O Sentimento de Si

by António Damásio, M.F.M (Translator)

Neste novo livro, que tem sido recebido por cientistas e artistas com as críticas mais calorosas e elogiosas, o neurologista e humanista António Damásio confronta o mistério da consciência. Como é que chegamos a saber? Como é que a mente desenvolve o sentido de si ? Depois de ler "O Erro de Decartes", hoje traduzido em mais de vinte línguas, Jonas Salk escreveu: «Nunca mais conseguiremos olhar para nós ou para o outro sem nos interrogarmos sobre o que se passa por detrás dos olhos que assim se encontram». Em O Sentimento de Si, Damásio avança no mesmo caminho de descoberta e mostra como «a consciência é a chave para uma vida examinada».

Genres: Psychology, Science, Nonfiction, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Brain, Self Help

414 pages, Capa Mole

First published September 27, 1999

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

[Joshua Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Damasio is a terrific writer, and this is a fantastic assessment of the neurophysiology of consciousness. I strongly recommend it for those who are interested in neuroscience.

There are some concerns I have about the philosophical underpinnings, but Damasio isn't a philosopher. He doesn't grasp the philosophical literature quite as well as, say, Pinker, but he's still a terrific mind and he has a great understanding of neurophysiological involvement in cognitive functions. It's not really that Damasio is presenting a theory of consciousness. Really, Damasio is just presenting some data and some considerations for a potential theory of consciousness, and then referring to several philosophical theories in order to try to see which best reflects his data. That is a totally reasonable approach, and actually much less audacious than what many of his colleagues are attempting to do.

Damasio is very good at equivocating, but being clear about what his views are. He is willing to acknowledge the limits of the data that he has access to, while at the same time asserting that his conclusions are definitive when he means them to be. In that sense, Damasio is a very lucid writer, and is an excellent resource for those who aren't that confident that they can tell real neurophysiological data from bullcrap.

I strongly recommend the book for laymen. I am not sure how much someone with a professional knowledge of the material would get out of this. Some of the more technical details are really interesting, but I am sure that they can be found in other places in the professional literature, where there is far more depth.

[Rory · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is heavier on the neuroanatomy than other books on consciousness, so won't be to everyone's taste.

However, Damasio is an excellent writer and it is very interesting to get a neurologists take on consciousness, particularly as his focus has been on human emotion (finally emerging from the taboo that it has suffered for too long) and he has a long history with clinical patients that he can refer to when discussing the different parts of his anatomy.

Damasio's model of consciousness is intriguing and well worth exploring. He builds it up in three stages; (i) our proto-consciousness, that us based on the basic regulatory functions for governing the body, (ii) our core-consciousness, aware of stimuli as they arrive and finally (iii) the extended-consciousness that involves the auto-biography, the self generated by referring to memory and future plans.

Damasio backs this up with positive and negative examples, referring to clinical patients who have suffered different insults to their CNS.

Recommended - but remember that you will need to be able to tell your hypothalamus from your pre-frontal cortex, if you wish to get the most out of it.

[Samir Rawas Sarayji · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are interesting aspects to this book that I, as a non-scientist, enjoyed. The focus on the neurological to explain consciousness is the paramount focus, and it’s a new way of looking at the subject of consciousness for me. The material requires concentrated reading particularly because of the new jargon (proto-self, extended consciousness, and other scientific jargon), but mostly because Damasio uses an academic register to argue much of his ideas. This is where I became a bit confused, is the book written for the masses or for the scientific community, because I thought for the former, and if I'm right, then Damasio is one of those writers (at least till that point) who can't simplify and communicate his ideas with analogies and diagrams. When reading a field I've not studied or intend to study, I prefer the layman's approach because I want to get the gist of it and an over-arching view, and not get bogged down rereading a paragraph 3 times to finally say 'ah'. I felt much of the sentences were dense and run-on, there were many instances where a comma or a new sentence would have clarified his thoughts better. There were too few diagrams to illustrate his ideas and explanations. There were also instances where bullet points or lists would have made me absorb the facts much faster and more clearly, rather than convoluted paragraphs. I'm left with a feeling that this is someone who knows much about his field but sucks at bringing it across (unless you're studying his stuff).

My other main concern is the lack of large samples on which he bases his hypotheses. Some of his arguments in this book are presented through case studies (which are always super-interesting) but are not followed up with larger data samples, so the analysis comes across as based on a small sample. I don't know if this is the case in his research or not, but that is how it reads here, and that too left me with an odd feeling. Anyone who has read Freud knows that that is one of his fallacies.

Having said all that, for those who enjoy scientific arguments, and those interested in neurology and consciousness, I'm sure there is much to find here that is of interest. Bear in mind, the book was published in 1999, so things may have changed or even be outdated.

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me this was not an easy read all the way through. I had to keep putting it down every several pages, sometimes to avoid automatically reading it and not understanding it fully....having said that I was rubbish at Biology in school. Surprisingly for the most part, it is not that hard going, and at the end of it you get a good idea where your sense of self comes from and the constituent parts of the Brain and Brain stem that are involved in the processes of consciousness. There are helpful diagrams and a good appendix which make the going a bit easier for the layman, and the author has the impressive ability to impart knowledge without baffling, or presupposing excessive medical training. I'd recommend it to anyone with a curiosity in perception and how emotions are generated and perceived.

[Kent · Rating 3 out of 5]

Damasio takes a very difficult subject and makes it a little less difficult.

Something I (re)learned: "The net result is that as you think about an object, reconstructing part of the accommodations required to perceive it in the past as well as the emotive responses to it in the past is enough to change the proto-self in much the same manner that I have described for when an external object confronts you directly....In all likelihood, even the plans for future perceptuo-motor accommodations are effective modifiers of the proto-self and thus originators of second-order accounts."

In laymen's terms (as I understand it): Just as recalling an object or event (the memory of, say, an illicit love affair) produces neural patterns in the brain not unlike those produced when the object or event was originally perceived (engaging in an illicit love affair), it's likely that the neural patterns produced by an intention (plans to dip your pen in another man's inkwell, so to speak) are also similar.

In Catholic nuns' terms: Just thinking about the sin is tantamount to committing the sin.

[Joana’s World · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um tema difícil escrito de uma maneira menos difícil. Para quem realmente gosta de psicologia.

[Ihor Kolesnyk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Власне.. цю книгу варто би перекласти замість вже існуючої популярної версії ідей Антоніо "Почуття і знання" у видавництві Лабораторія. Вона громіздка, із великою кількістю аргументів, експериментів і кейсів, але тоді текст має грунт, основу.
Важлива ідея, яку візьму до докторського дослідження - це свідомість як форма почуттєвості. Це перегукується із концепцією, що наша свідомість є взаємодією різних свідомостей (зору, слуху, нюху, дотиковості, смаку)+розуму. Розум або свідомість тут відіграє роль своєрідного органу чуття, через який ми пропускаємо наш ментальний зміст.

Дуже цікава книга. Якщо ви в темі філософії свідомості і читаєте англійською, то прочитання буде гарною нагодою значно розширити знання теми.

[John Turlockton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Definitely not for a general audience, he regularly talks about things like parabrachial network or thalamic nuclei without explaining it. At the end there's an appendix where he goes through all the terms he was using throughout the book. I didn't see that part so completely missed it and had to just try figure it out based on what I already knew about the brain structure. Who would explain all the technical terms at the end of a book?

Despite not explaining those things properly, he manages to sometimes over-explain things, like when he spend almost a chapter explaining what an organism is, repeating really obvious things that everyone will know about what makes an object distinct from its surroundings. Even on other parts he talks around in circles sometimes never just saying directly what he's talking about. Generally, throughout the book, the issue is that things aren't explained clearly, it's not like the guys argument is so difficult to understand, it's just never laid out simply like 'this is what I think, 1, 2, 3 and here is my evidence for it.' He also never clearly goes through what I thought what his key point. that consciousness can't exist without emotion, he seems to hint at this throughout the book but never actually goes into it. Maybe this was explained in a previous book? If so, it's certainly not an advertisement for this book.

On evidence, he spends big chunks of the book laying out his argument without giving any evidence, it's only at the start when he's explaining what consciousness is not, and then later in the book at like chapters 8 and 9 that he starts going through evidence for things. Even then he never explains the evidence in an easy-to-read manner (this is part of why I say it's not for a general audience), he basically just says 'yes we have evidence for this' and leaves a footnote number, though in my version there were no footnotes, maybe I have to go online to get them.

Overall I don't know if this is a good argument or not for what consciousness is, because his argument is not clearly laid out nor is his evidence for that argument. If I had the footnotes it might be a good compilation of the studies that support his argument if I was going to read all of them, which I'm not. I'll look for another book on the subject, maybe Edelman or Koch. Stay away from this version unless you just want to read every possible theory of consciousness, even then, I'd advise looking for someone else writing about this theory if you can find it.

[Tanya Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book felt very specialised (and I will be stealing many impressive-sounding words), but this probably was just because I have no great knowledge of neurological matters. Damasio very excellently laid out points in a concoction of philosophy of being, feeling, and knowing, and neurocentric scientific terms that had my eyes glazing over. I appreciated this especially as it provided a starting point off which I can have baseline discussions on experienced phenomena through understandings of biological feeling, emotion, and consciousness. The book didn’t shy away from juicy claims that will sit nicely as quotes regarding what self contains and reaches, definitions of consciousness, and distinctions between feeling and emotion.

[Broodingferret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Provocative and well-writen, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness is, in many ways, the logical continuation of Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. Moving beyond "simple" decision making, Damásio posits in this work that the whole of consciousness is first initiated by basic regulatory processes, augmented by sensory input, and finally made fully manifest in the moment-by-moment reference of said data to the memories that are represented in the brain as patterns of synaptic connectivity and neuronal activity. Calling on years of experience working with brain trauma patients, Damásio puts both positive and negative evidence to good use in backing up his hypothesis. Though fascinating, this work is highly detailed and dense, and likely to be a challenging read if one doesn't have at least a basic (though more than passing) familiarity with neuoanatomy; in fact, Damásio (and many other scientists) could benefit from a writing class focusing on making science writing more accessible to the layman. Nevertheless, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness is enjoyable, thought-provoking, and well worth reading, especially to those with a strong interest in neuroscience and psychology.

[Greg Collver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting book! I plan to read this book again when I can study it more thoroughly and learn some basic neuroanatomy.

"Perhaps the most startling idea in this book is that, in the end, consciousness begins as a feeling, a special kind of feeling, to be sure, but a feeling nonetheless. I still remember why I began thinking of consciousness as feeling and it seems like a sensible reason: consciousness feels like a feeling, and if it feels like a feeling, it may well be a feeling.

"The seventeenth century French philosopher Malebranche wrote:
It is through light and through a clear idea that the mind sees the essence of things, numbers, and extensions. It is through a vague idea or through feeling that the mind judges the existence of creatures and that it knows its own existence."

[Kramer Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many other reviewers here are saying that Damasio is a great writer, but I definitely did not have that thought while reading The Feeling of What Happens. I think that Damasio's argument throughout the book is quite interesting and elucidating, but to me it seemed that Damasio was often sloppy with his terminology, would not adequately distinguish his terminology, or would speak intentionally poetically to try to enhance the beauty of some conception of consciousness (or some related phenomenon). This made it very difficult to read. I also struggled with understanding the neuroscience behind many of his claims, but that's not his fault; my neuroscientific knowledge is certainly lacking. Still, this only just got a 3 because while it was often enjoyable to read, it was similarly often unnecessarily difficult.

[Michael Vagnetti · Rating 5 out of 5]

A description of how we feel consciousness, written with authority but also lyricism. For me, this was a remarkable account because it gives the underpinning of why human experience is so transient and elusive. Second, it uses the concept of a wordless brain "narrative" to describe consciousness, undermining language, and thus demonstrates why "subverbal" concepts have such massive weight. For me, language has always been in the shadow of the specter of what Damasio calls the "proto-self." Put another way, in simile, this account exposes consciousness like a giant glacier underneath the ocean, while we sit on a tip above water and think it a profound continent. The most profound passages for me can be found via findings: http://goo.gl/XWY32.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the first book that gave me the insight into what psycho-physical-whole means.Damasio taught me how our neuro pathways deliver the information we are constantly receiving, to our brain, that then sorts the information and --well--- that is when we know what we know. This understanding has completely transformed my life. I love Damasio, have fantasized for years about inviting him to dinner with a small group of people to talk, laugh, trade stories. I know it would be fun because he quotes playrights, poets etc. in explaining his concepts.

[Ethan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Your consciousness is built from mapped representations of the body's states. Usefully distinguishes from an emotion, a hard-wired response to some stimulus, and a feeling, the brain's becoming aware of that emotion. A must-read.

[Flan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite interesting for anyone who is intrigued by how the mind works or those who look into the body-mind connection. He introduces interesting connections between science and philosophy and psychology.

[Frank Jude · Rating 4 out of 5]

After Damasio pretty much convincingly showed how there can be no reason and rationality without emotion in his first book, Decarte's Error and that generally, it's emotion that leads, in this one he approaches the making of consciousness based upon somatic and emotional experience. The short take is that consciousness is a feeling of what happens and he offers a fairly well laid out map for how it develops.

Damasio begins with basic sensing at a cellular level and shows a progression towards what he calls a "proto-self" which is a neuro-construction that leads to second-order mapping of organism/object relationship (a sense of self/other) that then lays the basis for what he calls a "core self" that eventually grows into a more complex structure/function involving enhanced attention and memory. It's with memory that we develop what he calls an "autobiographical self" which is the only self we consciously know and experience (the proto and core selves are beyond accessibility). This is what Buddhists may call an "empirical self". This self is a house of cards that would collapse if the core or proto-self were to be disrupted. I saw this with my mother during her dementia. Her autobiographical self was gone long before her physical body died.

Damasio is a scientist, but he has the heart of a poet. He writes:

"Of course, consciousness and its revelations allow us to create a better life for self and others, but the price we pay for that better life is high. It is not just the price of risk and danger and pain, It is the price of knowing risk, danger, and pain. Worse even: it is the price of knowing what pleasure is and knowing when it is missing or unattainable."

Given this situation, Damasio tells us "there are no blueprints to followl the successes may be small; failure is likely, And yet, if creativity is directed successfully, even modestly, we will allow consciousness...to fulfill its homeostatic, regulating role over existence."

We can hope.

[J C · Rating 3 out of 5]

《O Sentimento de Si》, 5ª edição revista e atualizada, foi o meu primeiro livro de António Damásio. Conhecia vagamente o autor pelo seu percurso na neurociencia, mas nunca tinha lido uma obra sua.
Senti dificuldades a terminar o livro por diversas vezes, mesmo tendo um perfil científico e conhecimentos de fisiologia e neurociências. Frequentemente sentia que o livro era mais um jogo de palavras ou um ensaio filosófico do que propriamente uma obra de divulgação científica.
Os capítulos são praticamente irrelevantes porque existem diversas repetições das mesmas ideias em todos eles, tornando o livro cansativo e assemelhando-se a um livro para consulta bibliográfica e não de leitura informal.
Não senti que tivesse existido o cuidado de curar a informação científica passada ao leitor, sendo despejadas diversas vezes listas de nomes de estruturas e fenómenos que obrigam a quem não as conheça que interrompa a leitura e consulte as notas finais/apêndice ou então as leia sem refletir sobre a informação passada.
António Damásio é, sem dúvida, um cientista renomeado, mas escrever obras de divulgação científica nunca poderá ser igual a escrever artigos de revisão para pares.
No final, consegue-se ficar com a ideia geral da sua hipótese para a evolução e mecanismo da criação da consciência, mas bastariam muito menos páginas para o leitor ficar satisfeito.

[Alejandro Donaire Salvador · Rating 3 out of 5]

The main reason of this rather low rating is the fact that I was on the brink of putting the book aside towards the middle. In particular, it became too article-like for a hundred pages or so, and overall not very engaging. However, the beginning and the end of the book are blissfully thought-provoking and, in general, The Feeling of What Happens provides a lot of information, interesting hypotheses and explanations of real-life cases, among other things, which I certainly enjoyed. Personally, it has been exciting to think about the concepts presented in the book in terms of AI and the not-so-unlikely future where machines with some level of consciousness (or, I'd prefer saying, "self-awareness") exist.

[Eduardo Xavier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eu recebi essa recomendação num curso de neurociência; neurobiologia da motivação. Que trouxe uma visão realista sobre a condição de ser ou ser motivado respeitando aspectos do nosso corpo, nosso cognitivo e nosso ambiente. Por aí, muito se fala da “consciência” a partir da filosofia e não da biologia do corpo. O fato é que as emoções, sentimentos; nosso processo mental é base fundamental desse nascedouro de motivação. Por isso busquei o Damásio, que fala dos sentimentos, emoções e da consciência e esse universo maravilhoso que é nosso organismo.
Tem muitas coisas legais nesse livro e também o assustador assunto da síndrome do encarceramento.
É prazeroso ler o que ele escreve e aprender sua filósofo. Apesar do assunto ser bem difícil.

[Nancy Mills]

I'm still slogging through this. the chapter on the Neurology of Consciousness begs my comments. .. Damasio refers to the locked in syndrome, wherein a patient is conscious but appears to be vegetative and for years aware of everything that goes on around them but unable to communicate at all. In the more recently published book, Into the Gray Zone, author Adrian Owen describes his difficult but often successful work in communicating with these people, using mris and eegs. great book. don't know how to put in the link.

[Seth · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book took me forever to read; partly because I found better things to do, and partly because it’s rather dry and overly scientific. I typically don’t mind reads that lean to the scientific writing but either the age or writing style of this one just didn’t do it for me. I pushed through it but would not say I enjoyed this book. Not too many takeaways for me, best suited for those deeply enthralled by neuroscience.

[Daniela Telefan]

DNF.
Quanto mais lia menos eu entendia então pelo bem estar da minha saúde mental irei parar de ler.

[Jennifer Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a look into what consciousness means, as well as how feeling, memory, emotion, consciousness, and embodiment all engage with each other, this is a powerful look into what it means to be human and experience the human condition. Damasio's work is a careful exploration of what consciousness is and is not, and what must be understood in any examination of how the brain works to untangle and allow for experience & memory. Most of the book is wholly accessible to the average reader (if requiring some real concentration and not just casual dipping in...), though a few chapters delve deeper into the science involved and may or may not be of interest to every lay reader. That said, though, the author's talent for blending explanation with philosophy, case study and history with science, and theory with fact is impressive, and makes for a fascinating read.

Truly, readers interested in better understanding their own human condition or that of others, or consciousness and senses of self, couldn't do much better than to pick up this work if they're willing to put in the focus that the book sometimes requires. It is, without doubt, engaging and powerful throughout, and well worth the time involved.

Recommended.

[Awinash Jha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read now the fourth one of Antonio's book and know for sure that one of the best book to read if you are looking for answers on thoughts , feelings , emotions and consciousness. The best part ,it clearly states that knowing and experiencing are not the same thing . So even after reading this book you don't have the feeling of experience , pl. don't blame the book it's the design of our hardwiring. Nevertheless the feeling of knowing is serene. Though the book deals with neural structure and technical literature at some places but it can be skipped easily without missing on the overall message.

[Claudia Reinfelds · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The first fact is that some aspects of the processes of consciousness can be related to the operation of specific brain regions and systems...The second fact is that consciousness and wakefulness, as well as consciousness and low-level attention, can be separated....The third, and perhaps most revealing fact is the consciousness and emotion are not separable...The fourth fact is that consciousness is not a monolith, at least not in humans: it can be separated into simple and complex kinds, and the neurological evidence makes the separation transparent."

[Maha Shangab · Rating 5 out of 5]

Be it the first book I've read about consciousness, I don't think I could have chosen a better gate opener to such a study.
I admired the philosophical approach into consciousness and the neurobiological correlations seen by evidences in research. It still is however, a more theorizing and less analyzing review of consciousness, something the author doesn't shy from stating, but it does provoke questions that keeps the mind pondering over and eager to search about

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

What I was hoping to be a good layman's explanation of neuroscience and emotion via case histories a la Oliver Sacks was instead a more philosophical and highly technical exploration of the self. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but was too dry for my taste. It also exhibited the typical Western bias of too much neuroscience circa the early 2000s, which didn't take into account any of the insights into emotion and self gleaned from Buddhist philosophy.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

A scientific discussion of what many intuitively presume to be true: that our consciousness and cognition are inextricably linked to our emotions--that when the emotional responses fail to function, logic and cognition are impaired as well. Illustrated by plenty of case studies that make the connection clear.

[Alexi Parizeau · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is deliciously mindblowing on every page. It appears that in 1997 Damasio had finally fleshed out his neurobiological theory of consciousness and he quite skillfully managed to lay it out in under 400 pages (that may sound like a lot, but it's rather concise considering how much needed to be explained). I highly recommend it!