Странный порядок вещей: Жизнь, чувства и рождение культур

by António Damásio, Антонио Дамасио, Мария Елиферова (Translator)

Антонио Дамасио — один из авторитетнейших нейробиологов современности, известный популяризатор науки, автор нескольких научно-популярных книг. "Странный порядок вещей" продолжает предыдущие исследования ученого, который стремится доказать ошибочность широко распространенного представления о мозге как о компьютере, определяющем все факторы нашей жизни. Дамасио настаивает, что мозг и другие органы равны и что важно разобраться в биологической эволюции чувств, так как именно они стимулируют науку, медицину, религию и искусство. Природа чувств и происхождение культур исследуются Дамасио через призму гомеостаза, то есть способности каждого организма не только сохранять свое постоянство, поддерживая внутреннее равновесие, но и развиваться и процветать.

Genres: Science, Psychology, Nonfiction, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Biology, Audiobook

320 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2017

About the author

Damásio studied medicine at the University of Lisbon Medical School in Portugal, where he also did his medical residency rotation and completed his doctorate. Later, he moved to the United States as a research fellow at the Aphasia Research Center in Boston. His work there on behavioral neurology was done under the supervision of Norman Geschwind.

As a researcher, Dr. Damásio's main interest is the neurobiology of the mind, especially neural systems which subserve memory, language, emotion, and decision-making. His research has helped to elucidate the neural basis for the emotions and has shown that emotions play a central role in social cognition and decision-making. Damásio has formulated the somatic markers hypothesis.

As a clinician, he and his collaborators study and treat the disorders of behavior and cognition, and movement disorders.

Damásio's books deal with the relationship between emotions and feelings, and what are their bases in the brain. His 1994 book, Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain, was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and is translated in over 30 languages. His second book, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, was named as one of the ten best books of 2001 by New York Times Book Review, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, a Library Journal Best Book of the Year, and has thirty foreign editions. Damásio's most recent book, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, was published in 2003. In it, Damásio explores philosophy and its relations to neurobiology, suggesting that it might provide guidelines for human ethics.

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine, and the European Academy of Arts and Sciences. Damásio has received many awards including the Prince of Asturias Award in Science and Technology, Kappers Neuroscience Medal, the Beaumont Medal from the American Medical Association and the Reenpaa Prize in Neuroscience. He is also in the editorial board of many important journals in the field.

His current work involves the social emotions, decision neuroscience and creativity.

Prof. Damásio is married to Dr. Hanna Damásio, his colleague and co-author of several works.

(from: Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Charlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a hugely important book and one worth reading. Why? Because Damasio has joined the ranks of scientists such as Nick Lane (mentioned in the book) and Jeremy England (not mentioned) who are giving the "modern" synthesis of evolution a much needed update. This update replaces the gene centered theory with a theory centered on thermodynamics. As Damasio outlined in this book, there are 2 approaches scientists are taking when trying to understand the origins of life:

1. Genes first, championed by Dawkins and the like, which suggests genes came first and replicated.

2. Metabolism first, which suggests metabolism predated genes and in fact gave rise to genes. This dethrones the selfish gene (finally!) and paints a more accurate picture of the evolution of every species as yet another way for an organism to capture and circulate energy. Unlike genes first, metabolism first can account for the energy needed to create the molecules of life. Deep hydrothermal vents, which of course do not have genes, provide an acidic environment in which all that H+ acted like a battery, allowing bonds to be broken and made, thus making the molecules of life. RNA world and other gene centered theories simply cannot account for the energy needed to put these molecules and cells together so that evolution of living organisms can get a foothold. Damasio thanks Martin and Lane (and Russell) for their work on this front, as do I because it was paradigm shifting.

Damasio makes his arguments for metabolism first by focusing on the evolution of emotions. I cannot say I was a fan of the second half of the book, which offered a lot of philosophical musings I had heard many, many times before. But the first half of the book was truly exceptional. Damasio argued that feelings have shaped our culture and those feelings have arisen from homeostatic processes that can be traced back to single cells. If anyone can make this argument, it's Damasio's, whose research dominated my neuroscience textbooks. I cannot recall one professor at Penn who was not in awe of his excellent work over the many decades he has been studying the brain. Damasio argued that emotions themselves were a product of the very first hoeostatic processes at work *while* assembling genes at the hydrothermal vents, pre-dating genes. Thus, the evolution of emotions arises from those processes and not from genes. Genes themselves arise from homeostatic processes and not the other way around because homeostatic processes developed before the creation of genes. Homeostatic processes have been passed down through every generation. Genes were merely a way to help these processes occur inside organisms. At the end of the day, homeostatic processes arise because of the second law of thermodynamics. They are a thermodynamic process. Genes were created to aid this process. This process was not created to aid the passing down of genes. The passing down of genes certainly continues to help this process occur in each species, but the gene is a helper, not the star of the show.

As organisms continued to gain complexity, their homeostatic processes in turn became more complex as well. For example, when organisms evolved nerves, their homeostatic processes were regulated via these nerves. As the nerves (brains) became more and more complex, so too did the homeostatic processes that govern those nerve networks. As a result, we all have internal drives. (I cannot think of another scientists who has done more to study internal drives. See Damasio's work on impulse, galvanic skin response, etc to learn more about internal drives and associated brain regions). The internal drives common to population of humans served as the drivers for the very development of civilization. Consider bacteria and criminal justice. Bacteria do not even have nerves; and yet, they engage in punishing non cooperators. It's easy to imagine how this developed into a criminal justice system (flawed or not) in organisms with more complex bodies (namely brains). Other examples are provided about the evolution of punishment, creation, and other aspects of human existence that have helped build all of the civilizations from the beginning of recorded history.

Damasio suggested we take the "static" part out of homeostatic processes because they are anything but static. Rather, they are homeodynamic because these internal states are always active, striving to help the organism maintain the optimal state. Being in that state requires constant internal work that requires a lot of cooperation between cells, organs, hormones, etc -- a very dynamic process. His discussion on this type of cooperation inside organisms was very pointed at the Dawkins minded scientists who still subscribe to the conflict only, selfish gene paradigm. In the end, it is homeostasis and not genes that drive organisms to survive, thrive, and live on throughout the generations. It is this drive that has led to the cultural practices that appear to help global progress that has resulted in longer lives, on average, and will continue to focus on better sustaining the life process.

Damasio could not refrain from talking about the transhumanists who believe they can make an AI that preserves the brains of humans. He suggested they forgot about the fact that the brain had to work with the many microbes (and their homeostatic processes) and other cells inside the body. He, imo, is short sighted in this regard. I can imagine that eventually transhumanists will simply come to understand what role microbes and other cells, and their homeostatic processes, play in governing the brain and body and they will simply incorporate that into their AI. Seems shortsighted to be so confident in ruling that out. Instead, it would have been better to simply list the challenges to current models of AI. For example, being clear that they will need to take the role of microbes into account. That is something missing from Kurzweil's arguments. So it adds to the discussion. Ruling out the possibility that they can incorporate microbes seems far less helpful.

If for no other reason, you should read this book to understand, in great and fantastic detail, the evolution of our senses. Just brilliant.

One last note: Damasio mentioned the work of John Torday, whose work I love. He called him a kindred spirit but barely gave the reader an idea of what Torday's work entails. I highly recommend reading his academic articles on evolution and homeostasis.

[Erik · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Strange Order of Things is my first book by Damásio, but it was a bit of a disappointment. It tries to synthesize the entire evolutionary history from RNA-based precursors of modern life over bacterial cultures through human cultures and into the prospects of artificial intelligence through the prism of homeostasis. The word homeostasis appears 200 times in the book, and in the end it seems like a crutch, a sort of modern "soul" that is supposed to explain everything about any living substance. In the end, Damásio argues that artificial intelligence isn't possible because a digital consciousness doesn't have a homeostatic imperative. But what is the fundamental function of homeostasic feelings then? Basically to tell us whether the body is doing well or not:

"Valence translates the condition of life directly in mental terms, moment to moment. It inevitably reveals the condition as good, bad, or somewhere in between. When we experience a condition that is conducive to the continuation of life, we describe it in positive terms and call it pleasant, for example; when the condition is not conducive, we describe the experience in negative terms and talk of unpleasantness. Valence is the defining element of feeling and, by extension, of affect."

Is a binary characteristic that tells the consciousness whether the body is doing good or bad really impossible to emulate in an artificial consciousness?

Over all, then, the argument of the book didn't really convince me. That doesn't mean there isn't a lot of factual information that's valuable, and one thing I especially appreciated was that Damásio has a lot of non-English language sources, which is a breath of fresh air when most of the anglophone world is so insular.

I'd prefer to give 2½ stars, but I lean more towards "It was okay" than "I liked it".

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provides an incredibly good way to think about order, origins of life and life. Anytime one can look at a problem coherently from a different perspective one can develop a deeper insight and understand the nature of reality just a little bit better than they did before. For example, I love ‘information theory’ and how it can be used to explain the universe as a paradigm for fundamental understanding of the quantum nature of the universe even to the degree that one of the most famous physicist in recent times, John Archibald Wheeler, would say that ‘it from bit’ explains our universe, that ‘existence comes from information’ (this is not germane to my point, but someday when you have time look up Rule 110 on wiki you’ll be able to understand how a universal computing machine that is Turing complete can come from an incredibly simple algorithm thus leading to a complex universe as ours appears to be) , and that Claude Shannon would show that the second law of thermodynamics (Entropy) can be restated inversely in terms of information theory. (Shannon actually seemed to be a hero of the author of this book).

This book deals with biology more than physics but the author has an alternative way of thinking about biological life arising from chemical processes leading to humans rather than appealing to the standard paradigmatic archetype most of us are already familiar with. He’s going to show how order arises from chaos through homeostasis and metabolism (stealing useful energy from outside of oneself) explains the origin of life and intelligent life.

Spinoza will say and the author will paraphrase him as such ‘everything (both mental and physical) strives (Latin: conatus) to preserve in its being’. In order to do that, the thing in question must steal useful energy (or order) from somewhere outside of itself and it must preserve its nature or it will lose its nature. This is the paradigm the author describes, the homeostasis, the striving (the clinging, the endeavor, the will (that’s what Schopenhauer speaks about, by all means read his Volume I of ‘Will and Representation’, the ‘will to power’ (Nietzsche takes Spinoza’s conatus and Schopenhauer’s’ ‘will’ to come up with this same idea that the author gives except they can’t use those words because they haven’t been codified in their time period)) and the stealing of useful energy from outside of itself thus leading to an increase of entropy in the system as a whole but a decrease in entropy in the thing (the entity).

I’m easily irritated with willfully ignorant people. One of my pet peeves is someone who says that since we weren’t there we can’t possibly know what happened therefore ‘god did it’ (Rush Limbaugh did exactly that the day after Stephen Hawking died and dismissed the ‘big bang’ in his ravings). This book gives a beautiful retort to such stupidity in abiogenesis. Before there were bacteria there were chemical processes. The processes that stayed around and evolved are the ones that reached a steady state with a modicum of homeostasis and metabolic systems at play (and it probably happened in undersea vents. One of the few places on Earth where the energy doesn’t come from the sun. It comes from the radiation left over from the accretion of the earth during its formation).

The author in the first two thirds of the book never just states things. He builds his argument across time and across space. The body develops before the central nervous system in its evolutionary development. Our emotive, temperament and mood happened before our feelings. Our feelings come before our reason both evolutionary and developmentally. A really smart biologist can prove evolution by analyzing the taxonomy of the current living organisms of the now. The fossil record is not necessary for them to prove evolution and its development over time, but the biologist also has the fossil record to make their story even more complete. A neuroscientist, as the author is, also has brain development and processes to add to the equation. This author uses every fact at his disposal in his telling for the development of the self awareness that humans possess.

Logic only preserves truth. It cannot create truth. The feelings we have from our emotive, temperament and mood give us the narrative and the intuition that we need in giving us our self awareness (consciousness) and the story that we end up telling ourselves. Our subjective selves come from our feelings not from our logic based rational selves. (I think all of this is in his book in one way another). He believes our mental states come from our experiences. He even ended one chapter by saying something along the lines that ‘Proust explains it in ‘Swann’s Way’’). It’s too bad he ended that chapter like that because I think Proust had it better than this book does, and also I think ‘How Emotions are Made’ by Lisa Barrett follows Proust more closely and they both wisely stay away from absolute mental states.

I thought the last third of this book never should have been written. He was really out of his depth. He speaks about AI, trans-humanism, camp fires, religion, Adorno, Pinker, Freud and his death wish as expressed in ‘Civilizations and its Discontents’ and many other topics. Matter of fact, I’m currently reading ‘Feminine Law’ and the name and idea dropping between the that book and the last third of this book surprised me in their overlap, but for ‘Feminine Law’ she’s a specialist in the field of psychoanalysis and this author does not seem to be. I can say two nice things about the end of the book, he’s trying to connect his thesis with reality, and secondly he actually predicts the ‘Cambridge Analytics’ and Facebook scandal with incredible prescience.

In spite of the train wreck of the last third of the book, the first two thirds make this book a special find and I would definitely recommend it.

[Maria Ferreira · Rating 5 out of 5]

António Damásio divide o livro em três partes:
Parte I- A vida e a sua regulação homeostasia
Consiste em olhar o individuo por dentro, desde as bactérias às enzimas e células nervosas, responde a questões puramente biológicas de como o individuo sente a dor física e como a mente perceciona essa dor.
Fala-nos sobre a homeostasia, como seja um conjunto de operações que o nosso organismo executa para persistir e prevalecer.
Os sentimentos e a homeostasia estão associados de modo próximo e consistente. Os sentimentos são as experiências subjetivas do estado da vida, ou seja, da homeostasia, em todas as criaturas dotadas de mente e de um ponto de vista consciente.
Parte II- A montagem da mente cultural
Nesta parte o autor revela como o homem observa, reflete e age. Nós, seres humanos importamos para a nossa mente as imagens percecionadas pelos nossos 5 sentidos: olfato, visão, tato, audição e paladar, e a partir dessas imagens que a nossa mente recebe do exterior, armazena na memória e dá-lhes um sentido, ou seja cria as suas próprias narrativas a partir destas imagens e da nossa experiência vivida, aguarda igualmente na memória permitindo-lhe mais tarde recordar e contar ao outro. Foi através deste processo que foi evoluindo progressivamente e lentamente a mente humana.
O autor revela que subjacente a este processo está a emoção do medo, o facto do homem percecionar o perigo e de sentir dor é que nos motiva a agir em conformidade para terminar com esta sensação desagradável. Duas grandes ações extremamente importantes e eficazes para o homem foi o domínio do fogo e a invenção da alquimia, que deu origem à medicina.
A descoberta da forma de controlar o fogo, foi das invenções mais importantes para a civilização, em imensos aspetos que não valerá a pena aqui falar sobre todos, mas um que o autor revela no livro achei muito curioso. Após o domínio do fogo o homem passou a dormir menos horas e permanecer mais tempo acordado ao final do dia, pelo que enquanto cozinhavam, comiam e se aqueciam em torno da fogueira passaram igualmente a conviver mais, a contar histórias das atividades diurnas, umas verdadeiras, outras fantasiadas, a criar utensílios de caça, a fabricar as roupas para satisfazer muitas das necessidades básicas, mas não só, também a partir destes momentos que se passou a dar mais importância aos afetos e às emoções, à construção dos sentimentos, a refletir sobre as experiências vivenciadas e sentidas na dualidade corpo-cérebro, resultando no aparecimento das artes e rituais, a musica, a dança, o teatro, as pinturas seriam uma manifestação artística para responder ao desejo de manifestar emoções positivas como a alegria, o prazer e a paixão.

Parte III– A mente cultural em ação
Após ficarmos a conhecer o nosso corpo biológico, o funcionamento do cérebro e as interligações corpo – cérebro reportando o nosso passado até 2017, justificando porque somos como somos. O autor faz uma breve analise sobre o homem cultural social, o mundo que nos rodeia.
Embora faça a ponte entre o homem biológico e intelectual, o autor pretendeu deixar a sua opinião sobre a politica, as crenças religiosas, a medicina, a crise económica, a ausência de valores morais, a tecnologia e os conflitos mundiais. Uma das criticas que fez foi a Yuval Harari no seu livro Homo Deus em que este refere que os organismos vivos são algoritmos, logo programáveis, logo com capacidade de se auto desenvolver e controlar o mundo levando ao extermínio da humanidade, algo fatalista e irreal. Damásio responde assim a yuval:

“Dizer que os organismos vivos são algoritmos é, pelo menos enganador, e em termos estritos é falso. Os algoritmos são fórmulas, receitas, enumerações de passos na construção de um resultado particular. Os organismos vivos, incluindo os organismos humanos, constroem-se segundo algoritmos e usam algoritmos para operar a sua maquinaria genética. No entanto, NÂO são eles próprios algoritmos. Os organismos vivos são consequências da interação de algoritmos e exibem propriedades que podem ou não ter sido especificadas pelos algoritmos que lhes orientam a construção. O mais importante a reter é que os organismos vivos são conjuntos de tecidos, órgãos e sistemas em que cada célula componente é uma entidade viva, vulnerável, composta por proteínas, lípidos e açucares. Não são linhas de código; são coisas palpáveis.”

[Nelson Zagalo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sou grande admirador de António Damásio, aliás muito daquilo que é a minha paixão pela investigação científica devo-a a ele, em particular ao seu primeiro livro “O Erro de Descartes” de 1995. Depois disso fui seguindo a sua investigação e entrevistas e lendo todos os seus livros, mas à medida que os anos se foram passando os seus livros foram perdendo chama, muito por se repetirem, por tentar de formas distintas dizer aquilo que já tinha dito antes ainda que sem qualquer preocupação de olhar para o lado e procurar incorporar o que outros académicos iam também dizendo e fazendo. Por isso no ano passado quando saiu “Estranha Ordem das Coisas” não corri a comprar, tinha pensado mesmo passar, até que li as palavras de Leonard Mlodinow, “Quase um quarto de século após o erro de Descartes, Antonio Damasio consegue novamente.” Senti-me obrigado a ler o livro, tinha de saber o que tinha Damásio encontrado de novo para nos dizer. Em poucas palavras: confesso a desilusão, ainda que continue sendo um grande comunicador.
..

A análise continua em detalhe, e pode ser lida com links no blog VI, em: https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...

[João Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

António Damásio (n. 1944)

O português António Damásio (n. 1944) – médico, neurologista e neurocientista, é professor da cátedra David Dornsife de “Neurociência, Psicologia e Filosofia", e director do Brain and Creativity Institute na University os Southern California, em Los Angeles, Estados Unidos da América.
Com o seu primeiro livro – “ O Erro de Descartes” - António Damásio pretende ”(…) explicar como a emoção contribui para a razão e para o comportamento social adaptativo. (…) oferecendo-nos também uma nova perspetiva do que as emoções e os sentimentos realmente são: uma perceção direta dos nossos próprios estados físicos, um elo entre o corpo e as suas regulações que visam a sobrevivência, por um lado, e a consciência, por outro.”
No início de ”A Estranha Ordem das Coisas”, António Damásio refere: ”O presente livro tem a ver com um interesse e uma ideia. Há muito que me interesso pelos afetos humanos, o mundo das emoções e dos sentimentos, e que os investigo - como e porquê nos emocionamos e sentimos, como usamos os sentimentos para construir as nossas personalidades, como os sentimentos ajudam ou prejudicam as nossas melhores intenções, como e porquê o cérebro interage com o corpo em apoio dessas funções.”
Em ”A Estranha Ordem das Coisas” surgem inúmeros conceitos e ideias numa busca incessante por nova(s) teoria(s) que interligam os sentimentos e a homeostasia com a(s) cultura(s). Como é que se iniciaram determinados processos – ou como é que evoluíram? A questão da linguagem verbal surge a par de outras características notáveis, como a sociabilidade intensa e um intelecto superior. Há, no entanto, um motivo poderoso que é inquestionável – os sentimentos.
”A ideia, na sua essência, é que a atividade cultural teve início nos sentimentos e deles continua a depender. Se quisermos compreender os conflitos e as contradições da condição humana, precisamos de reconhecer a interação, tanto favorável como desfavorável, entre sentimentos e raciocínio.” (Pág. 15)
”Os sentimentos são as expressões mentais da homeostasia, e a homeostasia, agindo sob a capa do sentimento, estabelece a ligação funcional entre as primeiras formas de vida e a extraordinária colaboração que se veio a estabelecer entre corpos e sistemas nervosos.” (Pág. 17)
Quase no final do primeiro capítulo Inícios refere: ”O presente livro tem como objetivo apresentar alguns factos associados à criação de mentes que pensam, criam narrativas e significado, recordam o passado e imaginam o futuro; e associados à estrutura do sentimento e da consciência responsável pelas ligações recíprocas entre mentes, mundo exterior, e o processo fundamental da vida.” (Pág. 19)
Ao ler A Estranha Ordem das Coisas” apreendemos que mais que a excepcional inteligência humana e a linguagem são os sentimentos as forças primordiais que amplificam a saga das culturas humanas. A ausência de sentimento(s) é incompatível com a vida humana – existindo em qualquer ser o objectivo de estabilizar o seu ambiente interno – a homeostasia.
Nem sempre de leitura fácil - ”A Estranha Ordem das Coisas” é uma excelente “mistura” entre detalhes científicos e filosóficos, numa reflexão assente nos detalhes biológicos e sociais, sobre os caminhos percorridos desde a origem da vida até aos nossos dias.

[Mehrsa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a cool and thought-provoking book, but a bit sloppy and unclear. The book explores the role of feelings guiding us through evolution and what the implications are for cultural evolution. I have read a lot of books in this genre so I had to do a ton of gap filling in several sections of the book, but I am not a scientist so I could have used some more guidance when he made some of the leaps he did. The payoff for me was in the end when he challenges Harari and a few other transhumanist ideas about the end of humanity and the inevitability of algorithms taking over. He disagrees, which was comforting.

[Mircea Petcu · Rating 5 out of 5]

În aceasta carte, neurocercetătorul Antonio Damasio reia conceptele de "homeostazie" și "sentiment" din cărțile precedente, pe care le leagă ulterior de cel de "cultură". O alăturare, cu siguranță, neașteptată.

Homeostazia (din limba greacă, hómoios = aceeași, și stásis = stare) reprezintă în biologie proprietatea unui organism de a menține, în limite foarte apropiate, constantele mediului său intern (ph-ul, glicemia etc). Viața nu ar fi viabilă fără trăsăturile impuse de homeostazie. Se poate vorbi de un imperativ homeostatic. Prin intermediul acestui imperativ: "viața nu este doar reglată în cadrul unui interval care este compatibil cu supraviețuirea, ci conduce și la prosperitate, la o proiecție a vieții în viitorul unui organism sau al unei specii."

Sentimentele, ca reprezentanți ai homeostaziei, sunt catalizatorii reacțiilor ce au dus la apariția culturilor umane. Cum poate fi asociată cultura umană (arta, filosofia, religia, tehnologia, știința) cu sentimentele și homeostazia? Practicile culturale au necesitat sentimentul unui declin homeostatic (durerea, suferința, amenințarea etc.) sau al unui beneficiu homeostatic potențial (plăcerea, iubirea, prietenia etc.) și că sentimentele au acționat ca o motivație pentru a reduce nevoile sau a capitaliza abundența.
De exemplu: valurile de căldură au indus o stare de rău care a stimulat inventarea aparatelor de aer condiționat.

Identificarea legăturilor dintre procesele biologice, pe de o parte, și fenomenele mentale și socio-culturale, pe de altă parte, nu echivalează cu faptul că mecanismele biologice pot explica pe deplin forma societăților și alcătuirea culturii. Imperativul homeostatic a dezvoltat "coduri de conduită" care au redus riscurile pentru indivizi și grupuri sociale, având drept rezultat diminuarea suferinței și promovarea stării de bine a oamenilor. Codul lui Hammurabi, Constituția Statelor Unite, Carte Națiunilor Unite au fost influențate de circumstanțele perioadei și locului în care au apărut și de persoanele pe care le-au gândit, dar în spatele acestora se află imperativul homeostatic și sentimentele.

Recomand

[P K · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is like being cornered at a party by your philosophy department’s biggest blowhard. I was a big fan of Descartes’ Error, which inspired me to read more about Damasio’s work. I’ve always thought of him as a particularly clear eyed, rational thinker and writer. His somatic marker hypothesis inspired so many interesting experiments in neuroscience. Where is that man now? This book was just absolutely the opposite of the impression I had of Damasio before. This book not only taught me nothing, I found it seriously boring. He has completely switched from the conversational but academic tone of Descartes Error to the cumbersome, inexact, self-congratulatory tone of the worst brand of Victorian philosopher. This is the kind of prose we’re dealing with:

“And yet, a remarkable yet, there is a parallel mental world that accompanies all those images, often so subtle that it does not demand any attention for itself but occasionally so significant that it alters the course of the dominant part of the mind, sometimes arrestingly so.”

Translation: There are mental processes you’re not aware of that significantly affect your conscious processes.
The book sounded to me like he confidently began speaking with no structured plan, and continued well after he had lost his train of thought. First, it’s about the startling and novel idea that homeostasis was a major driving force of human cultural evolution. But wait, first we have to totally redefine homeostasis to mean not only maintaining a steady state in physiological systems, but also the things that make an organism flourish. Basically, he argues in this book that homeostasis is the driver of life, from unicellular organisms, to modern humans. Homeostatic urges are expressed via feelings. Thus, feelings are an integral part of our cognition. Thus it is also an integral part of the rise of human culture, as well as our sense of who we are. So homeostasis led to basically everything about humans, and it’s the same drive that drives bacteria to search for food and humans to invent complicated technologies, it links us all together. Upon finishing the book, I just felt a resounding “so what”? It’s not clear to me how this idea of life has useful predictive power.
I guess the biggest problem for me with this book was the sweeping definition of homeostasis Damasio uses (read made up). The last straw for me was the “homeostasis” driven process of “genetic machinery that standardized the regulation of life inside cells and permitted the transmission of life to new generations.” Homeostasis sounds really important and critical for everything that’s ever happened to humans, as long as you extend its definition to include processes as far back as the division of the very first cells on earth.
The clip linked below illustrates well how I feel about this sweeping definition:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYyd3...

[Kunal Sen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am terribly conflicted about this book. I found the first half interesting, as it provided another piece of the puzzle towards our understanding of how our mind evolved and works. The extra insight it brings in is the idea that feelings, the ability of all living things to have a constant perception of our internal state, plays a very important role in development of our mind, including our consciousness. The author extends this idea not just to humans, where the mechanism has reached a new height, but to all living things, including the most ancient bacteria. Even there, the organism had a sense of its wellbeing through a complex array of chemicals and modified its behavior based on these chemical signals. The author tries to explain that life's most fundamental code of conduct is based on the homeostatic principle, which tries to regulate the system to keep certain wellness parameters within a certain range. In order to do this well, the system uses the "feelings" as the main feedback mechanism.

However, things went south for me as the book entered its later half. I could agree with the argument why we should not subscribe to the view that the mind is controlling a simple mechanistic body, but rather it is the mind+body as a single interconnected entity that is responsible for our behavior and our conscious self-awareness. This view can find support from many observations that we are discovering about the two-way interactions between mind and body. However, then the author claims that since the substrate on which the mind works is so important, there is no substrate-independence, as is believed by many researchers, and therefore it is impossible in principle to construct a "real" mind outside of life processes. That is, artificial intelligence will always be a mimicry of real life, and no matter how convincing the mimicry, it will still not be real.

This is strange leap to take. If the substrate of life is an important factor then why not incorporate that into the concept of the mind? That is, why not define the system as a combination of the brain+body? It is still a system that has to obey the laws of physics and chemistry, and therefore, in principle, be "understandable". He makes another implicit claim that even if we can simulate a process, the simulation is always different from the real thing. I have difficulty accepting this position. To me, ultimately everything in the universe is about information flow, and if a simulation cannot capture all the nuances of the physical system, then it can be improved by making the simulation deeper, going one more level granular. At some level of observation, a simulation becomes indistinguishable from the system it is simulating. The simulation of the human mind can very well require incorporation of the body and feelings, and at some point if we cannot perceive any difference between the simulation and the "real" thing then shouldn't we call it "real"? Not doing so is not a scientific view, but pure prejudice.

I am surprised by Damasio's shallow understanding of the concept of algorithm. He explicitly assumes that algorithms are predictable, and therefore cannot model something as life, which is inherently unpredictable. In this argument he is restricting himself to the most mundane types of algorithms, and ignoring the emergent properties of another class of algorithms whose net output is as unpredictable as any biological system. Here again, he falls into the trap that life is something magical, beyond our full understanding, and therefore simulation.

The author also makes an absurd claim that since it took nature millions of years to evolve the "feelings" system, how dare we think we can do the same in a mere thousands of years. Here he completely missed the point that while evolution is a blind process, depending on chance and relatively long lifespans of the creatures, intentional design does not depend on either, and therefore can go incredibly faster. Moreover, since something is difficult does not make it impossible. The author constantly confuses between difficulty and complexity with impossibility.

At the end of the book he goes into a discussion of what is wrong with the present day society. While I agree with some of his concerns, I don't think he could make a strong case of how that is connected with the topic of this book. It seemed like he is pained by the state of things, and he was a desperate to somehow force that into the book, with very little justification. I am also significantly more optimistic about the future, but that is a matter of taste.

[Miles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Antonio Damasio’s impact on my intellectual development would be difficult to overstate. I first encountered his work when I was assigned The Feeling of What Happens for a philosophy of mind course in college. That book fundamentally transformed how I understood myself as a thinking, feeling being, and when I read Self Comes to Mind a few years later, my perspective was embellished further by Damasio’s complex yet accessible presentation of his groundbreaking research on how the body-mind constructs consciousness and identity.

The Strange Order of Things, Damasio’s newest offering, strikes me as less impressive but also more ambitious than those that came before. It feels like a rehashing of Damasio’s older work applied to a new subject, human culture, with varying degrees of success. But it’s still an engaging read full of intriguing ideas, useful information, and fun speculation.

The central tenets of Damsio’s Strange Order are thus: (1) biological homeostasis is the foundation for human flourishing, (2) feelings, when combined with homeostatic imperatives and imbued with valence, provide the basis for the development of human cultures, and (3) cooperation between organisms, which is intrinsic to flourishing and cultural expression, is rooted in nonconscious and ancient biological phenomena. I’ll explain these in turn.

Anyone who has read Damasio previously or is familiar with his research will note his preoccupation with the concept of homeostasis. I’m in no position to judge whether the scientific community has failed to grant homeostasis the attention it deserves (Damasio’s contention), or whether Damasio is merely puffing up his academic hobby horse to make it seem all-encompassing, but either way his ideas on the matter appear valuable. Here’s how he defines the term:

"Homeostasis refers to the fundamental set of operations at the core of life, from the earliest and long-vanished point of its beginning in early biochemistry to the present. Homeostasis is the powerful, unthought, unspoken imperative, whose discharge implies, for every living organism, small or large, nothing less than enduring and prevailing. The part of the homeostatic imperative that concerns 'enduring' is transparent: it produces survival and is taken for granted without any specific reference or reverence whenever the evolution of any organism or species is considered. The part of homeostasis that concerns 'prevailing' is more subtle and rarely acknowledged. It ensures that life is regulated within a range that is not just compatible with survival but also conducive to flourishing, to a projection of life into the future of an organism or a species." (25, emphasis his)

Damasio later expands on this definition by adding: “One might say that organisms want their health and then some” (45). It is this “then some” that creates Damasio’s Strange Order. Without homeostatic flourishing, the argument goes, the biological sensing and mapping functions that undergird future projection and complex memory might never have come into existence, thereby obviating the development of consciousness, identity, sociality, and the plethora of cultural practices that derive from those qualities.

In order to complete (or at least extend) this picture, we need to also consider the role of feelings and valence in the production of cultures. For Damasio, feelings provide the foundation for mental experience and subjectivity, and, “as deputies of homeostasis, are the catalysts for the responses that began human cultures” (26, emphasis his). These homeostatic “deputies” are charged with three main duties: the generation of motives for intellectual creation, the monitoring of cultural practices and instruments for success or failure, and the negotiation of cultural adaptation over time (15). One of the great strengths of Damasio’s outlook is his insistence that feelings matter because they represent the deep evolutionary wisdom that resides within and emanates from human bodies. This doesn’t mean feelings should always have the final say or that they shouldn’t be subject to critique or revision, but it does encourage readers to realize that our feelings always have something valuable to tell us, even when we choose to ignore or override them. It is the ongoing dance between unbidden feelings that arise in the body and other, more intellectual modes of cognition that produces cultures in all their glory and horror.

Also important is the assertion that feelings are never neutral, but rather imbued with an intrinsic, value-laden property that Damasio calls “valence”:

"Valence translates the condition of life directly in mental terms, moment to moment. It inevitably reveals the condition as good, bad, or somewhere in between. When we experience a condition that is conducive to the continuation of life, we describe it in positive terms and call it pleasant, for example; when the condition is not conducive, we describe the experience in negative terms and talk of unpleasantness. Valence is the defining element of feeling and, by extension, of affect." (102)

The undeniable presence of valence in our palette of feelings reveals that the human mind occupies a “weighted” space––a complex web of value judgments that is essential to and inseparable from our every interaction with objects, ideas, and other organisms. Valence, therefore, is a not only a critical source of cultural expression but also a mediator for cultural critique and augmentation.

Cooperation is another critical component in the creation of cultures. Evolutionary biology has traditionally focused on competition as the primary driver of natural selection, and it has been challenging for cooperation to gain legitimacy as an equally important player in the evolutionary epic. But, in concert with other thinkers in recent years who’ve sought to understand the profound impact of cooperative evolutionary strategies, Damasio puts the lie to the idea that evolutionary success is all about competition:

"The principle is always the same: organisms give up something in exchange for something that other organisms can offer them; in the long run, this will make their lives more efficient and survival more likely. What bacteria, or nucleated cells, or tissues, or organs give up, in general, is independence; what they get in return is access to the 'commons,' the goods that come from a cooperative arrangement in terms of indispensable nutrients or favorable general conditions, such as access to oxygen or advantages of climate…The homeostatic imperative stands behind the processes of cooperation and also looms large behind the emergence of 'general' systems, ubiquitously present throughout multicellular organisms. Without such 'whole-body systems,' the complex structures and functions of multicellular organisms would not be viable." (55)

According to this view, the evolutionary dynamics of cooperation are the groundwork for the complex biological systems responsible for all multicellular activity, including human life and cultures; without the substantial benefits conferred by successful cooperation, the biological complexity necessary for cultural development would be an evolutionary dead end. Further, Damasio claims convincingly that “the emergence of subjective mental states” is a “prime example of cooperation” sprung from the collaborative interactions between different types of cells, tissues and organs (67).

Damasio is careful to avoid anthropocentrism by emphasizing that cooperation took place in evolution long before “minded” creatures were around to conceptualize what was going on. The best example of this is his description of “the convenient treaty celebrated between two bacteria: a pushy, upstart bacterium that wanted to take over a bigger and more established one”:

"The pushy bacterium operates as if concluding that 'when we cannot win over them, we might as well join them.' The established bacterium, on the other side, operates as if thinking, 'I may as well accept this invader provided it offers something to me.' But neither bacterium thought anything, of course. No mental reflection was involved, no overt consideration of prior knowledge, no cunning, guile, kindness, fair play, or diplomatic conciliation. The equation of the problem was resolved blindly and from within the process, bottom up, as an option that, in retrospect, worked for both sides. The successful option was shaped by the imperative requirements of homeostasis, and that was not magic, except in a poetic sense. It consisted of concrete physical and chemical constraints applied to the life process, within the cells, in the context of their physiochemical relations with the environment…The genetic machinery of the successful organisms made sure the strategy would remain in the repertoire of future generations." (235, emphasis his).

This empirically-supportable tale drives home the important lesson that cooperation is just as native to all organisms as competition. Once internalized, this lesson shows us that, at least at the intersubjective level of human consciousness and sociality, we can prioritize cooperative, positive-sum strategies over competitive, zero-sum strategies without feeling that we are somehow balking our evolutionary heritage by positing “unnatural” or “unrealistic” solutions to serious problems.

I doubt that many scientists or science-savvy readers would reject Damasio’s general outline of the biological basis for culture, but what of his comments on culture itself? The third and final part of Strange Order analyzes “The Cultural Mind at Work,” and is simultaneously the most entertaining and disappointing portion of the book. Damasio rushes through a robust list of cultural topics, spending mere paragraphs on subjects that demand their own book-length treatments. Here’s a in-exhaustive list from my notes:

––Creativity
––Religion
––The universal appeal of music and dance
––The algorithmic account of humanity
––The future and limitations of artificial intelligence
––Drug addiction and pain management
––The psychological effects of widespread rapid communication technology
––The dangers and benefits of population diversity
––Education
––Questioning the assertion that we are living through “the best time” in human history
––Ancient Greek Tragedies and Shakespeare
––Altruism
––Profit and greed
––Neuroscience’s tendency to over-favor the cerebral cortex
––The suggestion that modern computational sciences are enacting an odd reincarnation of Cartesian dualism
––Biological systems and neural networks as the original gatherers of “Big Data”
––The next steps for the humanist project

Damasio addresses all these topics and more in less than one hundred pages of text. It’s a pleasurable ride and written with a lot of artistry and passion, but my reaction was mixed due to the lack of detail devoted to each individual topic. I’m not convinced that other readers will necessary have the same problem, and will also admit that I’ve enjoyed this style more in other books (most notably the works of Yuval Noah Harari). Though I disagreed with some of Damasio’s speculations, I never felt like he stumbled into intellectually insupportable territory.

Overall, Damasio manages to put forth a level-headed picture, proving himself neither an optimist nor pessimist about the current state of human civilization. He ends on a responsible and honest note, pointing out that his ideas will need to be revised as new evidence comes to light, and also marveling at how little we truly understand about ourselves and the vast universe in which we are embedded. The Strange Order of Things demonstrates the clear value of combining a scientific mindset with cultural analysis, but also demonstrates the inherent weaknesses of that approach, reminding us of the need for additional perspectives.

This review was originally published on my blog, words&dirt.

[hayatem · Rating 4 out of 5]

عن تشكّل الثقافة ودورها في بناء الهوية، وعن ذلك التسلسل الغريب في نمو الأشياء حتى تغدو جزءًا من نسيج مجتمعي أو هوياتي. عن دورها في إعادة تشكيل المفاهيم الحياتية، وصياغتها ضمن أنظمة وأطر تمس تفاصيل الحياة اليومية أو روتين الأفراد، فتتكيف لتصبح جزءًا من هويتهم ووعيهم ومعانيهم. كما تتجلى في الأفعال المتراكمة التي تُبنى بها الذات عبر الخيارات اليومية.

وكذلك عن الاتزان الحيوي كقوة خفية وراء تشكّل الوعي والثقافة، وعن رؤية داماسيو للثقافة بوصفها امتدادًا عضويًا للطبيعة لا نقيضًا لها.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very interesting book, taking Spinoza's affects to the next level - the level of neurobiology. The world of feelings as homeostatic mechanisms of the body / nervous system is a very interesting perspective on things. Never thought of that.
The last few chapters - the cultural mind and the future of the humans were for me too long.
Actually this is my only problem with the book - it it too long for what it says. Could have been more condensed. The chapter on "consciousness" is way to long for example, in the end not having really said anything.

[Sofia Teixeira · Rating 3 out of 5]

Homeostasia - Processo de regulação pelo qual um organismo consegue a constância do seu equilíbrio (Priberam).

Opinião: Há muito que me interesso pela mente humana, mas nos últimos anos esse interesse tem-se tornado numa pequena obsessão. Sempre me questionei muito do porquê do ser humano agir desta ou daquela maneira quando confrontado com diferentes situações. A luta entre a razão e a emoção tem sido o eixo pelo qual tenho procurado saber mais sobre o funcionamento do cérebro humano. Essa procura iniciou-se através de alguns livros temáticos, mas desde há dois ou três anos que tenho mergulhado mesmo na neurociência, numa mistura de interligar a neurobiologia com a actividade dos neurónios e a repercussão no comportamento humano.

Ainda estou longe de ter o conhecimento que gostaria, mas ler este livro ajudou a que algumas questões pertinentes ficassem um pouco mais claras, chegando à conclusão que existe um' "a estranha ordem das coisas". À semelhança da velha expressão - "o que nasceu primeiro? o ovo ou a galinha?" - existem muitas perguntas semelhantes em relação à emergência da cooperação, das diferentes culturas e do papel que as emoções tiveram nestes processos complexos.

António Damásio é professor da cátedra David Dornsife de Neurociência, Psicologia e Filosofia, e diretor do Brain and Creativity Institute na University of Southern California, em Los Angeles. Neurologista e neurocientista, Damásio tem dado contributos fundamentais para a compreensão dos processos cerebrais subjacentes às emoções, aos sentimentos e à consciência (Wook).

António Damásio, autor deste livro, explica-nos que "Os sentimentos são as expressões mentais da homeostasia, e a homeostasia, agindo sob a capa do sentimento, estabelece a ligação funcional entre as primeiras formas de vida e a extraordinária colaboração que se veio a estabelecer entre corpos e sistemas nervosos." E o que isto significa é que as culturas resultam da expressão dos sentimentos e que esses sentimentos são expressões da tentativa do nosso organismo de manter a homeostasia. Aviso-vos, ler este livro é super fascinante, porém também um pouco de cansativo pela sua densidade e forma.

Não sei se é por o livro ser a tradução do original em inglês, mas a narrativa não é fácil nem para quem está familiarizado com o assunto, muito menos para quem não está. É muito importante perceber logo desde o início que "homeostasia" é todo o processo celular que tenta manter o organismo num equilíbrio em que, no sentido figurado, temos uma harmonia e uma dinâmica que nos mantém saudáveis e com uma sensação de bem-estar. Aliás, é argumentado no livro que, dado que os sentimentos são expressões da homeostasia, devemos ter atenção às mesmas para perceber se estamos com alguns desequilíbrio ou doença. O que, na verdade, faz todo o sentido.

Se tiverem paciência e curiosidade suficientes, acho que a persistência na leitura acaba por ter a sua recompensa. Fazendo um balanço do livro no seu todo, é incrível como António Damásio nos explica como é que a nossa composição genética, os nossos comportamentos e culturas têm origem nos tempos unicelulares resultando da evolução do processo homeostático. E talvez vocês já estejam um bocadinho cansados da palavra homeostasia, mas esse é mesmo o conceito central o livro e vai aparecer muitas vezes.

Antes de terminar, quero só referenciar também uma parte mais curta do livro, mas com que o meu lado engenheira ficou logo em alerta - o papel da inteligência artificial na reprodução/preservação do cérebro humano. Confesso que mesmo trabalhando indirectamente com Inteligência Artificial e Sistemas Inteligentes, o ramo que explora a possibilidade de reproduzir emoções e uma estrutura capaz de mimicar o cérebro humano, não me seduz. E aqui, correndo o risco de ser redutora, espero que António Damásio tenha razão na sua argumentação de que todo este processo que nos distingue dos demais seres vivos, resultante de processos complexos entre diferentes componentes celulares, genéticos e culturais, dificilmente será passível de se ser reproduzido por mão humana.

Resumindo e concluindo, A Estranha Ordem das Coisas é um livro interessante, por vezes um pouco confuso, mas em que partes em que a narrativa fica mais fácil e fluída vale completamente a pena. O nosso poder associativo e racional facilmente cria ligações entre os conceitos mais complexos e dinâmicas mais simples, fazendo com que este processo de compreender melhor a origem e a ordem de emergência dos vários componentes da civilização humana ganhe alguma luz e maior compreensão.

[Sebastián · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una reseña pendiente.
Pero como comentario final puedo decir que, si pude con este libro, podré con cualquiera.

Es sumamente complejo todo lo que ocurre en este ensayo. Siento que aprendí mucho, que fue y es un libro maravilloso. No lo recomendaría a cualquiera, solo a aquellos que quieran aprender.

Gracias Damasio, con este libro cumplo mi meta de 12 libros este año.

Ahora sí, la reseña:

Cuando adquirí este libro, pensé que estaba relacionado con un enfoque antropológico y que lo explicaría por medio de ejemplos sociales. Que error.

Nunca había leído al autor, entonces me dejé guiar por una portada bonita y un nombre agradable. Lo que encontré fue formas de comprender comportamientos que se relacionan con estos elementos:
- Biología celular
- Consciencia
- Emociones
- Sentimientos
- Dispositivos culturales
- Medicina
- Autopoiesis
- Homeostasis

Todo esto junto para llegar a conclusiones que me cambiaron la forma de ver nuestros comportamientos.

Además de esto, aprendí mucho de los temas mencionados antes pero que no fue un aprendizaje amable, ya que no hay introducción para algunos de los temas y toca indagar uno mismo, he allí el dilema de este libro. No hay una explicación amplia sino que toca buscarla por otros medios.

¿Por qué leerlo?
Porque es un libro de divulgación que permite comprender el complejo entramado de procesos que se requieren para expresar y comprender mis propias emociones y sentimientos. No es una reflexión, es una explicación científica de los procesos internos y como son un reflejo de lo que sucede afuera del cuerpo.

Lo recomiendo para
- Comprender los dispositivos culturales
- Establecer la diferencia entre sentimiento y emoción.
- Aprender sobre la forma en que los sentimientos nos hicieron humanos.

[Stetson · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Strange Order of Things is an ambitious and provocative mess of a work. At its center, the book posits that foundational thermodynamic processes instantiated homeostatic mechanisms in living things which in turn creates a subjective state that provokes the action of life. However, Damásio shows only a passing interest in developing the argument for his heterodox view of life's origins nor does he really address what the purported issues are with the orthodox theory of life (i.e. the RNA world hypothesis paired with the gene's eye view of evolution and endosymbiosis). There is a flippant dismissal that the energetics don't work in the orthodox theory, but this is inconsistent with the empirical work on this topic (e.g. RNA self-catalysis, RNA spontaneous polymerization with clay catalysts, etc). Ultimately, a lot of the scientific claims and philosophical musings (lot more of the latter) are rendered uninformative or contradictory or even misleading.

Despite the half-baked and somewhat sloppy nature of The Strange Order of Things, it was still periodically an interesting or engaging read. The third part of the book was sort of a grab-bag commentary on various contemporary phenomena or ideas. He's particularly critical of transhumanist and techno-utopian thought; some of his opining is interesting, but it appears he may be right for the wrong reasons on some issues.

All together, I don't strongly recommend as there are a lot of better books out there (apparently even by this same author according to the other Goodreads reviews I perused).

[John Shillington · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars is a poor rating relative to two of Damasio’s other books—Descartes’ Error and The Feeling of What Happens—both of which I would give 5-stars. The problem with The Strange Order of Things is that it seems to me that Damasio has very little new to add to what he has already written about extensively in his other books. In addition, the voice of the author of Descartes’ Error was charming, literate, personal and engaging, whereas the author’s voice in The Strange Order of Things is more pedantic and, at times, hectoring. None of this is to say that the book is actually bad, just that there isn’t enough new material in the book to justify a whole new book, in my opinion. Some of the ideas, for example about the sociality of bacteria and of the complexity (and sophistication) of our enteric nervous system, are very interesting and definitely worth thinking about. On the other hand, his speculations about the (in)ability of AI to achieve AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) because they aren’t organic, chemical processes, are weak and poorly argued. He may be right, ultimately, but not for the reasons that he uses to buttress his argument.

In short: if you haven’t read anything else by Damasio, read Descartes’ Error. If you *have* read some or all of his other books, then this includes some nice additions and expansions to the ideas in his other books, but be prepared to speed through portions of it as you go.

[Vladimir · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is a poorly written, sloppy, pretentious soup. This is the first of Damasio's books that I've had a bad reaction to, most others I've enjoyed, but boy was it a bad reaction! There are some interesting new ideas (as another reviewer pointed out, his approach to evolution, for example), some interesting recycled ones (his view of cognition) and a ton of information that form a piece of a highly intellectually pretentious puzzle that never really fits together.

It puzzles me at all, to be honest, why any one person thinks they can encompass everything from cellular metabolism to human emotional life and culture in one book. Or in their thoughts at all. There is a kind of tremendous arrogance in that.

[Owlseyes]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/t...

[Ben Zimmerman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up this book because I had read another one of Damasio’s books, Descartes’ Error, which I loved. Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed by this work, which seemed underdeveloped, and took a more philosophical tone than the personal and engaging tone of Descartes’ Error.

My favorite part was an interesting section on the role of the brainstem, cranial nerves (particularly the vagal nerve) and enteric nervous system in creating feelings. As a researcher in neuroscience, I can attest that these areas are often overlooked in studies, especially in typical neuroimaging, fMRI experiments. I found Damasio’s speculations about the lack of myelination in the vagal nerve to be fascinating, although I also found it to be a bit underdeveloped. He speculates that this would allow the neurons to communicate at more locations along the body of the neuron and so integrate more complex information, but he didn’t really specify how this would work.

In general, I was often finding myself not being convinced or satisfied with Damasio’s arguments. One of the biggest issues was that “homeostasis” as a concept seemed to be used too haphazardly. He expands the concept away from the idea of just maintaining set points to an idea of an organism striving to thrive. Whereas the first and simpler definition of homeostasis makes it easy to understand machine-like biological mechanisms and feedback loops that could exert drives towards homeostasis, expanding the definition to include a strive to thrive muddles the mechanism, and Damasio never explicitly lays out how it works mechanistically. Secondly, Damasio discusses his view that a subjective perspective, which leads to feelings, is synonymous with experience and consciousness. He assumes that certain types of animals have feelings, which didn’t seem justified to me based on any prior arguments, and I would have liked to see the discussion go into more depth. Later in the book, speculations about the inability of AI to achieve artificial general intelligence seemed weak to me. I couldn’t really grasp the argument, which seemed to rely on the lack of homeostatic imperatives. None of the pieces of the argument to me seemed like impossible hurdles for engineering intelligent systems.

[la poesie a fleur de peau · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Uma vez que todos experienciamos sentimentos continuamente, torna-se espantoso que, em geral, seja tão difícil explicar de modo satisfatório a sua natureza. A questão do conteúdo é o único aspeto minimamente óbvio e compreensível do problema. É fácil concordar com a descrição de acontecimentos que constituem sentimentos, com a sequência em que ocorrem, e até com a forma como esses acontecimentos são distribuídos e sequenciados no nosso corpo. Por exemplo, em resposta a um tremor de terra podemos sentir o batimento prematuro do coração, mais forte do que o normal, ou a boca seca que se fez sentir imediatamente antes ou logo a seguir, ou talvez a garganta contraída. Um simples estudo realizado no laboratório Rita Haari, na Finlândia, confirma as observações que muitos de nós temos feito ao longo dos anos, e confirma também as brilhantes intuições dos poetas. O estudo mostra que um numeroso grupo de seres humanos normais identificou de forma consistente que certas regiões do corpo estão ativas durante experiências típicas de situações homeostáticas e emocionais. A cabeça, o peito e o abdómen são os «teatros» do sentimento mais frequentemente ativados. São, com efeito, os «palcos» onde se criam os sentimentos. Wordsworth ficaria satisfeito. Afinal de contas, foi ele que escreveu sobre as «doces sensações, sentidas no sangue e sentidas ao longo do coração», as sensações que, segundo ele, nos chegavam à «mente pura, numa tranquila restauração»."

***

Não sei se consigo travar o meu sentido de humor: se eu bebesse um shot de vodka sempre que encontrasse as palavras "homeostasia" e "homeostática", ganhava uma cirrose hepática antes de alcançar 1/4 do livro.

Piadas imbecis à parte, a linguagem é de fácil acesso, mas sinto que em termos de conteúdo se desenvolve pouco ou nada, impressão que se agudizou quando cheguei à secção da AI e das novas tecnologias. Acho o António Damásio um comunicador incrível, mas não creio que seja neste livro que essa qualidade melhor se revela.

[Stephie Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this book Antonio Damasio attempts to explain how culture in humans arose in terms of brain anatomy and function. Parts one and two are top heavy in brain anatomy. Part one covers homeostasis. Chapter one sets the background discussing the human condition. Chapter two covers the role of movement, starting with the earliest life forms. In chapter three we get a look inside homeostasis and its various functions, which are quite wide. Chapter four covers how life developed from bacteria to the human mind. Part two covers the brain and the making of culture. In it you will find the origins of mind, expanding minds, feelings, and consciousness. Part three moves to the realizing of culture via the brain and homeostasis, explaining how culture arose, and the various things it accomplishes for individually and as a collective, and it discusses religious belief, morality, government, the arts, philosophy, and science. After this he discuss immortality, the role of algorithmic mind, including robots, and mortality. The book finishes with the current sate of understanding cultural life now. It ends with an exploration of "the strange order of things."

The following are comments based on my notes. Numbers in brackets [] refer to Kindle pagination where a quoted part of the text is found. An at symbol "@" before the number indicates where no specific text is being quote, Only where the thought occurred.

[112] "Drives, motivations, and emotions often have something to add to or subtract from decisions one would have expected to be purely rational." This is so import not to forget the interaction of thought and feeling. I often refer this as a tangled web because that is how strongly they are connected.

[146] "Flowing along this super movie-in-the-brain, there are symbols, and some of them make up a verbal track that translates objects and actions into words and sentences." I would say the same of our thoughts. I say this because I think that language is not how we think, but the result of our thoughts. For a defense of this stance see (https://aquestionersjourney.wordpress...).

[@175] Only now does he switch to a more plain language in his coverage of culture, and leaves behind a large amount of brain anatomy and function, including neurotransmitters.

[177] "They would engage social motivations and would result in powerful and cooperative collective behaviors. Fear, dread, and anger would be immediate results and compromise homeostasis, but cooperative group support would follow along with attempts to comprehend, justify, and respond to the situation constructively. Some responses would include behaviors later incorporated in religious, artistic, and governance practices. Wars constitute a special case because they can prompt both constructive remedies and endless cycles of violence begetting violence. There is nothing to be added to what Homer, the Mahabharata, and Shakespeare’s history plays illustrate on this issue." This explains how problem solving as a social function may have arisen.

[188] ". . . which is the same as saying that the mental face had to be owned by the organism in which it occurred, thereby becoming subjective, in brief, conscious." I question the use of subjective here and through the rest of the book. It seems unnecessary with less explanatory value than consciousness.

[199] "One of the key ideas in this book is that minds arise from interactions of bodies and brains, not from brains alone. Are transhumanists planning to download the body, too?" Another thing missing within this description is the fact that we don't use language to think as almost all attempts at programming the brain uses. The exception maybe neuroprocessing where mathematical calculations are used. It uses a state at time 1 to get the state at time 2. This goes on until it has found the solution to the problem at hand. But, if you consider mathematics as a language than this is actually no exception at all.

[200] " . . . many aspects of the assembly of natural organisms and of communication depend on algorithms and on coding, as do many aspects of computation as well as the entire enterprises of artificial intelligence and robotics. But this fact has given rise to the sweeping notion that natural organisms would somehow be reducible to algorithms." How do you code for experiences throughout life. It seems like chaos theory would have something to say. Just a change here and you wind up at Stone St., instead of Maxwell Dr., get the idea?

[200] "This is part of an alleged singularity enabled by the fact that we can write algorithms artificially and connect them with the natural variety, and mix them, so to speak." The future may be open, but this is poppycock (so what if it is not a well constructed argument). But, this is why we need to see an experiment that actually proves this wild ass junk.

[202] "But there is no evidence that such artificial organisms, designed for the sole purpose of being intelligent, can generate feelings just because they are behaving intelligently. Natural feelings emerged in evolution, and there they remained because they have made live or die contributions to the organisms lucky enough to have them." Feelings are important to human intelligence (thanks Antonio Damasio). They might of weak AI, but strong AI is going to take something other than mere code, because I believe we do not think in language, and that is what coding is. Even PDPs use mathematics, which is a language all it's own, but it still interacts with natural language anyway.

[202] "Curiously, pure intellectual processes lend themselves well to an algorithmic account and do not appear to be dependent on the substrate. This is the reason why well-conceived AI programs can beat chess champions, excel at Go, and drive cars successfully. However, there is no evidence to date to suggest that intellectual processes alone can constitute the basis for what makes us distinctly human." Because intelligence is more than coding in a machine. It, as Damasio has shown in this book, it lacks feelings. No feelings no strong AI. Plus my previously state believe that we don't think in language.

[214] "On the other hand, the public generally lacks the time and the method to convert massive massive amounts of information into sensible and practically usable conclusions." Like Republicans lack enough information to vote intelligently, especially the Trump crowd.

[264] Note - 6. "'Default mode network' refers to a set of bilateral cortical regions that become especially active in certain behavioral and mental conditions, such as resting and mind wandering, and may become less active when the mind is focused on a particular content." So, I do have some support that mind wandering can be a positive method of mindfulness. Thanks once again Damasio.

The first part of the book was heavy on brain anatomy. And, the second still contains a lot. While it may be important, it sure is boring to me. However, in the third part he takes off on far less proven information. The last chapter is like a fairy tell. But, a you can tell from my notes, it was an engaging book.

This book would be appropriate for those interested in the development of culture, interested in brain anatomy as it concerns feelings, mainly, and those that are just interested in the brain and mind.

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

The ideas in the book itself are quite valuable thinking points, but I am giving this book a lower rating than expected because 1) the writing style was pedantic and difficult to simplify, and 2) many very important topics at the end of the book were rushed (culture, Christianity, the use of media, education) and Damasio leaves a lot of insurmountable questions to be answered: "Can societies succeed at introducing... an intelligent and well rewarded form of altruism such that it would replace the self-absorption that now reigns?"

The book itself seemed to almost overuse the key word 'homeostasis' - as if the grand idea ties everything together very neatly and thematically.

[Rita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adoro como o Damásio explica tudo de forma tão fácil e inteligível. Como eu não hei-de gostar de um autor que diz com toda a convicção que o segredo da Humanidade top é se definitivamente conjugarmos as áreas do saber da Psicologia, da Biologia e da Filosofia.
Um crente inacreditável do papel da Educa��ão,e das Artes naquilo que é o objectivo último da Humanidade, a promoção da vida e o seu fomentar em qualidade no futuro. Wow.
Loved this book. <3

[Dr. Tobias Christian Fischer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ein schönes Buch, was man in der Tiefe einige Male lesen sollte. Ich denke, dass es schön ist und sich gut anfühlt.

[Jonathan Hockey · Rating 5 out of 5]

For the last few chapters I give this a 5 star rather than an anticipated 3 or 4 star rating, because I think what he has to say here provides potentially a very useful framework for how we can find a reasonable connection between biology and culture in our future speculations on humanity and its place and purpose in the world.

The main arguments surround a few key points:

1) The homeostatic imperative
2) The importance of feelings to monitoring and regulating this homeostatic state
3) The importance of feelings to giving us a sense of value and purpose to our subjective assessments of things.
4) The interaction between the monitoring of feeling states in our own internal organism and our cognitive models of our external surroundings through reasoning to form intelligent cultural responses to our condition.

Here is a good summarising quote from the book:

"This approach would regard the notion that reason should take charge as pure folly, a mere leftover from the the worst excesses of rationalism, but it would also reject the idea that we should simply endorse the recommendations of emotions - be kind, compassionate, angry or disgusted - without filtering them through knowledge and reason. It would foster a productive partnership of feelings and reason, emphasizing nourishing emotions and suppressing negative ones. Last, it would reject the notion of human minds as a equivalent to artificial intelligence creations."

And for the future culture:

"would require upholding human dignity and reverence for human life as nonnegotiable, sacred values; it would also require a set of goals capable of transcending immediate homeostatic needs and both inspiring and elevating the mind as projected into the future."

This whole approach of affective neurobiology is a welcome and refreshing change from the limitations of functionalist accounts, behavioral accounts and those accounts that start from some notion of inherent selfish or self directedness in organisms and expect to contrive a purely procedural or computational strategic solution to moral and cultural human problems from there. This latter is simply not going to work, other than to feed dystopian imaginings. It will not create a viable and healthy long term culture for humanity. Because it ignores the felt subjective experience of human beings and how critical this is to our whole biological and cultural evolution as a species.

Culture is an ongoing negotiation with our own feelings, with others, and with our environments. It is a negotiation with self, other and the world, not merely an exploitation or instrumental manipulation of them. The choice is not the polarised selfish exploiter or the selfless altruist. Both these options in the west ignore your own personal feelings. The choice is a reasonable negotiation between your feelings and the surrounding world that you must be striving to always be aware of. When we can regulate our own feelings in modern cultures much better we will rely less on the instrumental manipulations and technological machinations of a predatory elite group of people, and we can maybe make some steps towards a democracy, not just in name, but in our real lived culture.

[R Nair · Rating 1 out of 5]

The first half of the book is fascinating and brings about a unique approach towards scientifically exlpaining the origins of consciousness. The second half of the book drowns the reader in excessively convoluted sentence construction and sweeping statements based on a superfluous, all-encompassing definition of a single biological process.

Homeostasis is the state of unconsciously regulated physical and chemical conditions maintained by living systems, a good example of which is body temperature.
This book attempts to use this concept of homeostasis throughout to identify in a scientific manner how feelings and hence consciousness could have arisen all the way from the homeostatically driven prokaryotic origins of life. This makes the first half of the book truly worth reading. Here are the key points that I could dig out as a basic summary of the first (read: relevant) half of the book.

'…Feelings arose from a series of gradual, body related processes, bottom up, from simpler chemical and action phenomenon accumulated and maintained over evolution.'

...Feelings are the result of operations necessary for homeostasis in organisms such as ours. They are integrally present, made from the same cloth as other aspects of mind. The homeostatic imperative that pervaded the organisation of early organisms led to the selection of programs of chemical pathways and specific actions that ensured the maintenance of organisms integrity. Once there were organisms with nervous systems and image-making ability, brain and body cooperated to image those complex multistep programs of integrity maintenance in a multidimensional manner, and that gave rise to feelings.

...feelings let the mind know about the current state of homeostatis and thus added another layer of valuable regulatory options. Feelings were a decisive advantage that nature would not have failed to select and use as consistent accompaniment to mental processes.

…mental states naturally feel like something because it is advantageous for organisms to have mental states qualified by feelings. Only then can mental states assist the organisms in producing the most homeostatically compatible behaviours. In fact, complex organisms such as ours would not survive in the absence of feelings.'

[Farha Crystal · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a story about the evolution of mind and culture through the prism of Homeostasis ( An organism's internal attempt to balance and regulate itself optimally to ensure survival). Homeostasis is common among the simplest creatures. But, when an organism becomes more complex( i.e. nerve cells ), it's homeostasis process turns out to be more complicated. So, a lot of internal cooperation is required to maintain the optimal state. As a result, awareness develops in the process of maintaining cooperation. However, the differences in the form of animal awareness and subjectivity emerge with increasing anatomical complexity. Antoni Damasio assumes no particular neural coordinate for consciousness except that consciousness is a dance among the brain and other bodily systems.

This is my first book by Damásio. I appreciate his argument that feelings are the precursors to subjective consciousness and homeostasis is the process to develop feelings. I also appreciate his understanding of the concept of Algorithms and it's limitations. But, I don't feel satisfied with the last and final part of the book due to the lack of details on miscellaneous cultural topics. Maybe, I should read more of his works. :)

[zafira · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 e tal, como diziam os meus professores do básico

O início deste livro (na verdade toda a 1a parte) foi doloroso para quem já levou com biologia e neurociências durante seis anos consecutivos. Infelizmente fez com que não tivesse vontade de ler o resto do livro com o mesmo entusiasmo que tinha lido a contracapa.

Porém, as últimas 80 páginas foram incríveis.
Os meus capítulos favoritos foram o 11 “Medicina, Imortalidade e Algoritmos” e o 12 “Sobre a Atual Condição Humana”

[Michael Huang]

The book started with homeostasis:the body’s need/desire to maintain equilibrium or in stable conditions. It goes on to explain how nervous system help in this process: passing on feelings from different parts of body to the brain. The feeling of the outside world and inside our body go hand in hand. Feelings also drive human innovation (for example to keep temperatures comfortable).

In quite a bit of stretch IMO, the author claims that feelings also explain a lot social problems: we are primarily concern with the individual’s homeostasis. We can’t be expected to suddenly be receptive of other people’s homeostatic needs.