@golsno147 @golsno147 One last key point re your first point is perhaps the importance of clarifying the difference between reflexive, instinctual, and automatic. There is a difference between an sea slug's reflexive (and also instinctive) gill withdrawal, and a monkeys EMOTIONAL, (and also instinctive) fear of snakes. This fear would be different from a learned fear of, say, shiny objects. This is all explained in good detail in damasios excellent book, "in search of spinoza"
A Portuguese psychologist. FINALLY! Honestly, I'm a 3rd year psych student, and all I keep hearing about is Germans, Americans, Brits, French, and Italians. Finally someone from my own culture!
I liked your "how/why". Why is a problematic word when dealing with scientific questions, for example "why is there a universe". Better to reformulate the question to "how is there a universe". Why is so self centered and we learned that we are not the center of nothing. We are just something happening in the universe.
@golsno147 Extremely keen insight in your question... so let me give it a shot (I have read damasio's book on this). With the first point, while there may indeed be such rare moments you describe of "equilibrium" in life they are few and far between. The only example I can think of is eastern meditation and only in extreme forms of experiencing either pure, or non-, consciousness, where there is little emotional monitoring. In dreams however, your brain is actually quite active...
@golsno147 Point #2 -- Yes, "knowing what we are doing" is a cognitive process; however, this occurs AFTER a response (we know this) and is a separate process. Again what damasio is saying is that trigger--> body emotive response --> brain's automatic appraisal of body change --> conscious feeling.
He seems to be arguing with someone who is not present in the interview, someone who puts thinking at the highest level and looks down on emotions. Mr Spock was the character in the original Star Trek who had suppressed all of his emotions and was completely logical. This would never work. Emotions and feelings not only protect us, but they give us our goals and desires, our rational mind is then able to find a way to get us what we want, so a logical life would be pretty useless.
@golsno147 ...self-monitoring to produce appropriate responses to internal or external events. Even in dreamless sleep, the brain still shows a large amount of self regulatory activity so that you can get responses from a sleeping person without hem waking up!!! (Think of whip cream pranks!). When our unsuspecting buddy smears whip cream all over after a feather tickle, it is a response to he environment they are unaware of...they might even make disgruntled noises without waking up.
unlike most people I awoke once. it was only then that I knew the truth. their are 2 realities withing the same existence. one where you exist and one where you don't. the mind works like a faucet. when it's open you see me and when it's closed you do not. this is the premise of all religions. I'm almost certain that heaven and hell used to refer to state of mind and perception of beauty. but we have corrupted their meanings over time.
You’re wrong. He never made any statements in that direction in any of his books and these contain a lot about the philosophical and religious background of Spinoza, for example. Why waste resources on laughing about nonexistent issues if you got real problems to solve in the neurosciences? In fact, he even writes about certain possible connections between some neural pathways and spirituality and religious experience. He never talks about his world-view, though. His work is what counts.
@golsno147 (cont) ... In fact that emotional perception--in this case of 'created' narratives an-- imagery is what makes you wake up physically shaken after a nightmare! In dreams this *process* is non conscious but the mental narrative and imagery created can still be laid down in memory if recalled soon enough. In sum, what damasio is speaking of is what happens day in and day out...even when we seem content, and there is nothing pushing us or pulling us, our brains are constantly..
You have any documentation of him admitting to being an atheist? And by "theism," are you also including deism, pantheism and any other non-atheist viewpoint?
I read one of his books years ago, it was pretty much, "the sky is blue, and water is wet', ya OK. And? He is still making the utterly obvious sound like Revelations from on High. How about some solutions Doc?
It is almost certain that the gods of revealed religion are human made. Actually, multiple areas of the brain are involved in spiritual experiences. It just some temporal lope epileptics have claimed to have spiritual experiences. Neural correlations do not answer the how/why we have such experiences. Such is matter of personel preference.
Sorry to say that, but damasios view to the topic emotions is not profound enough. Much more helpfull to try to understand emotions is the view of Bruce Lipton, where our subconsious seems to communicate (or work along) with our concious mind, that seems to be making the decisions needed (seemingly delayed) . Our subconsious communicates through mashine -like devices (like emotions and other sensations like fever or excaustion, when we are sick and need rest for example) with our concious, whereas our concious has a voice and articulates wishes and desires. Both systems seem to be error-prone. The big Problem though is how the fuck do these systems work together, where the border between them extends, since they seem to get activated as a whole in a perplex and complex orchestration. A new generation of researches has to tell us much more about this problem, but damasio belongs to an older generation, that seems to be stuck, lost in translation of definitions. We need researchers, who shit on definitions and grab the bulls on the horns
