Looking for Spinoza | Mille Records

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A more personal Damasio

Part science, part philosophy, part character journey

A joy to read

Theodore Faulders 2007-12-19

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

"Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain" (Harcourt, 2003) is first-class philosophy and neuroscience book from a first-rate neuroscientist. Antonio Damasio is currently the David Dornsife Chair in Neuroscience and Professor of Psychology and Neurology as well as the Director of the USC College Brain and Creativity Institute in Southern California. He opens the book with his mission statement: "to understand feelings" (p. 7). Included in the first chapter are three wonderful drawings by Hanna Damasio who is the Dana Dornsife Chair in Neuroscience and Professor of Psychology and Neurology at the Univ. of Southern California.

The subject of chapter two is 'emotions' and opens with the question of whether emotions allow us to adapt to the environment? Dr. Damasio welcomes the question and lets us know that the goal of having emotions remains a "mystery" (p. 78). But thanks to the excellent scholarship of Damasio, the final cause and purpose of an emotion becomes more clear: to "provide a natural means for the brain and mind to evaluate the environment within and around the organism, and respond... adaptively" (p. 54). Damasio kindly gives us a "manageable description" (p. 64) of how an emotion proceeds from (i) a "single stimulus" toward (ii) the "recall of other related stimuli," then (iii) to "modifications" of the stimulus by a person's awareness and "cognitives process", and then finally (iv) to the "sustaining", "amplification" and "abatement" of the emotion by one's personal thoughts and cognitive processes. This "manageable description" of an emotion is valuable for three reasons. First, the four-step process is natural, for Damasio writes, "Our organisms gravitate toward a 'good' result of their own accord" (p. 51). Second, the clear description of an emotion above allows us to arrive at a clear definition of a "mood", which refers "to the sustaining of a given emotion over long periods of time" (p. 43). Lastly, Damasio's manageable description shows us our ethical responsibility to think about ways to sustain pleasurable emotions and to remove painful emotions. Aristotle writes, "Every passion and every action is accompanied by pleasure and pain, for this reason also virtue will be concerned with pleasures and pains" (Nichomachean Ethics, 2.3). Damasio agrees and writes, "We can simply use sheer willpower and just say no. Sometimes" (p. 52). A person's cognitive awareness can sustain and amplify pleasurable emotions and has the power to abate and reduce painful emotions. And we learn how use our cognitive power by making mistakes, by observing mature people and by finding time to think about the stimulus we are processing emotionally will lead to virtues.

The subject of chapter three is 'feelings' and introduces the reader to the question of whether a feeling is an awareness "of varied body changes?" (p. 121) Damasio accepts the question even though he hopes the reader acknowledges that his solution is a rough draft. "I caution that the emergence of mental images from neural patterns is not a fully understood process" (p. 88). Damasio then responds to the question affirmatively and writes that "feelings arise from the neural patterns exhibited in body maps" (p. 123). Thanks to "nerve endings" in "every region of the body" (p. 124), a person may become aware of various changes in his body and detect the "intimate functional state of that living flesh" (p. 128). Like the excellent "manageable description" of emotions in chapter two, Damasio reveals the "basic processes that permit feeling" (p. 109). To begin with, (i) a person must have a body with a "nervous system" and the "means to represent that body inside itself." Then (ii) a person's nervous system must "be able to map body structures" and to "transform the neural patterns... into... images" (p. 110). Next, (iii) a person must become aware of the body structures as reported by the nervous system in sets of images, although, as Damasio admits, this is a delicate step: "The relation between feeling and consciousness is tricky" (p. 110). Lastly, (iv) a person's nervous system must be able to bring about and "evoke" feelings about various "configurations of the body state" (p. 132). The curious thing about the above four-step process is that it is taking place 100% of the time. Damasio writes, "At every moment of our lives the brain's body-sensing regions receive signals with which they can construct maps of the ongoing body state" (p. 112).

'Feelings' are the subject of chapter four which addresses the question of whether feelings help us to manage our lives? Damasio approves of the question and warns the reader that his solution is a rough draft. "The foregoing, I note again, are ideas whose merits remain to be assessed" (p. 169). Damasio then addresses the question and answers affirmatively, "Feelings improve and amplify the process of managing life" (p. 178). The final cause and goal of a feeling is to increase "the efficiency" of a person's "reasoning process and making it speedier" (p. 148). For example, the feeling of joy signifies an "optimal physiological coordination and smooth running of the operations of life" (p. 137) which enables a person to decide how to sustain the smooth running operations. Thus, feelings assist a person's decision making activity by steering his "behavior in the proper direction" (p. 150) and by showing that his "life governing processes are either fluid or strained" (p. 130). Damasio has seen many patients who had both problems with becoming aware of their body structures and problems with making decisions. In "Descartes' Error," Damasio clearly demonstrates the relationship between "impaired reasoning/decision making and impaired emotion/feeling" (D.E., p. 60). And Damasio writes in "Looking for Spinoza," "I suspect that the downward spiral of addicts' lives begins as a result of the distortions of feelings and the ensuing decision impairments" (p. 152). In summary, feelings are "neural maps" in the form of images about a person's "body states" (p. 176) which allow the person to make good decisions that promote the "survival," "balance" and "well-being" of life (p. 167).

Chapter five opens with a whole new topic and asks whether the mind is dependent upon the brain? Damasio consents to provide an answer as long as the reader remembers this will be a rough draft. He writes, "I venture, and am ready to admit I may be wrong" (p. 210); and "Others may disagree with my interpretation" (p. 216). Damasio then responds to the question and writes, "And so, perhaps for most scientists working on mind and brain, the fact that the mind depends closely on the workings of the brain is no longer a question" (p. 190). And he quotes Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) who writes, "The human mind is capable of perceiving a great number of things, and is so in proportion as its body is capable of receiving a great number of impressions" (The Ethics, 2.15, p. 212). An excellent bibliography for students who are interested in this fascinating topic on the mind's relation to the body is kindly provided by Damasio (p. 322, no. 2). And I enjoy reading clear thoughts of Damasio who is an expert neuroscientist who addresses this mysterious and philosophical question.

However, there are three possible misconceptions about the mind in chapter five that I wish to address here. First, Damasio writes that "the mind arises from or in biological tissue -- nerve cells..." (p. 190). This seems to be a misconception since the mind is not physical and cannot arise from physical causes, such as a body with a nervous system. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) writes, "[I]n the case of a loud sound we cannot hear easily immediately after, or in the case of a bright colour or a powerful odour we cannot see or smell, but in the case of mind thought about an object that is highly intelligible renders it more and not less able afterwards to think objects that are less intelligible: the reason is that while the faculty of sensation is dependent upon the body, mind is separable from it" (De Anima, 3.4). Our ears get tired after hearing a loud jet engine and our eyes need a break after being in the sun for a long time. But the mind does not get tired after studying philosophy and does not need a break after understanding the wisdom in chapter five. The second possible misconception is the belief that "ideas... are, in one way or another, brain representations of the body." This is appears to be a misconception since the brain does not produce ideas. John Poinsot (1589-1644), a Spanish philosopher from Madrid, writes, "For the signification of something cannot be perceived, unless an order to another is perceived; but to know order is to know a relation and comparison, which the internal sense of a brute animals is not able to know, much less the external sense" (Treatise on Signs, trans. 1989, p. 210). Brute animals have brains and neural processes but do not have ideas, since brute animals do not detect relations and comparisons, and since they do not change their diets as human animals do. To illustrate, a kangaroo knows who its mother is but does not know she is a 'parent', a 'vertebrate' or a 'chordate'. The third possible misconception is that there is a "neurobiological level of operations that also include what we call mind and consciousness" (p. 206). This is seems to be a misconception since the mind is not physical and ideas are not caused by the nervous system. To illustrate, common nouns are ideas that signify a class of people, places or things and are abstract productions of an abstract mind. And if ideas were fabricated by a physical brain, then every living things with a brain would have grammar books. But this is clearly not the case, since only humans have grammar books. As a result, all three myths show how it is false to conclude that "the brain managed to create the mind" (p. 4).

Chapter Six is an excellent review of the life of Baruch Spinoza. Students who are not familiar with Spinoza, "a decisive engine behind the development of the Enlightment" (p. 257), will enjoy reading this chapter, since Damasio describes Spinoza's room and library in Amsterdam, relates the horrible curses given by unreasonable Jewish leaders that tragically and unfairly fell upon Baruch, and carefully explains "silicosis" (p. 261) which is the respiratory ailment -- caused by dust from grinding glass -- that killed Spinoza when he was 44 years old. And three more beautiful drawings by Hanna Damasio are included.

Chapter seven asks the question of whether Spinoza's view of happiness is a healthy view of happiness? Damasio approves of the question and writes, "Today, the new understanding of the machinery of emotion and feeling makes Spinoza's goal all the more achievable" (p. 275). Here Damasio gives an excellent over-view of the philosophy of Spinoza and compares it to that of Johann Goethe (1749-1832), William James (1843-1910), the "adorable genius" (p. 281) and Albert Einstein (1879-1955). The goal of a human person, according to Spinoza, is to gain "some clarity about the meaning of one's life" (p. 268). We do that by clarifying our feelings about the things in our lives, such as "love, family, friendships, and good health" along with one's "job", "pleasures and the accumulation of possessions" (p. 268). All these things trigger our emotions, change our body states, give us ideas and concepts and challenge us to make efficient decisions. Damasio writes, "Spinoza's solution hinges on the mind's power over the emotional process" (p. 275). If this is the genuine solution to human life, then Damasio's Looking for Spinoza is the perfect book for life. But there are two objections to Spinoza's plan for happiness. First, "Spinoza's solution works best in isolated self-centeredness, away from human intimacy" (p. 278). Second, James noticed the "bubbliness" of Spinoza and concluded that Spinoza failed to see the dark side of human life. To the first objection, Damasio writes, "Why should Aristotle's wisdom not prevail here? Aristotle insisted that... health, wealth, love, and friendship are part of contentment" (p. 278). I totally agree. Happiness, for Aristotle, involved riches, power, fame, pleasure beauty and honor in moderate levels. He writes that a person "cannot be supremely happy without external goods" (Nich. Ehics 10.8). Damasio responds to the second objection and writes, "I do not believe Spinoza had any difficulty in seeing the darkness in nature, having experienced its effects himself" (p. 281). It would be hard for anyone to remain bubbly after receiving the unloving and unfair curses that Spinoza received from Jewish leaders.

Damasio closes his wonderful book with a description of happiness that he bases on the philosophy of Spinoza and on the medical care of his neurological patients. "This path includes a life of the spirit that seeks understanding with enthusiasm and some sort of discipline as a source of joy... The practice of this life also assumes a combative attitude based on the belief that part of humanity's tragic condition can be alleviated." This is profound, in my humble opinion. According to Damasio, a person may become happy by becoming enthusiastic about a subject, such as science and art, becoming trained in the subject, and using one's enthusiasm and training to solve problems and to help people. Damasio writes, "I believe Spinoza was entirely on the mark in his view that joy and its variants lead to greater functional perfection" (p. 285). And I believe Damasio is completely right-on since Aristotle writes, "For an activity is intensified by its proper pleasure, since each class of things is better judged of and brought to precision by those who engage in the activity with pleasure; e.g. it is those who enjoy geometrical thinking that become geometers and grasp the various propositions better, and, similarly, those who are fond of music or of building, and so on, make progress in their proper function by enjoying it" (Nich. Ethics, 10.5). If we do things with joy and pleasure, then we do them better, more precisely and with "greater functional perfection." And when we are doing things more precisely and better, we can truly help others. I can honestly tell that Damasio had pleasure writing Looking for Spinoza and felt joy when making a bridge between Spinoza's seventeenth century philosophy and his own twenty-first century neuroscience.

The Feeling Biologist

Andy Blunden 2006-08-30

2 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

On the plus side:
It is good to have an advocate for the role of emotions and feelings in rational thought. There can be no doubt that both emotions and feelings have a crucial role to play in learning, discovery, persuasion, belief and insight; the challenge, which Dammassio is not equipped or inclined to meet, is to define the boundaries of the proper role of emotions in rational thought. It is not clear to me how Dammassio would advise members of a jury to weigh the evidence before them 'dispassionately'. Or perhaps he would advise that they shouldn't?
Despite the eccentricity of ascribing 'emotions' to single cell organisms, I appreciate Dammassio's distinction between emotions - dispositions organisms adopt, more or less automatically, in response to stimuli which serve to promote restoration of homeostasis, and feelings - dispositions of the mind in which perceptions of emotions expressed in the body, in turn modify those same emotions, and for which mental events can also act as stimuli. This sets up the suggestive and useful idea of the 'brain-body loop', including the 'as-if brain-body loop' where the stimulus is mental.
This conception allows Dammassio to explain how the whole body participates in thinking, by mediating processes in the brain. A feeling causes a change in the body (e.g. a tightening of the stomach in response to some cause of anxiety) which in turn produces the sensation of that same emotion (e.g., you feel your stomach tighten, alerting you to your anxiety). This is a very useful idea, and needs in fact the body is able to play this mediating role in brain activity of all kinds, not just feelings and emotions. Dammassio provides a strong argument for understanding the whole person as the appropriate unit for understanding thinking, not just the brain.
On the minus side:
What is it with this mixture of positivistic, almost Lockean, exposition of human biology, based on 'the latest discoveries of science', in the tradition of Comte, social Darwinism, Ernst Haeckel, Konrad Lorenz, Desmond Morris, Robert Ardrey and company, with, on the other hand, semi-biographical eulogies over the seventeenth century rationalist philosopher Spinoza? It's like the song-and-dance routines put on for pre-match and half-time entertainment at the football. I suspect that Dammassio is relying on a weakness of Spinoza to which he makes a passing reference, namely, that by simply saying that thought and extension are two attributes of the one substance, the difficulty of explaining how thought arises from the activity of material beings is simply by-passed. For this is just what Dammassio does.
Like any number of positivists before him, Dammassio finds that 'the latest discoveries of science' have at last given us an understanding of how mental images are formed ... all except for just that last step unfortunately, but that last link in the chain will doubtless be discovered within the next decade or two. Dammassio has the same problem as John Locke: if you see thought as simply the product of one material system interacting with other material systems, then you can push the boundary back further and further (either by speculation or by scientific investigation) but sooner or later you get to that point, and you either insert the homunculus to watch the "movie-in-the-brain" (as Dammassio calls it) or you just hope that that last step will be explained by new discoveries of modern science, just around the corner. Dammassio is sophisticated enough to avoid highlighting the contradiction with any reference to a homunculus, or a yet-to-be-discovered 'control centre' somewhere in the brain, so his ruse seems to be to insert a eulogy to Spinoza in lieu of an explanation.
And these 'mirror neurons', introduced to explain empathy, are complete fiction. This is not a claim that needs to be argued, the idea is pure fantasy and the claim to have found the location where they to be found is outrageous. No-one in the field believes it. 'Mirror neurons' are a disturbing step from biological explanation of biological phenomena to biological explanations of social phenomena, and with that, the incipient justification for medical intervention and social engineering as the cure for social problems.
All this could be harmless enough. If the object is to improve understanding of the working of the nervous system for the purpose of curing psychiatric illness or brain injury, it is a very worthwhile exercise. But the 'mirror neurons' alert us to the inevitable wider agenda.
For Dammassio, all social institutions are "mechanisms for exerting homeostasis at the level of the social group", and in fact all social, political and ethical phenomena are "extensions" of these processes within the organism, and have their "forerunners" in the social behaviour of wolves, birds and so on. In other words, puerile social Darwinism of the worst order.
Faced with self-serving naïvité of this breathtaking order, and with obvious fictions like the 'mirror neurons' making their appearance in what is presented as hard neuroscientific fact, one is then somewhat hesitant about accepting as good coin the rather appealing ideas about the role of body maps and emotions in the mediation of thought.
Dammassio also cleverly plays with the idea that all the phenomena of culture and human society are somehow less real than the facts of biology, self-aggrandizing illusions of animals who kid themselves that they have become something more. Thus consciousness and mind are "what we call mind and consciousness," (this phrase 'what we call' is used several times). Dammassio is clever enough not, like say Desmond Morris, to be explicit in this ploy, he just suggests to the reader without spelling it out.

The Mind is shaped by Nature to ensure survival of the Body

Geoff Bond 2005-03-01

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

Spinoza was a remarkable 17th century philosopher whose Jewish family fled the Portuguese Inquisition to find refuge in Holland.
Spinoza held that `the mind' is simply a bodily process: it is not a separate entity from the body. Furthermore, he claimed that emotions, including spiritual emotions, are a body's signals to the brain: their purpose is to make the brain adjust the body's activities in ways that will bring it back to a state of balance with its environment.
Spinoza built up a strong case for saying so in various publications. This idea was a direct challenge to the religious authorities. He received 39 lashes and excommunication from his own synagogue for his pains. After his death, even the tolerant Dutch authorities banned publication of Spinoza's works.
Nevertheless, his ideas lived on and became a driving force of the Enlightenment a century later.
Antonio Damasio is Van Allen Distinguished professor at University of Iowa College of Medicine. As a neuroscientist in the forefront of modern research, he specializes in finding out how the brain detects both emotion and feeling. The brain is receiving billions of reports every second from every cell in the body. Neuroscientists can record these signals in particular circuits in the brain. The brain integrates these reports and the result is perceived as an emotion.
`Background' emotions work at a subconscious level and are noticed as states of well-being, instinctive dislikes -- and so on. `Primary' emotions are basic ones such as fear, disgust, sadness and happiness. `Social' emotions include shame, pride, envy and indignation.
In turn emotion gives rise to feeling -- an internalized emotion of emotion. All these processes can be recorded as neural maps in the brain as they occur. These emotions and feelings manipulate the body to behave in ways that enhances its self-preservation.
Damasio interweaves his neural science narrative cleverly with the thread of Spinoza's philosophy. There is a lot still to discover, but neural science is vindicating Spinoza's hypothesis: that our mental life is shaped by nature to serve the optimum survival of the physical body.
There is a powerful lesson to be drawn: this mental life is designed to work in forager groups in the African Savannah. Our lives today are so far removed from these conditions that we are continuously stressed by emotional signals occurring in inappropriate ways.
Today, we medicate our feelings with alcohol, drugs, and New Age therapies. However, the insights provided by neuroscience point the way to how we might structure our lives in ways that bring our bodies back into a state of harmony with our natures.
Damasio does not venture into how we might do this, but we at www.naturaleater.com will be tackling this question of evolutionary psychology on our website very shortly.

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Looking for Spinoza

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Antonio R Damasio

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release date: 2004-05-06

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