Antonio Damasio: Συγκινήσεις, συναισθήματα, νόηση, συνείδηση [ΣΥΝΕΝΤΕΥΞΗ]

Ο Νευροεπιστήμονας  Antonio Damasio, έχει αφιερώσει μεγάλο μέρος της ζωής του στη μελέτη των ανθρώπινων συγκινήσεων, των συναισθημάτων, των βιολογικών τους βάσεων, του ρόλου τους στη νοητική και κοινωνική ζωή των ανθρώπων, αλλά και στην ανάδυση της συνείδησης. [βλ.και παλαιότερη ανάρτηση]. 
Mία από τις βασικές θέσεις του Damasio είναι πως η νόηση είναι αλληλένδετη με τις  συγκινήσεις και τα συναισθήματα. Τα συναισθήματα δεν είναι μία εξελικτική πολυτέλεια, αλλά σημαντικοί πυλώνες της σκέψης και μίας φυσιολογικής κοινωνικής συμπεριφοράς, απαραίτητα για τη διατήρηση της ομοιοστασίας στον άνθρωπο, όπως ο Damasio υποστηρίζει. 
Ακολουθεί μία συνέντευξή του στην οποία εξηγεί κάποια από τα ευρήματα και θέσεις του. 

Iούλιος 2009: Τhis time with feeling. The Aspen Institute.

Bonus tracks:
1. On his book 'Self Comes to Mind'



2. What is this thing called mind?




3. Explain the difference between self and mind...




4. What Qualities Define the Human Self?




5. When you describe waking up it sounds no less complicated than a symphony. How does this miracle happen instantaneously every morning?




6. What role do emotions play in consciousness?




7. What idea in 'Self Comes to Mind' do you expect to cause ripples in the world of neuroscience?




Βιβλία του Antonio Damasio:
Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (1994)
A book by neurologist Antonio R. Damasio, in which the author presents the argument that emotion and reason are not separate but, in fact, are quite dependent upon one another. Damasio argues that the body is the genesis of thought. The philosopher René Descartes developed a method of reasoning based on the indisputable observation that if we think, we must exist. However, Damasio examines the physiological processes that contribute to the functioning of the mind and therefore proposes the idea that thinking is inherent to a body in which no spirit exists. Descartes' "error" was the dualist separation of mind and body, and the artificial dichotomy between rationality and emotion. One of Damasio's key points is that rationality does not function without emotional input. Damasio explores in depth the famous case of Phineas Gage. While Gage's intelligence remained intact after his brain was damaged in an 1848 accident, Damasio believes that Gage's ability to reason and make rational decisions became severely handicapped because his emotions could no longer be engaged in the process. Damasio uses this and other brain-damage cases to develop his thesis on emotion and its relationship to human activity. He argues that rationality stems from our emotions, and that our emotions stem from our bodily senses. The state of the mind, or feeling, is merely a reflection of the state of the body, and feeling is an indispensable ingredient of rational thought. Emotions are not a luxury, they are essential to rational thinking and to normal social behavior.


The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (2000)
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 and scientific thinker, Damasio helps readers to ask and answer questions about what it is to be human. His elegant investigation of feeling and emotion offers a new understanding of the conscious mind and, as the New York Times has noted, “will change your experience of yourself.” 


Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (2003)
In the seventeenth century, the philosopher Spinoza examined the role emotion played in human survival and culture. Yet hundreds of years and many significant scientific advances later, the neurobiological roots of joy and sorrow remain a mystery. Today, we spend countless resources doctoring our feelings with alcohol, prescription drugs, health clubs, therapy, vacation retreats, and other sorts of consumption; still, the inner workings of our minds-what feelings are, how they work, and what they mean-are largely an unexplored frontier. With scientific expertise and literary facility, bestselling author and world famous neuroscientist Antonio Damasio concludes his groundbreaking trilogy in Looking for Spinoza, exploring the cerebral processes that keep us alive and make life worth living.


Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (2010)
From one of the most significant neuroscientists at work today, a pathbreaking investigation of a question that has confounded philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists for centuries: how is consciousness created? 
Antonio Damasio has spent the past thirty years studying and writing about how the brain operates, and his work has garnered acclaim for its singular melding of the scientific and the humanistic. In Self Comes to Mind, he goes against the long-standing idea that consciousness is somehow separate from the body, presenting compelling new scientific evidence that consciousness—what we think of as a mind with a self—is to begin with a biological process created by a living organism. Besides the three traditional perspectives used to study the mind (the introspective, the behavioral, and the neurological), Damasio introduces an evolutionary perspective that entails a radical change in the way the history of conscious minds is viewed and told. He also advances a radical hypothesis regarding the origins and varieties of feelings, which is central to his framework for the biological construction of consciousness: feelings are grounded in a near fusion of body and brain networks, and first emerge from the historically old and humble brain stem rather than from the modern cerebral cortex. 
Damasio suggests that the brain’s development of a human self becomes a challenge to nature’s indifference and opens the way for the appearance of culture, a radical break in the course of evolution and the source of a new level of life regulation—sociocultural homeostasis. He leaves no doubt that the blueprint for the work-in-progress he calls sociocultural homeostasis is the genetically well-established basic homeostasis, the curator of value that has been present in simple life-forms for billions of years. Self Comes to Mind is a groundbreaking journey into the neurobiological foundations of mind and self.