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A leading expert of the neurophysiology of emotions, Damasio shows how our consciousness arose out of the development of emotion. At its core human consciousness is consciousness of the feeling and experiencing self.
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Copyright © 1999 ISBN: 0151003696 For Hanna Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply That it is not heard at all, but you are the music While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses, Hints followed by guesses; and the rest Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action. The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation. T. S. ELIOT "Dry Salvages" from Four Quartets The question of who I was consumed me. I became convinced I should not find the image of the person that I was: Seconds passed. What rose to the surface in me plunged out of sight again. And yet I felt the moment of my first investiture was the moment I began to represent myself— the moment I began to live—by degrees—second by second—unrelentingly—Oh mind what you're doing!— do you want to be covered or do you want to be seen?.— And the garment — how it becomes you!—starry with the eyes of others, weeping — JORIE GRAHAM "Notes on the Reality of the Self" from Materialism CONTENTS part 1 Introduction 1 chapter one Stepping into the Light 3 Stepping into the Light • Absent without Leave • The Problem of Consciousness • Approaching Consciousness • Mind, Behavior, and Brain • Reflecting on the Neurological and Neuropsychological Evidence • A Search for Self • Why We Need Consciousness • The Beginning of Consciousness • Coping with Mystery • Hide and Seek part 11 Feeling and Knowing chapter two Emotion and Feeling 33 35 Once More with Emotion • A Historical Aside • The Brain Knows More than the Conscious Mind Reveals • An Aside on Controlling the Uncontrollable • What Are Emotions? • The Biological Function of Emotions • Inducing Emotions • The Mechanics of Emotion • Have No Fear • How It All Works • Sharpening the Definition of Emotion: An Aside • The Substrate for the Representation of Emotions and Feelings chapter three Core Consciousness 82 Studying Consciousness • The Music of Behavior and the External Manifestations of Consciousness • Wakefulness • Attention and Purposeful Behavior • Studying Consciousness from Its Absence chapter four The Hint Half Hinted 107 Language and Consciousness • If You Had That Much Money: A Comment on Language and Consciousness • Memory and Consciousness • Nothing Comes to Mind • David's Consciousness • Rounding Up Some Facts • The Hint Half Hinted part III A Biology for Knowing chapter five The Organism and the Object 131 133 The Body behind the Self • The Need for Stability • The Internal Milieu as a Precursor to the Self • More on the Internal Milieu • Under the Microscope • Managing Life • Why Are Body Representations Well Suited to Signify Stability? • One Body One Person: The Roots of the Singularity of Self • The Organism's Invariance and the Impermanence of Permanence • The Roots of Individual Perspective, Ownership, and Agency • The Mapping of Body Signals • The Neural Self • Brain Structures Required to Implement the Proto-Self • Brain Structures Which Are Not Required to Implement the Proto-Self • Something-to-Be-Known • A Note on the Disorders of the Something-to-Be-Known • It Must Be Me because I'm Here chapter six The Making of Core Consciousness 168 The Birth of Consciousness • You Are the Music while the Music Lasts: The Transient Core Self • Beyond the Transient Core Self: The Autobiographical Self • Assembling Core Consciousness • The Need for a Second-Order Neural Pattern • Where Is the Second-Order Neural Pattern? • The Images of Knowing • Consciousness from Perceived Objects and Recalled Past Perceptio