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Jump to navigationJump to searchSelf Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain by Antonio Damasio (view source)
Revision as of 13:38, 7 March 2012
, 13:38, 7 March 2012no edit summary
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.
Psychology is the science of human behaviour. This was drummed into our undergraduate heads when I started a psychology degree in the late 1980s. Quarter A quarter of a century on, the problem of the consciousness looks more respectable, and more solvable.
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.
I found ''Self Comes to Mind'' simply riveting and read it over a long period, with numerous breaks for considering the content, and even more so, the implications of what's being said. This might be because of my background in psychology and long-standing interest in neuroscience. I envy the modern undergraduates - and maybe even more the ones that will come to the field a few years hence - who may have a chance to explore the mechanics of consciousness. But I also think that Damasio's book is of interest to more than just an audience of unfulfilled (or budding) cognitive scientists.
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.
