Descartes' Error: How Emotion and Reason Interact in the Human Brain

Nadia: Antonio Damasio is an inspirational thinker and writer. This book is now almost 20 years old but still an essential read.

United Kingdom on Aug 06, 2023

Y Altamimi: Demasio here starts with the classical case of Phineas Gage and how his social and interactive decision making changed after a work related incident. That event changed the man forever. Then Demasio brilliantly takes you on a journey to understand various parts of the brain, their connections and functions without making it difficult for the lay person. He then embarks on explaining disposition al knowledge and images and how they interact. The concept of emotions and feelings takes a serious consideration.
He then puts his hypothesis about ‘self and subjectivity’ to the reader in a beautiful and eloquent way. I am personally blown away by the strength of his reasoning, discussion and the laying out of other thinkers propositions. Finally, he lays out why Descartes error was chosen and what he thinks the error was and what we must do in our current research, daily life and medial practice.
In a nutshell; a master piece of a book on the subjects of mind, awareness, emotions, self and subjectivity.

Australia on Apr 25, 2023

Raghubir Singh Pirta: 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...

India on Aug 22, 2022

Bernie Gourley: I’ve joked that there must be a law requiring any author writing a book on neuroscience for a popular audience to tell the story of Phineas Gage. This book is no exception. Its first couple chapters explore the case of Gage in detail. For those who don’t read much on this subject, Phineas Gage was a foreman for a construction company. By all accounts he was a reliable and solid individual, respected by his employees, trusted by his employer, and beloved by his family. Then one day a four foot tamping rod was blown through his skull – literally, in one side and out the other. One might think that having a chunk of brain skewered out by a steel rod on a gunpowder-fueled ride through the skull would leave one – at best -- a glassy-eyed, drooling, catatonic lump. Surely, a steel rod would wreak more havoc than the narrow needle used in lobotomies? However, what makes Gage’s story fascinating is that the injury resulted in no readily apparent disruption in cognitive function. Gage could still speak fluidly. He retained his memories. He could do math at the same level as before. However, this isn’t to say that the hole through his brain left him unchanged. The even...

United States on May 22, 2018

K. Helme: I bought this book some time in the 90’s, just after it was published; I came across a reference to it recently and when I found it realised that I hadn’t finished it (the bookmark was about half way through). So I started to read it again, and then realised why I had given up the first time. Parts of it – mostly the first part, – is interesting, well written, and informative. It deals largely with incontrovertible findings – descriptions of patients and their peculiarities (including a first chapter that looks at the now often mentioned story of Phineas Gage and his tamping iron). As the book progresses it becomes increasingly hard to read – not just because of the dense prose and lack of clarity of exposition (the diagrams are universally unhelpful), but most importantly due to an extraordinary simplistic underlying theory of emotions and mind. I feel slightly queasy writing this, given the praise that has been heaped upon the book by the likes of the Nobel laureate Hubel, but for what it’s worth, here goes.

The book would serve as a target of the thesis made in 2003 by Bennett and Hacker in their Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, where they...

United Kingdom on Mar 29, 2018

Matthew Miller: After reading Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, I wanted to give an overview of the book, and insight on how to go about reading it. First off, I would suggest this book to anyone who thinks that they are a logical thinker and decision maker that does not let emotion interfere with their decisions. Damasio uses case studies prolifically to support his hypotheses that the mind and body cannot be separated and are in fact an integrated unit.

If you are interested in reading about topics dealing with the mind, and this is the first book that you are choosing to read it will more than likely be a challenging one. Damasio uses numerous of anatomical names for structures and disease names within his book. If you are not familiar with the brain you will be constantly going to Wikipedia or Google to figure out what exactly he is talking about. I would highly suggest starting off with a different book that simply goes over the brain in general before tackling this one. While Descartes' Error can be informative it is much more enlightening and enjoyable if you already know the jargon. That way you will not have to stop reading every other paragraph to go online...

United States on Sep 30, 2013

Sphex: Substance dualism is the idea that our bodies are made out of one kind of stuff and our minds out of another, and Antonio Damasio is having none of it. Cogito ergo sum - perhaps the most famous statement in philosophy - "illustrates precisely the opposite of what I believe to be true about the origins of mind and about the relation between mind and body." Damasio reminds us that we were beings long before we became thinking beings, and, throughout this marvellous book, he argues for the importance of our bodies (not just our brains) in creating our minds. Indeed, "the bedrock of the sense of being alive" comes from just those "evolving representations of the body" that reach consciousness.

Perhaps it's not surprising that a philosopher elevated thinking, and awareness of thinking, to such prominence, but modern science is beginning to tell a far more interesting story about the "real substrates of being". The neat separation between the physical body - subject to its animal passions - and the higher rational soul - imagined as a divine endowment - is a fiction, albeit a powerful one. Damasio shows the many ways in which the "lowly orders of our organism are in the loop of...

United Kingdom on May 28, 2009

Edgar Foster: 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...

United States on Jan 06, 2005