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5.0 out of 5 stars Humanism from a neurobiologist, December 17, 2003

By 

Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (Paperback)

Part of this is a celebration of the 17th century Rationalist philosopher Baruch Spinosa

whose world view is very much in concert with that of Antonio Damasio. Spinosa's 

demolition of Descartes' mind/body duality is the thread that Damasio takes up and 

weaves into this graceful and agreeable narrative. Furthermore, it is Spinosa's 

recognition that we are part of, and contained within, nature and not materially 

different from nature (another of Descartes' errors) that attracts Damasio's admiration

for Spinosa.

Leaving aside this framing device I want to concentrate on Damasio's argument about 

the nature of humans based on his experience as a neurobiologist, which is really the 

core of this book.

Damasio recognizes that feelings, like consciousness itself, are perceptions, not states 

of mind. What is being perceived is the state of the body itself, and what is doing the 

perceiving is the brain. In this understanding--and I think it is a felicitous one--the brain

operates as a sixth sense, something like the so-called third eye of the Hindus. 

It is not, of course, a supernatural sixth sense, but a sense organ in addition to the 

other five whose job it is to perceive the homeostasis of the organism, a sense organ 

that looks within instead of without. Instead of the sensation of color or sound, 

the sixth sense perceives emotions.

Of course the Van Allen Distinguished Professor of Neurology at the University of Iowa 

Medical Center does not use such a term as "sixth sense" nor would he allude to the 

third eye of the Hindus. He is a neurologist, a scientist and (despite his demurral) 

a philosopher. I mention these other ways of "knowing" in an attempt to provide a 

larger context for Damasio's argument.

This argument is not original with Damasio (and I don't think he would claim it is). 

In one sense it is derivative from the growing understanding that consciousness itself, 

a kind of meta-awareness, is actually a perception. Damasio's "feelings" are part of this

consciousness.

A further part of Damasio's argument is that emotions are prior to feelings. 

First there is an emotionally competent stimulus (ECS). Then there is an "appraisal" of 

that stimulus which results in appropriate and automatic emotion, followed by feelings 

based on a perception of the emotion and the external situation. 

This is on-going, and we usually don't notice it. In extreme cases, such as danger, 

our feelings are more pronounced. In Damasio's scheme, an ECS might be a grizzly bear 

come upon suddenly while hiking. The "appraisal" would be the recognition that this is 

a bear, that it is big and it is potentially dangerous. The "emotion" would be all the 

systemic glandular, chemical and muscular responses in preparation for the flight 

or fight response. The "feeling" itself would be what we call fear.

Damasio attempts to explain the experience of feelings in anticipation of "naysayers"

who contend that such things are eternal mysteries. He makes a distinction between 

what, say, a Boeing 777 with all its sensing devices might "feel" and how humans feel.

The crux of Damasio's distinction is the enormously greater complexity of the biological

organism. But this argument, beginning on page 126, is not satisfactory because it does

not explain the subjective experience of pain, which is what the "naysayers" are really 

talking about.

What I think Damasio should say is that we can never know what the Boeing 777 is 

feeling (or if it is "feeling") since feelings are subjective experiences.

They can only be recognized in ourselves (if we have them) and identified with in the 

report of others. It is the same as trying to explain what the color red looks like to 

a blind person or how strawberries taste to someone who has never tasted one.

Analogies and comparisons may be drawn, but there is no way that I can ever be sure 

that I feel what you feel or that the subjective nature of any sensuous experience 

between one entity and another is the same.

In the fourth chapter, "Ever Since Feelings," Damasio attempts to account for how 

feelings arose in an evolutionary sense. He believes they help complex organisms solve

complex problems. (p. 177) "Body-state maps" work automatically for most organisms,

but, Damasio argues, with emotions made conscious through the experience of feeling, 

humans are able to achieve not only a "concern for the individual self" but with 

"sufficient integration of the now, the past, and the anticipated future" a more effective

game plan for survival and well-being. (p. 178) Feelings signal the conscious mind to

become involved and this has proven adaptive.

What I think is profound about this argument is how naturally it would have arisen from 

the evolutionary experience. Before humans and other sophisticated animals arose, 

most creatures probably made little or no distinction between themselves and 

their environment. Their responses were mostly automatic and they had no sense of 

self. Along comes this great leap forward called consciousness and it works because 

it makes us more effective at protecting ourselves. It also makes us more fearful of 

death, of course, which is part of the human predicament.

Despite some difficulties, I am very much impressed with Damasio's effort, and I think 

that his approach from neuroscience and biological evolution, and through the use of 

scientific experiment, is eons ahead of the old schools in psychology which attempted to

understand human beings based on arbitrary models such as psychoanalytic theory or 

on limited approaches such as behaviorism. But it must be realized (as I'm sure Damasio 

does) that we are at a tentative stage of understanding. Some even say that we will 

never be able to completely understand how our brain works. Some even cite Russell's

paradox and Godel's proof about the limitations of self-referential systems (the brain

/body is such a system) and deny that it is even theoretically possible for us 

to completely understand ourselves. Maybe only our artifacts, our computers will be 

able to understand us.