Looking for Spinoza

by Damasio, Antonio R.

• ISBN13: 9780156028714
• ISBN10: 0156028719
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-12-01
• Publisher: Mariner Books

Summary

With scientific expertise and literary facility, bestselling author and world famous neuroscientist Damasio concludes his groundbreaking trilogy in "Looking for Spinoza," exploring the cerebral processes that keep people alive and make life worth living.

Author Biography

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.

Table of Contents

Contents
CHAPTER 1 Enter Feelings
Enter Feelings
The Hague
Looking for Spinoza
Beware
In the Paviljoensgracht

CHAPTER 2 Of Appetites and Emotions
Trust Shakespeare
Emotions Precede Feelings
A Nesting Principle
More on the Emotion-Related Reactions: From Simple Homeostatic Regulation to Emotions-Proper
The Emotions of Simple Organisms
The Emotions-Proper
A Hypothesis in the Form of a Definition
The Brain Machinery of Emotion
Triggering and Executing Emotions
Out of the Blue
The Brain Stem Switch
Out-of-the-Blue Laughter
Laughter and Some More Crying
From the Active Body to the Mind

CHAPTER 3 Feelings
What Feelings Are
Is There More to Feelings than the Perception of Body State?
Feelings Are Interactive Perceptions
Mixing Memory with Desire: An Aside
Feelings in the Brain: New Evidence
A Comment on Related Evidence
Some More Corroborating Evidence
The Substrate of Feelings
Who Can Have Feelings?
Body States versus Body Maps
Actual Body States and Simulated Body States
Natural Analgesia
Empathy
Hallucinating the Body
The Chemicals of Feeling
Varieties of Drug-Induced Felicity
Enter the Naysayers
More Naysayers

CHAPTER 4 Ever Since Feelings
Of Joy and Sorrow
Feelings and Social Behavior
Inside a Decision-Making Mechanism
What the Mechanism Accomplishes
The Breakdown of a Normal Mechanism
Damage to Prefrontal Cortex in the Very Young
What If the World?
Neurobiology and Ethical Behaviors
Homeostasis and the Governance of Social Life
The Foundation of Virtue
What Are Feelings For?

CHAPTER 5 Body, Brain, and Mind
Body and Mind
The Hague, December 2, 1999
The Invisible Body
Losing the Body and Losing the Mind
The Assembly of Body Images
A Qualification
The Construction of Reality
Seeing Things
About the Origins of the Mind
Body, Mind, and Spinoza
Closing with Dr. Tulp

CHAPTER 6 A Visit to Spinoza
Rijnsburg, July 6, 2000
The Age
The Hague, 1670
Amsterdam, 1632
Ideas and Events
The Uriel da Costa Affair
Jewish Persecution and the Marrano Tradition
Excommunication
The Legacy
Beyond the Enlightenment
The Hague, 1677
The Library
Spinoza in My Mind

CHAPTER 7 Who's There?
The Contented Life
Spinoza's Solution
The Effectiveness of a Solution
Spinozism
Happy Endings?

Appendices
Notes
Glossary
Acknowledgments
Index

Copyright © 2003 by Antonio Damasio

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Excerpts

CHAPTER 1Enter FeelingsEnter FeelingsFeelings 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 w

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Excerpted from Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain by Antonio Damasio
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.