonio Damasio has percolated literary imagination. The writer of the Tomb of Sand, quite explicitly endorses it--the brain is storehouse of memories, the real stuff of thoughts is in body and senses.As a narrative of holistic brain-body interaction, which irresistibly incorporates emotions to reason is also a way to assimilate sociocultural reality. Damasio seems to warn us the way pleasure forms part of economic planning--promoting hedonistic culture.

The content of the book is good but the print itself is really bad: from the cheap textured paper, to the font, ink and print. The font is very small and with the paper and ink quality it makes the letters less legible, making the book hard to read. I get headaches after reading more than 20 min this book. I would suggest to buy the kindle version instead.

Great quality. Doesnt even look used

今ゆっくりと他の本と一笑に読んでいます。少々手ごわそうです。楽しみです。

Very insightful and great food for thought

It was an ordeal to read Damasio‘s book „Descartes‘ Error“.I made the mistake to buy the original version instead of the German translation. It‘s difficult for me to judge another person’s proficiency in English as I am not a native speaker myself. But I had the feeling that Damasio grossly overestimated his ability to write in English. He tries to sound intellectual. But the result is awkward sentence structures and sometimes almost unreadable phrases. An example from p. 242:„In other words, imagine that the third-party ensemble is building a dispositional representation of the self in the process of changing as the organism responds to an object.“Admittedly, it‘s a difficult matter. But obscure writing does not improve its comprehensibility. He might have better written the book in Portuguese and get a good translator.The second big minus of the book is its lack of structure. The outline seems to be fairly good. But in the chapters, Damasio is not keeping focus. The many excursions into side topics and the references to unknown personalities are making things worse. And he constantly writes that he will deal with a subject in more detail in a different section of the book. I was completely lost at times.So I was exhausted when I finally reached the core part of the book: the “somatic marker hypothesis”. It’s a fancy theory that claims that physiological states of the body, such as the heart rate and hormone levels, help the brain to mark events with positive or negative connotations. The thus created ‘emotions’ can enter the level of consciousness to become ‘feelings”. The brain would re-enact in its neurocircuitry the repercussions of these physiological changes whenever a decision needs to be made.I don’t think that this theory ever made its way to mainstream neurobiology. On the one hand, it is common sense that our physical comfort will emotionally mark a situation. On the other hand, I don’t see why the brain needs to re-enact its own reaction to physiological body states to determine if a future scenario has a positive outcome.I found the chapter on Decartes’s alleged error also quite irritating. Damasio’s criticism is a bit too emotional. Descartes lived in the 17th century when the church was still very powerful. He did his best to draw conclusions on the knowledge available at that time. I don’t think you can blame Descartes for a lack of progress in holistic medicine in the 20th century.I had the impression that his book tells less about the alleged error of a renowned 17th century philosopher than about the vanity of a 20th century neuroscientist.

It is a real pleasure to read this kind of scientific writing. Damasio states at the start that he sees the book as a conversation between him and the reader, and interesting conversation, with asides and digressions, is what this book has on offer.Neither too superficial, nor too detailed, with examples to illustrate what he wants to explain, Damasio succeeds in getting his ideas across. I only wish all scientific writing were that clear, interesting, fascinating, and enriching.

What one thinks of Damasio's lovely work, _Descartes' Error_, will largely depend on how interested one is in matters pertaining to the human brain, consciousness and the self. Additionally, one who does not have much of an appetite for technical language will probably not get very fair in this work. Much of Damasio's study is also hypothetical in nature. Therefore, I would not recommend this work to those who have little to no tolerance for abstracta or theoria. But if you are intensely intrigued by the inner workings of the human brain, this book is for you. Damasio initiates his discussion with a fascinating story about Phineas Gage, a man who had a 3 1/2 foot iron rod pass through his head and lived to tell about it. Damasio moves from Gage to other patients who have experienced damage to their frontal lobes and reviews the effect it had on their lives. He argues that reason and emotions are both needed in order for sound judgment or prudence to obtain. Finally, Damasio challenges Cartesian dualism, which posits the anthropological notion of a RES EXTENSA and RES COGITANS. Damasio winds up contending that the "self" which has received so much theoretical attention throughout human history is no doubt neural in nature, unlike Descrates envisioned it. In short, there is no self without a functioning brain in a body. At least, not on this earth. The one drawback that I find with this book is that Damasio does not spend enough time critiquing Cartesian dualism. Nevertheless, the journey that terminates in an analysis of Cartesianism is well worth the ride. Moreover, the author offers an alternative to Descartes' theory that is both compelling and thought-provoking.

Half of this book is really interesting for the layperson who doesn't know much about the workings of the brain. The other half is for people who have studied it extensively. It could work, but fails. I enjoyed the opening couple chapters and many of the examples Demasio gives to support his theory that emotional centres are located at the front of the brain. At least I think this was his theory, I kept getting hopelessly lost and trying to catch up. A brave show, but unless you are very knowledgeable about the workings of the brain and very interested in it, it is hardly worth your time.

It is interesting to hear a scientist talk about emotions having value. This is good approach to complex issue that may never be resolved. Question will always remain, what lies beneath the facts, and can we ever be sure that we didn't alter reality by studying it. Good for people to see into some research that talks of emotions as worthwhile in ever expanding one world order and monochrome lifestyles. Maybe the best foot in the door to introducing joy into your life and those of others (and sorrow and other emotions),

Damasio brings some some fascinating cases to bear on one of the oldest problems in philosophy and psychology. It's a good read and an important subject. It would be a mistake, however, to think that "Descartes' error" was just now being pointed out. In fact, practically no contemporary philosopher worth his or her salt subscribes to the Cartesian two-substance theory of body and mind. In his 1949 masterpiece, The Concept of Mind, Gilbert Ryle argued that Descartes' view was fatally flawed (and he wasn't really the first to point this out, either), and called it the "ghost in the machine" view of the body/mind relationship. If you get right down to it, Descartes himself would agree with Damasio that the emotions are not radically different kinds of things from the reasoning faculties, since he believed that experiencing an emotion was simply another mode of thought, just as drawing an inference is a mode of thought. But Descartes must be used to being a whipping boy by now, 350 years after his death; and the historical perspective aside, Damasio's book is an excellent contribution to scholarship on the effects of emotion on rationality.

In this brilliant, enjoyable book, Damasio demonstrates how being "rational" isn't equivalent to being intelligent. Emotions and "gut feelings" are a big part of the decision making process.It will be an intelligent decision for brain scientists, politicians, philosophers, economists, historians, sociologists, physicians, biologists and Wall Street traders to read and mediate about Damasio's book.Ate la vista Descartes.Paulo Andre, MD