- Hardcover: 386 pages
- Publisher: Harcourt Publishers Ltd College Publishers; 1 edition (1 Sep 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0151003696
- ISBN-13: 978-0151003693
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 16.3 x 3.8 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 798,674 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Synopsis
A new theory of consciousness and the construction of identity focuses on the body's reaction to its world, postulating that a complex relationship between body, emotion, and mind is required to configure the self.
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First Sentence
I have always been intrigued by the specific moment when, as we sit waiting in the audience, the door to the stage opens and a performer steps into the light; or, to take the other perspective, the moment when a performer who waits in semidarkness sees the same door open revealing the lights, the stage, and the audience. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
I have always been intrigued by the specific moment when, as we sit waiting in the audience, the door to the stage opens and a performer steps into the light; or, to take the other perspective, the moment when a performer who waits in semidarkness sees the same door open revealing the lights, the stage, and the audience. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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57 reviews
207 of 220 people found the following review helpful
Truly a "must read," albeit a first attempt
11 Dec 1999
Format:Hardcover
I'm a clinical neurologist myself, and familiar with Damasio's work...there's no doubt he's a first rate behavioral neurologist, who's made many original contributions on both theoretical and clinical levels to neuroscience and neurology. I believe his particular breakdown of consciousness into several levels..."proto" "core" "autobiographical" and "extended"...to be both novel and supported by clinical evidence and intuition. It is inaccurate to say that Damasio equates consciousness with the reticular activating system. In fact, he conceives "core consciousness", the unadorned feeling of self, to be a network function including not only the RAS, but the intralaminar thalamic nuclei and cingulate and primary somatosensory cortex. I also disagree strongly with the reviewer who felt the ideas were largely redundant with previous philosophical attempts at explanations of consciousness. Though I agree the book is at times wordy and could use more detailed scientific backup in places, it is clearly aimed at a popular audience. I look forward to seeing his paradigm used in further neuroscientific research on consciousness, and I'm convinced it will be. This book is definitely on the right track, and one shouldn't hesitate to read it. I'd also note that the book is strongly endorsed by leading scientists and philosophers, such as Eric Kandel, David Hubel, and the Churchlands.
77 of 82 people found the following review helpful
An exceptional synthesis, with many original ideas
9 Sep 1999
Format:Hardcover
This is a landmark book, almost irrespective of how accurate all of Antonio Damasio's extensive theoretical formulations turn out to be. He is the first to admit (in the book itself) that things are changing so fast in this area of neuroscience that virtually nothing on the table at this point can be considered doctrinal, or not subject to potentially major modifications. That being said, I suspect that much of Damasio's more original terminology, terms such as "proto-self," "core-self," "autobiographical self," "core consciousness," and "extended consciousness" will quickly become part of the basic lexicon in consciousness neuroscience in many quarters, due to the shear force of his ideas and the volume of original thought in this work. At the heart of this enterprise is Antonio Damasio's supposition (generally not informing much theorizing about consciousness) that the brain can't be conscious unless it represents not just objects, but a primitive self, and also represents the basic manner in which the self is being altered by interaction with the object(s). In other words, consciousness requires that the brain must represent not just the object, not just a basic self structure, but the interaction of the two. This is still an atypical foundation for a theory of consciousness, given that until recently, it was implicitly assumed that the self could be safely left out of the equation. There has been a recent sea change on this crucial point, parallel with the cogent formulations in Damasio's book.
The book will challenge and delight the most sophisticated readers, while rarely leaving the less sophisticated lost or overwhelmed. Damasio makes great use of the rich empirical database provided by the neurology of diseases of consciousness that some theorists of consciousness seem to know almost nothing about, and pay little attention to. The book also addresses in a most thoughtful and sophisticated fashion the problem(s) of self, and carefully unbundles the mostly conflated hierarchical nature of self and consciousness into separate but intimately related systems. It is tightly and carefully reasoned and empirically grounded. It integrates emotion and the body in the story of consciousness. Damasio deals skillfully with conceptual pitfalls in our commonplace terminology of "maps," "neural (neurodynamic) patterns," and "representations" (don't miss it stashed in the appendix!!) The book integrates classical RAS theory and neo-classical ERTAS (extended reticular thalamic activating system) theory into a broader theory about the ventral brain, that of "proto-self mappings and structures." Damasio admits readily this formulation is without the differential functional specificity for the proto-self structures (as perhaps the earliest functionally concerted, distributed system?) that he deeply hopes to see further developed. Further understanding of the functionally concerted and re-entrant operations of the various proto-self structures may be a great frontier in the neurology of consciousness. The core chapter of the book - The Neurology of Consciousness - in which he bridges concepts of proto-self, homeostatic and visceral regulation with traditional RAS and later ERTAS notions into a comprehensive theory of brainstem functions is brilliantly integrative and original, among the two or three finest pieces of neurological writing I have ever read. Added to this impressive menu are the delights of a literary, even at times poetic and moving, writing style.
For an in depth treatment of this book, see my review article coming out in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, or email me for reprints.
33 of 35 people found the following review helpful
Wordy but good.
29 Nov 1999
Format:Hardcover
I agree with the reviewer below that Damasio seems a little unclear about who is target audience is. The book has a bright new-agey cover but I doubt too many new-agers will enjoy the frequent 25 cent words. Besides that minor quibble I very much enjoyed this book. It's strong point is that it gives many more case histories and much more experimental evidence than one would find in a typical philosophy of the mind book. I liked the discussions on coma and lock-down syndrome as well as the review of cat experiments. There is also a section distinguishing emotions from feelings where the example was a patient with a calcified amygdala which I thought was very cool. This book gives a very strong case that consciousness should be distinguished from mental use of language. Damasio's argument that consciousness emerges in part of the reticular formation seems pretty believable. I find his argument though about how it emerges as some kind of second-order processing and story-telling of a persons internal senses in relation to objects in the external world as a bit too vague. Namely, he never really seems to say how this secord-order processing works. That is, what is the processing algorithm more specifically? All in all, though,I very much liked this book and can't help but think that true AI where people make machines that can mimic emotions than work up from that (like the facial expression research at MIT) is probably not more than a decade or two away.
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