The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness [Paperback]

As you read this, at some level you're aware that you're reading, thanks to a standard human feature commonly referred to as consciousness. What is it--a spiritual phenomenon, an evolutionary tool, a neurological side effect? The best scientists love to tackle big, meaningful questions like this, and neuroscientist Antonio Damasio jumps right in with The Feeling of What Happens, a poetic examination of interior life through lenses of research, medical cases, philosophical analysis, and unashamed introspection. Damasio's perspective is, fortunately, becoming increasingly common in the scientific community; despite all the protestations of old-guard behaviorists, subjective consciousness is a plain fact to most of us and the demand for new methods of inquiry is finally being met.

These new methods are not without rigor, though. Damasio and his colleagues examine patients with disruptions and interruptions in consciousness and take deep insights from these tragic lives while offering greater comfort and meaning to the sufferers. His thesis, that our sense of self arises from our need to map relations between self and others, is firmly rooted in medical and evolutionary research but stands up well to self-examination. His examples from the weird world of neurology are unsettling yet deeply humanizing--real people with serious problems spring to life in the pages, but they are never reduced to their deficits. The Feeling of What Happens captures the spirit of discovery as it plunges deeper than ever into the darkest waters yet. --Rob Lightner --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Tackling a great complex of questions that poets, artists and philosophers have contemplated for generations, Damasio (Descartes' Error) examines current neurological knowledge of human consciousness. Significantly, in key passages he evokes T.S. Eliot, Shakespeare and William James. In Eliot's words, consciousness is "music heard so deeply/ That it is not heard at all." It, like Hamlet, begins with the question "Who's there?" And Damasio holds that there is, as James thought, a "stream of" consciousness that utilizes every part of the brain. Consciousness, argues Damasio, is linked to emotion, to our feelings for the images we perceive. There are in fact several kinds of consciousness, he says: the proto-self, which exists in the mind's constant monitoring of the body's state, of which we are unaware; a core consciousness that perceives the world 500 milliseconds after the fact; and the extended consciousness of memory, reason and language. Different from wakefulness and attention, consciousness can exist without language, reason or memory: for example, an amnesiac has consciousness. But when core consciousness fails, all else fails with it. More important for Damasio's argument, emotion and consciousness tend to be present or absent together. At the height of consciousness, above reason and creativity, Damasio places conscience, a word that preceded conciousness by many centuries. The author's plain language and careful redefinition of key points make this difficult subject accessible for the general reader. In a book that cuts through the old nature vs. nurture argument as well as conventional ideas of identity and possibly even of soul, it's clear, though he may not say so, that Damasio is still on the side of the angels. Agent, Michael Carlisle; 9-city author tour. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

In his breathtaking Descartes's Error, Damasio linked emotion and feeling to reason. Now he links them to consciousness itself, showing that "consciousness begins as the feeling of what happens" when we see a dazzling shaft of sunlight or feel its heat on our skin. Damasio dazzles us, too, writing with an authority backed by years of research yet so lucidly that we feel it is child's play. (LJ 9/1/99)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Neurologist Damasio explained why emotions are essential to our survival in Descartes's Error (1994). Now, in another paradigm-shifting performance, he seeks to delineate the nature of consciousness and the biological source of our sense of self. Damasio approaches these elusive and tantalizing subjects with assurance and palpable excitement, aligning theory with life, as Oliver Saks does, by chronicling the poignant yet instructive experiences of people suffering neurological disorders. His goal is to understand how we cross the "threshold that separates being from knowing"; that is, how we not only know things about the world, via our senses, but how we are aware simultaneously of a self that is experiencing this "feeling of what happens." Drawing on his fluent understanding of the workings of the brain and of evolution, Damasio conjectures the existence of two levels of consciousness: a core consciousness and self, and an extended consciousness and an autobiographical self. He then postulates the crucial roles emotion, memory, and "wordless storytelling" play in our existence. At its base, Damasio concludes, consciousness means that we feel both pain and pleasure; in its higher manifestations, it enables us to transcend and articulate these feelings through language, creativity, and conscience. Donna Seaman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

The most intriguing unsolved problem in psychology may be the origin of consciousness; here, a noted neurologist proposes that the root of the answer lies in emotion. In Descartes' Error (1994), Damasio argued that the attempt to treat reason and emotion as separate entities was a profound mistake. Now he argues that the body's ability to sense and react to its own processes and its environment holds the key to consciousness. The problem of consciousness can be broken down into two related problems: how the brain engenders images of the outside world and how it engenders a sense of self. In other words, we need to know not only how the brain creates a ``movie'' from its sensory data, but also how it generates the ``audience'' that watches the movie. Damasio distinguishes between core consciousness, the nonverbal awareness of one's state of being, and extended consciousness, which entails a sense of other times and places, and which evolves over the lifetime of the creature possessing it. Damasio argues that most higher organisms possess core consciousness and many possess some form of extended consciousness; but in its highest manifestations, such as art and science, extended consciousness is characteristic of humanity. The author fleshes out his arguments with case histories and our current knowledge of the physiology of the brain. Damasio is particularly concerned to distinguish his views from the classical model of consciousness as a sort of miniature person inside the brain. He insists on the role of emotionthe responses of core consciousness to its experiencesin creating extended consciousness, which in one sense is core consciousness augmented by memory. While his argument demands close attention, its well worth the effort to follow him. Its clear that he has his finger on many of the key issues of the origins and meaning of consciousness in this fascinating study. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

As you read this, at some level you're aware that you're reading, thanks to a standard human feature commonly referred to as consciousness. What is it--a spiritual phenomenon, an evolutionary tool, a neurological side effect? The best scientists love to tackle big, meaningful questions like this, and neuroscientist Antonio Damasio jumps right in with The Feeling of What Happens, a poetic examination of interior life through lenses of research, medical cases, philosophical analysis, and unashamed introspection. Damasio's perspective is, fortunately, becoming increasingly common in the scientific community; despite all the protestations of old-guard behaviorists, subjective consciousness is a plain fact to most of us and the demand for new methods of inquiry is finally being met. These new methods are not without rigor, though. Damasio and his colleagues examine patients with disruptions and interruptions in consciousness and take deep insights from these tragic lives while offering greater comfort and meaning to the sufferers. His thesis, that our sense of self arises from our need to map relations between self and others, is firmly rooted in medical and evolutionary research but stands up well to self-examination. His examples from the weird world of neurology are unsettling yet deeply humanizing--real people with serious problems spring to life in the pages, but they are never reduced to their deficits. The Feeling of What Happens captures the spirit of discovery as it plunges deeper than ever into the darkest waters yet. (Amazon.com Review - Rob Lightner )

Tackling a great complex of questions that poets, artists and philosophers have contemplated for generations, Damasio (Descartes' Error) examines current neurological knowledge of human consciousness. Significantly, in key passages he evokes T.S. Eliot, Shakespeare and William James. In Eliot's words, consciousness is "music heard so deeply/ That it is not heard at all." It, like Hamlet, begins with the question "Who's there?" And Damasio holds that there is, as James thought, a "stream of" consciousness that utilizes every part of the brain. Consciousness, argues Damasio, is linked to emotion, to our feelings for the images we perceive. There are in fact several kinds of consciousness, he says: the proto-self, which exists in the mind's constant monitoring of the body's state, of which we are unaware; a core consciousness that perceives the world 500 milliseconds after the fact; and the extended consciousness of memory, reason and language. Different from wakefulness and attention, consciousness can exist without language, reason or memory: for example, an amnesiac has consciousness. But when core consciousness fails, all else fails with it. More important for Damasio's argument, emotion and consciousness tend to be present or absent together. At the height of consciousness, above reason and creativity, Damasio places conscience, a word that preceded conciousness by many centuries. The author's plain language and careful redefinition of key points make this difficult subject accessible for the general reader. In a book that cuts through the old nature vs. nurture argument as well as conventional ideas of identity and possibly even of soul, it's clear, though he may not say so, that Damasio is still on the side of the angels. Agent, Michael Carlisle; 9-city author tour. (Publishers Weekly )

Widely praised for his innovative scientific thinking and elegant writing, Antonio Damasio achieves a new understanding of consciousness by asking-and answering-profound questions: How is it that we know what we know? How is it that our conscious and private minds have a sense of self? A gifted medical clinician with decades of caring for patients with brain damage, a great scientific thinker, and an extraordinary writer, Damasio offers a new understanding of the biological roots of consciousness and its role in survival. Damasio's work on feeling and emotion forever joins our minds and bodies, offering an arrestingly original way of understanding what it is to be human. After reading Damasio's landmark, Descartes' Error, Jonas Salk wrote, "You will never again look at yourself or another without wondering what goes on behind the eyes that so meet." As to The Feeling of What Happens, the New York Times wrote, "Unlike any other book here, it will change your experience of yourself."

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.