Scan barcode
A review by ebnarabi
Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain by António R. Damásio
4.0
This is just a quick thoughts not a review yet.
Damasio is an excellent writer, I liked the way the book is written and how the main ideas are explained. Damasio is digging for the reasons behind the existence of the brain and awareness or consciousness, he separates between different types of consciousness such phenomenal which we share with other animals and self-consciousness which is unique to humans. How such a things came to be and what do they mean and how do they function? he says at the end of chapter 2
“Life and the conditions that are integral to it—the irrepressible mandate to survive and the complicated business of managing survival in an organism, with one cell or with trillions—were the root cause of the emergence and evolution of brains, the most elaborate management devices assembled by evolution, as well as the root cause of everything that followed from the development of ever more elaborate brains, inside ever more elaborate bodies, living in ever more complex environments.
When one looks at most any aspect of brain functions through the filter of this idea—that a brain exists for managing life inside a body—the oddities and mysteries of some of the traditional categories of psychology (emotion, perception, memory, language, intelligence, and consciousness) become less odd and far less mysterious. In fact, they develop a transparent reasonableness, an inevitable and endearing logic. How could we be any different, those functions seem to be asking, given the job that needs to be done?”
Once I finish Christof Koch book Consciousness I will write a review comparing both books. Hopefully.
Damasio is an excellent writer, I liked the way the book is written and how the main ideas are explained. Damasio is digging for the reasons behind the existence of the brain and awareness or consciousness, he separates between different types of consciousness such phenomenal which we share with other animals and self-consciousness which is unique to humans. How such a things came to be and what do they mean and how do they function? he says at the end of chapter 2
“Life and the conditions that are integral to it—the irrepressible mandate to survive and the complicated business of managing survival in an organism, with one cell or with trillions—were the root cause of the emergence and evolution of brains, the most elaborate management devices assembled by evolution, as well as the root cause of everything that followed from the development of ever more elaborate brains, inside ever more elaborate bodies, living in ever more complex environments.
When one looks at most any aspect of brain functions through the filter of this idea—that a brain exists for managing life inside a body—the oddities and mysteries of some of the traditional categories of psychology (emotion, perception, memory, language, intelligence, and consciousness) become less odd and far less mysterious. In fact, they develop a transparent reasonableness, an inevitable and endearing logic. How could we be any different, those functions seem to be asking, given the job that needs to be done?”
Once I finish Christof Koch book Consciousness I will write a review comparing both books. Hopefully.