Descartes' Error
Antonio Damasio
Suggests Descartes erred when he invoked a separate entity to explain reason and consciousness. In its place the author proposes... Examines the role (and necessity) of emotion in human reason. Interesting case studies of neurological disorder patients.

Story of Phineas Gage

Case of Elliot: Brain injury. "In some respects Elliot was a new Phineas Gage, fallen from social grace, unable to reason and decid ein ways conducive to the maintenance and betterment of himself and his family, no longer capable of succeeding as an independent human being. And like Gage he had developed a collecting habit. It is appropriate to say his free will had had been compromised..."

"The distinction between diseases of "brain" and "mind," between "neurological" problems and "psychiatric" ones, is an unfortunate cultural inheritance that permeates society and medicine. It reflects a basic ignorance of the relation between brain and mind. Diseases of the brain are seen as tragedies visited on people who cannot be blamed for their condition, while diseases of the mind, especially those that affect conduct and emotion, are seen as social inconveniences for which sufferers have much to answer. Individuals are to be blamed for their character flaws, defective emotional modulation, and so on; lack of willpower is supposed to be the primary problem."

"Brains can have many intervening steps in the circuits mediating between stimulus and response, and still have no mind, if they do not meet an essential condition: the ability to display images internally and to order those images in a process called thought."

"Images of something that has not yet happened and that may in fact never come to pass are no different in nature from the images you hold of something that has already happened. They constitute the memory of a possible future rather than of the past that was."

"We all have direct evidence that whenever we recall a given object, or face, or scene, we do not get an exact reproduction,but rather an interpretation, a newly reconstructed version of the original. In addition, as our age and experience change, versions of the same thing evolve."

Quoting William James: "What kind of an emotion of fear would be left if the feeling neither of quickened heartbeats nor of shallow breathing, neither of trembling lips nor of weakened limbs, neither of gooseflesh nor of visceral stirrings, were present, it is quite impossible for me to think."

"Cogito ergo sum... Taken literally, the statement illustrates precisely the opposite of what I believe to be true about the origins of mind and about the relation between mind and body."

Quoting Descartes: "From that I knew that I was a substance, the whole essence or nature of which is to think, and for its existence there is no need of any place, nor does it depend on any material thing; so that this "me," that is to say, the soul by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct form body, and is even more easy to know than is the latter; and even if the body were not, the soul would not cease to be what it is."

"This then is Descartes' error: the separation of the most refined operations of mind from the structure and operation of a biological organism."

"In fact, if mind can be separated form body, perhaps one can try to understand it without any appeal to neurobiology, without any need to be influenced by knowledge of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and neurochemistry. Interestingly and paradoxically, many cognitive scientists who believe they can investigate the mind without recourse to neurobiology would not consider themselves dualists."

"And this is of course the difficult job, is it not: to move the spirit from its nowhere pedestal to a somewhere place, while preserving its dignity and importance; to recognize its humble origin and vulnerability, yet still call upon its guidance."

Note: hardware/software distinction common is weakly-masked dualism.