António R. Damásio

I love genre-less books...or at least ones that don't fit neatly into one category. This book is chockfull of accessible neuroscience with helpful diagrams, but it is also a memoir of searching, of curiosity, of embracing the past to understand the present. Damasio makes a strong case that Spinoza was ahead of the game in terms of understanding feeling and emotion in terms of a body-mind connection, but this is no dry scientific work of Spinozan-apologetics. Damasio embraces humanistic show more inquiry, contextualizing Spinoza's work in a well-researched (and sometimes suprisingly enjoyably sentimental) study of his life. Anathematized from the Sephardic community in Amsterdam, Spinoza's identity during his life was well-known, but his ideas were sub rosa. The inverse was to be his legacy (257). With this study, Damasio contends that Spinoza was a "forerunner of modern biological thinking" (259) in a very important and specific way. He does not resort to hero-worship--Damasio is clear regarding where he think Spinoza misses the mark. But in this book, the result of his "quiet simmering of hints and reflections" (263-4)--one of the best descriptions of the historian's craft I've encountered--Damasio concludes the big takeaway from Spinoza is that "Science can be combined with the best of a humanist tradition to permit a new approach to human affairs and lead to human flourishing." (283). But he is more expansive yet, making the case that our brain, with all its mappings and homeostatic processes and endeavor for self-preservation, is crucial in carrying out Spinoza's "virtuous life in civitas" (274), and that ultimately, even in the face of all we see in the news, "there simply is no alternative to believing we can make a difference." (288) show less

Homeostasis does the heavy lifting in Antonio Damasio’s account of life, subjectivity, consciousness, and culture. Not the homeostasis that your mom told you about, the one that describes the tendency towards a relatively stable equilibrium of independent elements. It’s that, of course, but it is also much more. For Damasio, homeostasis includes the notion of prevailing. Life, from its earliest beginnings, hasn’t been about maintaining the status quo, it’s been about prevailing. All show more life. From the tiniest bacteria to multi-talented mankind. This redefinition or realization (it could be either) underwrites Damasio’s claim to be setting the standard view of consciousness, subjectivity, even culture, on its head. Consciousness, it turns out, is as embedded in the basic homeostatic drives as is hunger or thirst or what have you. The order goes from the bottom up, not the top down.

Damasio is both a serious researcher and an accomplished writer on his scientific field of study. Much of this book is devoted to detailing the research by himself and others that support his view of homeostasis. Especially important in this regard is the fundamental contribution made by feelings. Feelings are not some flavouring added on to the dish of life. They are essential for homeostatic prevailing to succeed when life encounters a potentially hostile world. Damasio rightly notes the novelty of his position. If he’s right, philosophers and cognitive scientists have some hard thinking ahead.

Where Damasio’s story begins to fray is perhaps where it began. His initial inspiration for this book stemmed from reading Jean Genet’s account of creativity: “Beauty has no other origin but the singular wound, different for each person, hidden or visible.” Could homeostatic prevailing also explain human culture? Perhaps. Certainly if Damasio’s earlier story is close to accurate, there is no reason to think that homeostasis doesn’t underwrite culture. If it underwrites all aspects of life, that would follow. But does saying that get us anywhere? When something explains everything, it ends up not explaining much at all. To which the useful admonishment is — back to the rough ground.

Recommended. show less

Interesting, but not satisfying. I felt that Damasio has a lot to say about consciousness and the self and the brain, but that he didn't really do it in this book. It seemed that he jumped far too quickly from high-level constructions like "mind" to low-level brain areas, and with too little justification. His train of thought seems to go into tunnels and come out at unexpected places.

However, this dissatisfaction might reflect the reader's ignorance more than anything else. Damasio has show more certainly earned a second reading. I want to make sense of this book - the fact that I haven't yet might be my fault, or his, or the fault may lie somewhere in between. show less

The closest I've read to a theory of life and everything in a while. Damasio demonstrates how feelings are mental representations of how close the inner environment of the viscera and the endocrine system is to the ideal of homeostasis. If the organism is in a state conducive to homeostasis then the feelings are of a pleasant nature. If far then of an unpleasant nature. The interesting thing is that the nature of emotion and affect in accompanying the regulation of homeostasis is new in show more terms of evolutionary time. Single celled bacteria don't have feelings, but they do exhibit many of the behaviours that our affect goes along with. Brilliant book - possibly revolutionary. show less