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|title=Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

|author=Antonio Damasio

|borrow=Yes

|isbn=978-0099498025

|pages=384

|publisher=Vintage

|date=January 2012

|summary=A demanding but fascinating look at the problem of consciousness which attempts to present an evolutionary and neurobiological framework for the emergence of conscious mind focused on self.

}}

What makes us, us? How is awareness of one's own being created in the human mind? What makes ''me'' who got up this morning ''me'' that went to bed last night, and the same ''me'' that got up on most mornings in the preceding forty-odd years? How is it that we see, remember and understand things, other humans and the world in general? And who is doing the understanding? How is it that we are conscious of our own experiences, and how is it that we are conscious of ourselves being conscious?

The problems of the mind and the self, the consciousness and the self-consciousness have interested philosophers since the human inquiry into the nature of things began, but the area has been, mostly, outside the remit of 'proper' science, not least because of the lack of framework and lack of means for such an investigation.

The solution won't, alas, come from psychology as such but from the exciting borderland between psychology, physiology and computer science that is often known as neuroscience or cognitive science. Antonio Damasio is one of the leading practitioners in that field as well as an author of several books in which he ''dared to speculate on neurobiological data'' in order to come up with explanations of higher-order phenomena.

''Self Comes to Mind'' is not a particularly easy read. Damasio's writing is erudite and persuasive, and although he has a tendency to run into quite elaborate metaphors, it seems justified considering an elusive nature of the subject. There are also many fairly tangential digressions, which would attract some readers (including this one) but put off others. Altogether it's a very idea-dense book, and in some chapters, on every page there is an idea or a concept that makes one stop and consider its implications. Other parts are rather technical. The varied fields of reference mean that to fully appreciate it, one needs to make an effort – especially if human neurobiology is unfamiliar – but it's an effort worth making.

Questions that ''Self Comes to Mind'' aims to explore reach to the very core of our being. Our conscious selves define what it is to be a human. Knowing how those selves are constructed on the foundation of the feedback loop between the brain and the rest of the body may inform moral, legal and scientific reasoning, and never more usefully than nowadays. From animal rights to notions of personal responsibility, from learning skills to deferring gratification and defying patterns that were adaptive in Palaeocene but are not in modern cities, understanding consciousness has many applications that go well beyond knowledge-for-knowledge's sake.

[[Sex, Drugs and Chocolate: The Science of Pleasure by Paul Martin]] explores human experiences of pleasure (and ties with many Damasio's ideas on planning and life-management.

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