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Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain

António R. Damásio

3.94 · Rating details · 1,833 ratings · 120 reviews

The last in a trilogy of books that investigates the philosophical and scientific foundations of human life

Joy, sorrow, jealousy, and awe—these and other feelings are the stuff of our daily lives. In the seventeenth century, the philosopher Spinoza devoted much of his life's work examining how these emotions supported human survival, yet hundreds of years later the biolo ...more

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Paperback, 368 pages

Published December 1st 2003 by Mariner Books (first published 2003)

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Nov 29, 2008 Jon Stout rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: idealists and reductive materialists

Shelves: philosophy

Inspired by Descartes' Error, and interested in a neurologist's interest in philosophers, I sought out Looking for Spinoza. It rewarded me in several ways, first by extending my understanding of how emotions as a biological concept are continuous with feelings as a conscious, mental phenomenon, and second by providing a guided, personal investigation into the life of Bento-Baruch-Benedict Spinoza.

Damasio has a lot to say about emotions and the structure of the brain, some of it exhaustingly deta Inspired by Descartes' Error, and interested in a neurologist's interest in philosophers, I sought out Looking for Spinoza. It rewarded me in several ways, first by extending my understanding of how emotions as a biological concept are continuous with feelings as a conscious, mental phenomenon, and second by providing a guided, personal investigation into the life of Bento-Baruch-Benedict Spinoza.

Damasio has a lot to say about emotions and the structure of the brain, some of it exhaustingly detailed. But the key area for me was in matching what I might introspectively think and feel, with Damasio's experimentally substantiated knowledge of the routes through the neural pathways that electrical and chemical signals follow.

One example would lie in Damasio's distinction between emotions and feelings, which I had previously taken to be roughly synonomous. Damasio says that emotions are instinctual reactions that all animals have as a way of coping with environmental stimuli. They are not necessarily conscious. But feelings, according to Damasio, are our conscious perceptions of our bodily states as we are having emotions. Thus a worm can react with alarm, but we conscious beings feel our bodies change when we are alarmed, and we can be alerted to consider why we are alarmed and what we want to do about it.

The less theoretical and more personally appealing part of the book is Damasio's personal quest to trace out the life of Spinoza, whose philosophy, Damasio believes, anticipates many of his own findings and conclusions. I love Damasio's drive to fit his scientific work into a philosophical overview, which is both theoretical and personal.

Damasio is originally Portuguese, and I can't help feeling that he is driven in part by a sense of kinship with a man who might have shared some of his cultural experiences, albeit separated by centuries. Much of the research on Spinoza is in Portuguese, showing some intensive effort. Spinoza was a Portuguese Jew whose family fled the inquisition for a relatively tolerant Holland.

There Spinoza participated in the Jewish community, but eventually was alienated from it, because he had attained views of his own, characteristic of the Enlightenment. Thus he moved from the Portuguese "Bento" to the Hebrew "Baruch" to the Latin "Benedictus" (all meaning "blessed", like "Barack" from Swahili and Arabic, I can't help adding).

Spinoza's odyssey is inspiring, as is Damasio's obvious admiration of it, and his own efforts to model his own life as a scientist on a comparable philosophical framework. As I get older (smile), I love it when science and philosophy get personal. ...more

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Nov 12, 2009 Stephen rated it it was ok

This book is, by turns, interesting and frustrating. Damasio knows his stuff when it comes to the details of neuroscience (which is to be expected because this is his field) and the details he supplies are fascinating. However, he overreaches himself when he tries to fit all these separate details into his one-size-fits-all model of how emotions and feelings interact together in a living brain; everything becomes ‘evidence’ for his overarching theory. Just because we have the one word ‘feelings’ ...more

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Nov 08, 2010 Melinda Olivas rated it liked it · review of another edition

I found the book “Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain” by Antonio Damasio an interesting look at the relationship between emotions, feelings, and the brain. I enjoyed reading about Damasio’s almost obsession-like fascination with the philosopher Spinoza. Damasio found Spinoza’s beliefs about feelings, passions, and emotions influential and relevant to his work as a neurologist. I also enjoyed that Damasio included a bit of philosophical flavor throughout the whole of this bo I found the book “Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain” by Antonio Damasio an interesting look at the relationship between emotions, feelings, and the brain. I enjoyed reading about Damasio’s almost obsession-like fascination with the philosopher Spinoza. Damasio found Spinoza’s beliefs about feelings, passions, and emotions influential and relevant to his work as a neurologist. I also enjoyed that Damasio included a bit of philosophical flavor throughout the whole of this book.
As a current doctoral student in clinical psychology, I found Damasio’s unique perspective on emotions and feelings interesting, though debatable. I read the book with an open mind yet could not help but think of my clients as their difficulties with feelings, affect, and emotion regulation are relevant to the topic. Damasio believes that emotions are a person’s external or observable expressions of feelings, and that feelings are the hidden, in-the-mind, non-observable experiences. He believes that emotions come before feelings which implies ideas such as one making a facial expression that typically implies “happiness”, then their internal state will also be happy. I find this idea hard to grasp because of the simplicity it suggests regarding emotion regulation. If being “happy” was this easy there would be little need for therapists or clinicians in general. On the other hand, some psychotherapy orientations, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, lend themselves to the idea that one’s internal experience of feelings are inter-dependent on one’s behaviors and thoughts. If one agrees with Damasio’s perspective, it would be interesting to see how a depressed client is affected by “pretending” to be happy.
A section that I also enjoyed reading and find applicable to my work as a clinician is that of joy and sorrow. Although Damasio breaks down these two feelings into neurological processes, he does talk about how a person’s choices are influenced by their past experience of the joy or sorrow feeling that they associate it with. Damasio wrote, “A gut feeling can suggest that you refrain from a choice that, in the past, has led to negative consequences, and it can do so ahead of your own regular reasoning telling you precisely the same ‘do not’ ” (147). Many clients seek therapy for problems they have related to attachment or interpersonal skills. These problems can be explained and understood in light of Damasio’s belief because they have dealt with similar situations and had negative consequences in their past. For example, if a person has been hurt as a result of an unfaithful partner and finds they can no longer trust people, it is their “gut feeling” that reminds them not to make the same bad choice and they find themselves alone and uhappy. Damasio suggests that this “gut feeling” or “hunches…steer our behavior in the proper direction” (150). Psychotherapy is a very beneficial and helpful resource for exploring, processing, and challenging the negative “gut feelings”.
I found this book to be interesting, applicable to clinical psychology, and, for the most part, easy to read. I liked his style of writing, was entertained with his fascination with Spinoza, and inspired by his passion for neuroscience.
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Oct 28, 2012 Randal Samstag rated it did not like it

Shelves: philosophy

For a devastating critique of this book see: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/23/boo....

Quoted from the review, by philosopher of mind, Colin McGinn:

"I have two things to say about this theory: it is unoriginal, and it is false. As anyone even remotely familiar with this topic is aware, what Damasio presents here is known as the ''James-Lange'' theory of emotion, after the two psychologists, William James and Carl G. Lange, who thought of it independently in the 1880's. Not once does Damasio refe For a devastating critique of this book see: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/23/boo....

Quoted from the review, by philosopher of mind, Colin McGinn:

"I have two things to say about this theory: it is unoriginal, and it is false. As anyone even remotely familiar with this topic is aware, what Damasio presents here is known as the ''James-Lange'' theory of emotion, after the two psychologists, William James and Carl G. Lange, who thought of it independently in the 1880's. Not once does Damasio refer to it by this name, and he makes only very cursory reference to James's version of the theory. He generally writes as if he were advancing a startling discovery, mere hints of which, with the benefit of hindsight, can be extracted from Spinoza and James. In fact, the theory is a standard chestnut of psychology textbooks, a staple of old-style behaviorist psychology, with its emphasis on outer behavior at the expense of inner feeling.

The errors of the theory are chiefly those of exaggeration. While it is a truism that whistling a happy tune can improve your mood so that external actions can initiate a change of emotional state, it by no means follows that feelings play no causal role in the production of behavior. And it is quite clear that an emotion can shape the course of a person's actions over time, as when someone stays in bed all day because he feels depressed. We do often cry because we are sad -- even though the crying can work to augment the feeling. There is causal interplay between feelings and their bodily expression, rather than a one-way dependence. The fact, cited by Damasio, that a bodily fear response can precede a conscious feeling of fear does not show that once the feeling is present it has no causal control over behavior -- and it clearly does, as with fleeing and hiding.

What about the idea that an emotion is a bodily perception? Suppose I am delighted that my son has become a doctor. I may have various sensations in my body that express this emotion -- say, lightness in my limbs and a warm feeling in my viscera. But the object of my delight is not my body; it is my son's success. My bodily sensations are directed to my body and my emotion is directed to my son. Therefore my emotion cannot be identical to my bodily sensations -- for the two have different objects. This refutes the James-Lange theory.

As Wittgenstein remarks in his classic discussion of this theory, the horribleness of my grief when someone I love dies cannot be explained as the horribleness of the sensations I feel in my body. It results, rather, from the horribleness of what my grief is about; my bodily sensations may not be particularly horrible in themselves. Nor do we try to assuage someone's grief by attending to her bodily sensations; instead we talk about what she is grieving over. The James-Lange theory fails because it ignores what philosophers call the intentionality of emotion -- that is, what emotions are about, their representational content, which are generally things outside the body. The theory tries to reduce an emotion to its sensory bodily symptoms, but these symptoms have the wrong kind of intentionality: the state of the body, not the state of the external world."

I would never take this guy (Damasio) seriously. ...more

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Nov 10, 2010 Elizabeth rated it really liked it

In Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain Antonio Damasio uses neurological and physiological markers to delineate the process of emotions and feelings. Then, he further integrates these scientific findings with social studies. This in and of itself was quite impressive and perhaps demonstrates the fields (e.g., what individuals call the soft sciences and hard sciences) coming together and taking a different integrative perspective of how mental health can be conceptualized.

Of In Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain Antonio Damasio uses neurological and physiological markers to delineate the process of emotions and feelings. Then, he further integrates these scientific findings with social studies. This in and of itself was quite impressive and perhaps demonstrates the fields (e.g., what individuals call the soft sciences and hard sciences) coming together and taking a different integrative perspective of how mental health can be conceptualized.

Of particular interest to me was when Damasio indicated that problems in the environment prompt self-preserving behavior. This perspective is very much in line with behaviorist thinking. However, on a more psychodynamic note, it makes me think about how personality becomes engrained, especially in the case of individuals with personality disorders. It makes me think about how crucial early relationships with significant others are. For example, an individual with antisocial personality disorder lacks empathy for others, because the individual more than likely experienced abuse, neglect, modeling of antisocial behavior in early relationships with significant others, and/or had a parent with an inability to set healthy boundaries (e.g., overindulgent parent). Conceptualizing psychopathology from the perspective that most behavior is aimed at self-preservation helps me conceptualize clients that may be difficult to work with from a different, perhaps more empathic, perspective. Additionally, conceptualizing all behavior as self-preserving behavior also makes one aware of the behaviors that our client’s pull from us and how therapy can serve as a problem or change in the environment that may prompt our clients to change their behaviors.

Also of clinical relevance was Damasio’s conceptualization that feelings serve as information about internal states of what is happening within the individual. This reminds me of client’s that wish that uncomfortable feelings would dissipate and go through quite a number of measures to ignore, avoid, and not feel unwanted feelings. The amount of energy that they expend in that process at times is significant. In the avoidance of unwanted feelings sometimes more emotional damage emanates rather than in accepting feelings as indicators that something in going on within. Perhaps, offering a metaphor of an unpleasant feeling being akin to a physical marker of pain (e.g., a person cutting their finger and blood the pain resulting from the experience) would help our clients come to accept some of their unpleasant feelings. The conceptualizing of the emotional healing process within the framework of a physical injury may also help our clients more holistically integrate and accept their feelings.

Overall, the book was full of food for thought. It was filled with clinical relevance and is worthy of keeping on a shelf as a book that could be re-visited for varying purposes (e.g., a clearer understanding of how neurology and psychopathology emanate in different cases, in helping conceptualizing certain clients, and so forth).
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Jan 13, 2010 cole rated it did not like it

If you buy the Enlightenment belief that scientific truth can be obtained and man made better for it, then take my review with a grain of salt. If you are convinced of the fact that using the terms "bad" and "human nature" in the same sentence is pretty acceptable, you won't like this too much.

Damasio's science seems interesting enough and does pose some engaging questions. However, there are far too many condescending logical leaps for me to stomach. The low point came with the rather absurd s ...more

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Dec 04, 2017 Michael rated it it was ok

Looking for Spinoza is essentially two books wishing it could be one. The first half covers the neurobiology of emotional life. Damasio lays out an interesting overview for a lay reader of how the brain operates as a self regulatory system, connecting this self-regulation to emotions and feelings. The second half is essentially a slim biography of Spinoza. Unfortunately, for a man whose major life events consisted of excommunication, writing philosophy and grinding lenses until he died, there is ...more

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Jan 26, 2016 Divya Palevski rated it liked it

I liked this book but found some parts weary to read. When Damasio writes about the neurology of the feeling brain , it is easy to assemble the author's love for his subject. However, found his sentence structuring elaborately wounded ( I had to read some sentences twice) and repetitive.
But that being said, his monolistic view of mind/ brain and body and his reverence towards Baruch Spinoza is admirable. I believe in Monolism and the idea of feelings variably related to the homeostasis of the b ...more

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Feb 15, 2018 Charles Daney rated it liked it

Shelves: biography, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, reviewed

The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio writes pleasant, elegant prose. Unfortunately, aside from that, this book, first published in 2003, is somewhat of a disappointment. The main concern of his scientific career has been to understand the mechanisms underlying "emotions" and "feelings". He has given good accounts of this subject in two previous books: Descartes' Error (1994) and The Feeling of What Happens (1999). What is good about Damasio's writing, especially in the earlier books, is that he do The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio writes pleasant, elegant prose. Unfortunately, aside from that, this book, first published in 2003, is somewhat of a disappointment. The main concern of his scientific career has been to understand the mechanisms underlying "emotions" and "feelings". He has given good accounts of this subject in two previous books: Descartes' Error (1994) and The Feeling of What Happens (1999). What is good about Damasio's writing, especially in the earlier books, is that he doesn't do much dumbing down of the material, by avoiding technical terms, to appeal to the "general reader", as too many "science writers" do.

The book reviewed here, however, doesn't cover the subject in as much depth as the previous books, and in particular it doesn't very well illuminate the distinction - which the author insists upon - between "emotion" and "feeling". It appears that Damasio wanted to write on what interested him about Spinoza, but didn't have enough to fill a whole book. So the first five chapters (about 3/4 of the total text) are devoted mostly to the neuropsychological issues, while the final two chapters are on Spinoza, and are connected only tenuously with the rest of the book.

Damasio has championed the idea that human consciousness and other psychological phenomena - emotions and feelings especially - aren't rooted primarily in the brain, but instead are shaped by physiological processes going on throughout the whole body. This may be surprising to some, but it's not an especially radical idea. It makes good evolutionary sense. An animal's main evolutionary objective is to be good at survival and reproduction. Emotions (at least in animals with more than a rudimentary nervous system) exist to motivate an individual to seek things that favor survival and reproduction (shelter, food, sex), and to avoid threatening things (excessive heat or cold, predators, reproductive rivals). They seem to form a bridge between the sensory and motor systems. In animals with a developed cerebral cortex, like humans, emotions work partly through cognition.

Note that the words "emotion" and "motivation" share the same linguistic root: the Indo-European MEUh-. Emotions, whether conscious or not, are what motivates animal behavior. Emotions in general and feelings in particular allow humans to make critical decisions quickly, when the situation requires that. It seems unlikely that inhabitants of the planet Vulcan, like Mr. Spock of Star Trek, could have successfully evolved without the help of emotions. (Though perhaps they became able to suppress them at a later stage.)

I wish Damasio had been clearer in this book about his distinction between emotions and feelings. Are things like "fear", "pleasure", "shame", etc. emotions or feelings? Most people, I think, might use either term for them. But for Damasio, it seems, an emotion is represented in the brain only in certain specific regions, and may or may not appear in consciousness. For instance, a person (who is capable of consciousness) may have a "je ne sais quoi" sensation of fear on encountering an animal or object or situation with which the individual has had a negative experience in the past, even if that has been forgotten. The person will still avoid the particular stimulus without giving much thought as to why. A feeling, on the other hand, enters consciousness and additionally involves parts of the brain related to deliberate behavior. ("I like (or don't like) this whatever and want to remain (or not remain) exposed to it.") Naturally, if an animal doesn't have "consciousness" in the human sense - a worm, say - the animal can still be said to have "emotions" if it is motivated to approach or avoid certain things, for its own benefit. At any rate, that's how I interpret Damasio's thesis, and if I've misinterpreted it, a lack of clarity may be the reason.

As far as the two chapters on Spinoza are concerned, they may be the most interesting part of the book in spite of their brevity. He lived from 1632 to 1677, entirely in Holland. This was mostly before what historians consider the "Age of Enlightenment", which flowered in the 18th century. Spinoza, however, is generally considered one of its earliest avatars. He was born into a moderately prosperous Jewish family, but eventually renounced both his material and religious heritage. Temperamentally he was reclusive, yet congenial with others in his limited social sphere. He came to reject both Judaism and Christianity, evidently for both philosophical reasons (of which see below) as well as revulsion at the irrationality and cruelty of both religious traditions. Fortunately for Spinoza, he lived in Holland, which at the time featured the least intolerant variety of Christianity. Nevertheless, his main philosophical work, the Ethics, was published only posthumously - and was almost immediately banned by both secular and religious (Jewish, Catholic, and Calvinist) authorities because of its "heretical" philosophy. Later leading philosophers of the Enlightenment (e. g. Locke, Hume, Leibniz, and Kant) apparently studied the Ethics - but were fearful of acknowledging its influence on them. At least Spinoza managed to escape the fates of other "heretics" like Giordano Bruno and Galileo.

If you're interested in much discussion of Spinoza's philosophy, the present book is disappointing on this too, for at least three reasons. First, Damasio alludes in passing only to a few places in Spinoza's writing that deal with the psychology of emotions and feelings. Although he suggests that Spinoza foreshadowed current research findings, Spinoza's musings on these issues, however prescient, can't be much more than lucky guesses about what neuroscience now knows. Second, Damasio is wise not to deal at length with Spinoza's take on philosophical questions like "free will" and the "mind-body" problem. That's because the occupation of philosophers is to argue endlessly about issues that can only be satisfactorily resolved by scientific investigation. Third, Spinoza's opinions on religion aren't crystal clear. It's true that Spinoza was perhaps the most noteworthy Western philosopher of the preceding 1500 or so years to flatly reject dogma of the polluted swamp of traditional religion. However, arguments (among philosophers who care about such things) are still going on as to whether Spinoza's opinions actually represented atheism, agnosticism, "panentheism", or "pantheism" (which has generally been attributed to Spinoza). ...more

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Aug 06, 2020 Jorge Hurtado rated it it was amazing

I didn't know the author before, but now I admire him.
Antonio Damasio is not just a scientist, he is also a humanist; he is a philosopher. He understands the deep of what he talks about and never claims to have the truth (as others claim) of difficult issues
such as feelings, consciousness, moral values,...

As the tittle suggests, the author talks about how emotions work, from a neurobiological perspective, and admires the evolutionary process that had to take place in order to reach a point of ...more

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Jul 19, 2019 Dennis Littrell rated it it was amazing

Humanism from a neurobiologist

Part of this is a celebration of the 17th century Rationalist philosopher Baruch Spinosa whose world view is very much in concert with that of Antonio Damasio. Spinosa's demolition of Descartes' mind/body duality is the thread that Damasio takes up and weaves into this graceful and agreeable narrative. Furthermore, it is Spinosa's recognition that we are part of, and contained within, nature and not materially different from nature (another of Descartes' errors) tha ...more

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Jan 16, 2019 Joshua rated it really liked it

Shelves: nonfiction, psychology, philosophy, science, knowledge, spirituality, historical, biography

This book was both not enough of and way more than I expected. I enjoyed the physiological discourse for which I picked up the book, and appreciated the philosophical overtones that were brought out in the latter parts.

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Aug 04, 2019 Pierre added it

Shelves: philosophy

Absolutely fascinating!

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Oct 31, 2016 Ari Landa rated it really liked it

Not an easy book to go through. Can get a bit too technical and sciencey, also the writing isn't as fluid as others (Perhaps there's a lot of "feelings of ideas" in the writing style which clouds the sentence syntax:)). That said it's a very smart book that explains a lot and also invites a lot of questions regarding the implications of feelings on the cognitive brain. For example, if the brain is built up from emotions to feelings to rational logic, and just as feelings are a more complicated e ...more

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Feb 15, 2020 Frank Strada rated it liked it

Shelves: books-reviewed

Much of Damasio's book is about brain anatomy. Too much detail (I skimmed most of this section), but his point is well taken: that Spinoza, who lived in the 17th century, had it right regarding human feeling and emotion, despite his lack of knowledge about neural systems.

Baruch Spinoza is known for his book Ethics and his Treatise on Politics and Religion, which had to be published under a pseudonym in once case and posthumously in the other. He advocated separation of church and state and demo ...more

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Feb 19, 2018 Drenda added it

Damasio is a prominent researcher in the field of neurology and has written a series of books describing the achievements in his field to the lay public. He is also a very informed reader of Spinoza and part of the charm of this book, and there is much charm to be found here, is that he is more than willing to expand on both his field and his interest.

Much of the time the researcher and the philosopher are just two different stories. Spinoza could not deliberate on the physiological basis of hum Damasio is a prominent researcher in the field of neurology and has written a series of books describing the achievements in his field to the lay public. He is also a very informed reader of Spinoza and part of the charm of this book, and there is much charm to be found here, is that he is more than willing to expand on both his field and his interest.

Much of the time the researcher and the philosopher are just two different stories. Spinoza could not deliberate on the physiological basis of human sensing, emoting and cognition since it was exactly in his time that the first scientific studies of the human body were being made. Much later, initial studies in brain functioning were pointed at finding specific locations in that organ for the specific processes: seeing, movement, language. That has been left far behind as the search is on for neural mappings wherein many nerve pathways are combined with chemical pathways in order to produce the smallest change in an organism. But it is easy to see how Spinoza could become a favorite of a broad minded neurologist. Both start from a foundation of human behavior that centers in the individual's basic need to maintain itself. Spinoza's description of this most basic concern can sound almost Darwinian, as, of course, does the neurologist's. Once again, the basic aim of any organism is to maintain itself. One branch of organisms were most successful with the development of sensitivities to the outside world-seeing, hearing, touch-that combined with increasing mobility, allowed them to flee predation and find nourishment. That entailed the development of an advanced nervous system, which needed to become more complex as the world became more complex. For homo sapiens, for example, the world became extremely complex when individuals had to deal with group interaction and social responsibilities. In fact, the neural interactions became so complex that the ultimate organizer was evolutionarily advantageous-consciousness.

No one really denies the trouble that happens with the appearance of that ultimate organizer, consciousness. Descartes came at the issue from the side of consciousness and left us with the unfortunate tradition of mind/body dualism. The sciences since the Enlightenment have come to the problem from the side of the body and many in that community have dealt with it by simply collapsing the mind into the body, claiming that with enough time, research will eliminate mind musings with complex neural mappings. Damasio tries to avoid such a simple minded approach and readily lists consciousness as one of the ingredients necessary to describe human behavior. He admits that neurology can't bridge the gap between mind issues and brain issues:

We can describe neural patterns-with the tools of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and neuro-
chemistry-and we can describe images with the tools of introspection. How we get from the
former to the latter is known only in part (p. 198)

However, when I read Damasio, I can't foresee any movement toward bridging the gap except with finding more and more complex neural interactions. I have many paragraphs in this book where I had to write 'by finding more complicated neural pathways?' Perhaps Damasio would say higher-order pathways, meaning some pathways have organizing functions over many other pathways, but I either don't buy the distinction or Damasio is left with defending higher-order in some way that is really not brain function. Consequently, Damasio falls back into the usual scientific collapse of mind into body.

His philosopher hero, Spinoza, would not have allowed such a collapse, since that eliminates an aspect of a thing, and Spinoza was all about inclusion. Spinoza's monism covered everything under the sun and beyond. He not only said that mind and body are aspects of the same thing, but that 'thing'-nature/god-has a multitude of aspects, perhaps an infinite number, being indeed, god/nature. The universe is one glorious or morbid whole, a stone, light waves, a hydrogen atom, smoke from the fireplace, a human being all equally reflecting that immutable being. the only thing that human being have going for them is the slight possibility f moving toward the joy of realizing this infinitely faceted whole.

I believe there is a way to take Spinoza's decription of the mind/body gap seriously, that they are aspects of the same thing, without collapsing either side into the other. Dmasio himself provides a hint as to how this might be done. He says at one point that the basic unit of neurobiology was not the atom but the cell, being in itself a striving system maintaining its own integrity while contributing to higher levels of organization. I assume most people who fall under the mantel of biology would say the same. So we have biologists who have their language for best describing the world, the physicists who use the language of the atom-why not be inclusive as Spinoza encourages and allow the language of the geologist, the sociologist, the chef and the beekeeper. Each language reflects an aspect of nature/god in its own way, often with no means of translating to another language without destroying its own integrity. I think few people in the western tradition, and with the obvious exceptions, would deny Damasio's outline of how consciousness came about. But once it was there, it became its own aspect of the human condition, with a language no longer translatable to its physiological foundation. ...more

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Feb 17, 2010 Freddie Berg rated it it was amazing

Never thought I would understand Spinoza. Never thought I would understand feelings. Never thought I would understand the psychophysiology and chemistry of the brain. Made me even more grateful to doctors and healers of all stripes and plaids.

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Mar 04, 2014 Freddie Berg rated it it was amazing

An excellent explication of many issues. Initially skipped a few sections on the complexity of neural electricity. Re-read other portions over several years, and still pick it up from time to time. Offered it to several friends. On my all time favorites shelf.

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Dec 22, 2007 Andrea rated it liked it

So far not as good as "Blink" or "Opening Skinner's Box". ...more

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Jul 29, 2020 Lucy Andrews rated it really liked it

Anything I write probably won't do justice to Damasio's book. In part because not being a neurobiologist when there is specific stuff about his or that part of the brain, my brain checks out. Same thing would happen with any technical discussion, really, of stuff I don't know anything about. But I got the gist of the argument about how and why feelings, as opposed to emotions (which are more basic) evolved and what they do for us. Also that Spinoza, in Damasio's view was the first to tackle the Anything I write probably won't do justice to Damasio's book. In part because not being a neurobiologist when there is specific stuff about his or that part of the brain, my brain checks out. Same thing would happen with any technical discussion, really, of stuff I don't know anything about. But I got the gist of the argument about how and why feelings, as opposed to emotions (which are more basic) evolved and what they do for us. Also that Spinoza, in Damasio's view was the first to tackle the issue of what feelings are and if they arise out of the body or . . . what? In short, yes, feelings which are in some ways a refinement or further development of emotional response (say, terror, panic vs. guilt and shame, or ecstasy vs joy evoked by listening to Bach) and that all of what is in our minds, what we are aware of, arises out of the body. The evolutionary purpose of all is in the attempt to keep the organism in homeostasis, in balance with itself -- alive and thriving. Damasio does a good job in weaving technical information in and explaining the mechanics of the brain for the layman. I didn't get it all, but got enough, I think. Bringing Spinoza in, in the personal way he does, visiting his abodes, trying to get a sense of who he was adds a dimension to the book that was very welcome. The last section meant the most to me -- Spinoza made the point that humans don't have a lot of choice, but one of the gifts our complex system of emotions into feelings and self-awareness gives us choice. You can choose not to perseverate, in other words, choose to decide not to linger on the negative side -- you don't pretend it isn't there the way a Stoic would, but you don't wallow because why? Sounds simplistic, almost ridiculous? Try it next time you start excoriating yourself. Ask yourself: how will punishing myself help me or anyone? Of course, not everyone does have the ability to make this kind of choice, but most of us do. Anyway, this rational but compassionate approach did not even begin to gain any traction until the late 19th century. Spinoza offered it in the 1500's but was banned so successfully and totally that his work still hasn't surfaced or received the merit it deserves. He was not an atheist but he did not envision God as a reflection of humanity or even interested in humanity, but that a being or intelligence was evident in everything around us. I remember responding strongly to Spinoza in college philosophy class. An early humanist, really. **** ...more

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Jul 02, 2018 Srividya rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

It took laborious effort to trudge through the concepts in the book.Though I am fascinated by the subject, I do not have formal knowledge to understand all the perspectives detailed in the book.The book has a lot of technical information and relational connections between the machinery of the brain and the mind.For me, glimpses into Spinoza's life interspersed with the technical interpretations added allure to the presentation.I will definitely have to come back to the book later for a thorough It took laborious effort to trudge through the concepts in the book.Though I am fascinated by the subject, I do not have formal knowledge to understand all the perspectives detailed in the book.The book has a lot of technical information and relational connections between the machinery of the brain and the mind.For me, glimpses into Spinoza's life interspersed with the technical interpretations added allure to the presentation.I will definitely have to come back to the book later for a thorough understanding but thought it worth to note down a few points from the current attempt.

The book lays out clearly the difference between emotions and feelings, till i read this book they were synonymous.Emotions are the ‘externalities’ played out for public expression and feelings involve the working of the inner machinery namely the mind.Emotion precedes feelings and when one loses the ability to express an emotion the associated feelings will also be lost.The associations of emotions ,feelings with the neural mapping of body states was interesting to read but I did not really grasp everything under that and same with Emotions vs reflexes, Feelings vs background emotions.The entire machinery of feelings is explained in detail from the conception of the thought that triggers emotion, the sensing of the body state to form the body maps, the simulated body states and how the actual and simulated states contribute to the mental experience and all this to the homeostatic regulation.

It also seems that he picked up only part of the solution from Spinoza.The book sets out to prove empirically Spinoza’s theory that Mind and Body are the same substance and our idea of pain and pleasure drive all the activity.But Damasio also claims that knowing these details we must be able to willfully regulate our emotions and our exposure to the associated environment.However If you completely go by Spinoza’s philosophy - There is no absolute or free will in the mind, and the solution cannot be uncomplicated. ...more

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Jan 28, 2019 Rhonda Sue rated it liked it

Hats off to neuroscience. This was not easy reading but I stuck with it to learn about the 17th century Dutch philosopher Spinoza and more brain science and how the brain, mind, and body work together. First come emotions, then feelings. Emotions are public, actions or movements in the theatre of the body. Feelings are hidden and play out in the theatre of the mind.

There are lots of brain figures in the book which help to illustrate which parts of the brain are related to different feelings, em ...more

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Sep 09, 2018 Niklas rated it liked it

Damasio is a first-grade neuroscientist and a decent writer on that matter as well. He's able to tie together very complex thing into understandable words.

I've been fascinated with emotions lately and this was the first of his many books on this topic.
Neuroscience-wise, there were new things for me and but especially the latter part of the book, the semi-biographical account of Spinoza was completely unknown to me beforehand.

It was interesting to read and get to know about this philosopher and ...more

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Aug 18, 2018 Fred Melden rated it liked it

Damasio has little light to shed on Spinoza, mostly because the latter lived a very private life. The book reveals a lot about the Jewish community's practices and political position in 17th-century Amsterdam. In addition, I found the distinction between emotion and feeling enlightening. For these alone, the book is worth reading. Against these are the convoluted writing style - probably the result of writing in a second language - and the rather tenuous tie between Spinoza and the discussion o ...more

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Aug 28, 2017 Xavier Alexandre rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science, philosophy, religion

Antonio Damasio successfully connects the most recent discoveries of neuroscience with the conclusions Spinoza reached in his study, almost 400 years ago. In particular, the idea that the body and the soul are inextricably linked - definitely not an Aristotelian thought - and that the drive to survive, modulated through aeons of evolution, is the main engine that not only sculpted our bodies, but also our emotions and feelings. Spinoza was right about all this, against Descartes, among others. I ...more

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Apr 09, 2021 Paul Schwartzmeyer rated it liked it

I typically don't give negative reviews but this book was a scream. It's about a guy, the author, looking for Spinoza.

What was funny was he was actually looking for Spinoza. He would go to places where Spinoza used to live and look in the windows! hahaha. Since Spinoza died in 1677, he never seemed to find him. I was looking for a book ON Spinoza, not a what I did on my summer Sabbatical.

He certainly is knowledgeable enough about Spinoza, but the condescension and over emotionalizing of Damasio ...more

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Jun 05, 2020 Rosemary rated it liked it · review of another edition

As someone who previously thought that emotions and feelings were the same thing, I did learn something from this book, although beyond that distinction I found the neurological parts hard to follow. The parts about Spinoza attracted me more, but they turned out to be rather superficial, with nothing that I didn't already know. So I was probably not the ideal reader for this book. It would be better suited to someone who had more of a grounding in science and less in philosophy. ...more

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Aug 07, 2008 Ryan rated it really liked it

“If we do not exist under oppression or in famine and yet cannot convince ourselves how lucky we are to be alive, perhaps we are not trying hard enough.” -Antonio Damasio in Searching for Spinoza.

“to face the music and dance [anyway]” Damasio’s conception of the human condition and what to do about it.

I enjoyed this book even though it was somewhat dry. I think Damasio's purpose is admirable. He is trying to reconcile current findings in neuroscience with philosophy. In this case, the philosophy “If we do not exist under oppression or in famine and yet cannot convince ourselves how lucky we are to be alive, perhaps we are not trying hard enough.” -Antonio Damasio in Searching for Spinoza.

“to face the music and dance [anyway]” Damasio’s conception of the human condition and what to do about it.

I enjoyed this book even though it was somewhat dry. I think Damasio's purpose is admirable. He is trying to reconcile current findings in neuroscience with philosophy. In this case, the philosophy of Benedictus Spinoza. He intertwines the physiological and neurological basis for emotions and feelings (two distinct phenomena according to him) and the story of Spinoza's life and the explication of his philosophy.

Basically, emotions are what we share with animals, they are, in some sense, involuntary—fear, pain, pleasure, anger, sadness. Feelings are our mental states that we get once we’ve sort of processed our emotions. Emotions are public which means that they can be inferred by facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, etc.; whereas feelings are private and are always hidden.

Emotions and feelings are different parts of a continuous process. He points out that feelings are more important to us, so we tend to think that feelings precede emotions, but it is actually the opposite. And this is so simply because evolution developed emotions first, which many animals have, and feelings later, which most animals do not have. He says that evolution developed a “homeostasis machine” for us. And he describes that emergent(or nested) machine with a tree metaphor: the lower trunk is metabolism, reflexes, and immune system, the middle trunk is pain and pleasure behaviors, the large branches are drives and motivations, the small branches are “emotions-proper”, and the leaves are feelings.
Drives and motivations are what Spinoza called “appetites” which include “hunger, thirst, curiousity and exploration, play and sex.” When we become aware of these drives, they become “desires” according to Spinoza.

The reason he links this new physiology and neuroscience about feelings and emotions with Spinoza is because Spinoza said that there is an emotional basis or back drop to rationality and reason, to the mind in other words. He also believed that the purpose of a human being is self-preservation plus homeostasis, or, joy. At least that’s what Damasio says. I don’t know, the parts about Spinoza were pretty boring mostly, his connection between what he has to offer and Spinoza often don’t feel all that necessary—maybe I’m just sad because the prose was so dry. Emotions and feelings obviously have a physical basis in the brain. Without certain regions of the brain we can’t have feelings or in some cases can’t experience social feelings like embarrassment, awkwardness, compassion, etc.
Oh, he also has something interesting to say about the mind-body problem. Namely that the mind maps body states, the mind is around, evolutionarily, (emerged from, not other than) the body proper which includes the brain. Therefore, in contradistinction to Descartes, mind and body are not two different substances. For Spinoza, body and mind are two different attributes of the same substance, which is not just semantics but an important distinction.
He also says things that creep me out—like there is no place for sadness in the human organism anymore. That sadness had it’s place, but now we should just focus on joy. He doesn’t accept that sadness is an implicit part of the human condition which is strange because later, at the end of the book, he cites the problem of having consciousness plus autobiographical memory plus empathy and relates it to how death, and knowing we are going to die, and, in fact, having loved ones die takes us out of our homeostasis. He does not go into detail about how sadness can be avoided altogether.
Although his focus is human flourishing, and he believes that elucidating how emotions and feelings work will help individuals and human institutions revise and improve their conception of human nature so that we can be “combative” toward the human condition; i.e., use our feeling mind to eradicate as much suffering as we can. Particularly the easy and obvious targets like famine, oppression, abject poverty, etc.
He spends a lot of time talking about “emotionally competent stimuli” which I understand to mean external objects and people that cause an emotion to happen. What he doesn’t quite get at, but what Echart Tolle does, is that by observing our mind having feelings, we don’t have to have such a close identity with them, we can find space in our mind for relaxation (peace) from The Interpreter, from our own endless thoughts, judgments, feelings, desires, wants, etc.
“The human mind is the idea of the human body.” Damasio’s words, an idea he attributes to Spinoza. He talks about body-maps. The emotion-feedback continuum are the feedback which tell us on a moment to moment basis how the body is doing.

“For Spinoza, human beings naturally endeavor, of necessity, to persevere in their own being; that necessary endeavor constitutes their actual essence.”
-I like this quote because I think it corresponds very well with our understanding of DNA.

...more

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Dec 20, 2018 Ana C. rated it it was amazing

I loved this book. Spinoza is one of the most underrated philosophers in history, and is an important philosopher for neuroscientists. He was the first to understand the relationship with the environment, and the ethics of emotions. I'm still learning and studying his writings. A great book to know about Spinoza and neuroscience. ...more

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Jan 20, 2020 Marta Ch added it · review of another edition

It is interesting, especially those who study psychiatry and psychology because there are some terms used in the subject studied about feelings. I found it complicated besides I tried to finish the book without jump some pages which usually I do not do. Unfortunately, this one did not catch much of my attention.

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About António R. Damásio

António R. Damásio

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Damásio studied medicine at the University of Lisbon Medical School in Portugal, where he also did his medical residency rotation and completed his doctorate. Later, he moved to the United States as a research fellow at the Aphasia Research Center in Boston. His work there on behavioral neurology was done under the supervision of Norman Geschwind.

As a researcher, Dr. Damásio's main interest is the Damásio studied medicine at the University of Lisbon Medical School in Portugal, where he also did his medical residency rotation and completed his doctorate. Later, he moved to the United States as a research fellow at the Aphasia Research Center in Boston. His work there on behavioral neurology was done under the supervision of Norman Geschwind.

As a researcher, Dr. Damásio's main interest is the neurobiology of the mind, especially neural systems which subserve memory, language, emotion, and decision-making. His research has helped to elucidate the neural basis for the emotions and has shown that emotions play a central role in social cognition and decision-making. Damásio has formulated the somatic markers hypothesis.

As a clinician, he and his collaborators study and treat the disorders of behavior and cognition, and movement disorders.

Damásio's books deal with the relationship between emotions and feelings, and what are their bases in the brain. His 1994 book, Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain, was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and is translated in over 30 languages. His second book, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, was named as one of the ten best books of 2001 by New York Times Book Review, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, a Library Journal Best Book of the Year, and has thirty foreign editions. Damásio's most recent book, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, was published in 2003. In it, Damásio explores philosophy and its relations to neurobiology, suggesting that it might provide guidelines for human ethics.

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine, and the European Academy of Arts and Sciences. Damásio has received many awards including the Prince of Asturias Award in Science and Technology, Kappers Neuroscience Medal, the Beaumont Medal from the American Medical Association and the Reenpaa Prize in Neuroscience. He is also in the editorial board of many important journals in the field.

His current work involves the social emotions, decision neuroscience and creativity.

Prof. Damásio is married to Dr. Hanna Damásio, his colleague and co-author of several works.

(from: Wikipedia) ...more

Books by António R. Damásio

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain

The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness

Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures

Sentir & Saber: A Caminho da Consciência

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“Leaving out appraisal also would render the biological description of the phenomena of emotion vulnerable to the caricature that emotions without an appraisal phase are meaningless events. It would be more difficult to see how beautiful and amazingly intelligent emotions can be, and how powerfully they can solve problems for us.” — 16 likes

“The doctors found one electrode contact that greatly relieved the woman's symptoms. But the unexpected happened when the electric current passed through one of the four contact sites on the patient's left side, precisely two millimeters below the contact that improved her condition. The patient stopped her ongoing conversation quite abruptly, cast her eyes down and to her right side, then leaned slightly to the right and her emotional expression became one of sadness. After a few seconds she suddenly began to cry. Tears flowed and her entire demeanor was one of profound misery. Soon she was sobbing. As this display continued she began talking about how deeply sad she felt, how she had no energies left to go on living in this manner, how hopeless and exhausted she was. [ . . . ]

The physician in charge of the treatment realized that this unusual event was due to the current and aborted the procedure. About ninety seconds after the current was interrupted the patient's behavior returned to normal. [ . . . ]

Why would this patient's brain evoke the kind of thoughts that normally cause sadness considering that the emotion and feeling were unmotivated by the appropriate stimuli? The answer has to do with the dependence of feeling on emotion and the intriguing ways of one's memory. When the emotion sadness is deployed, feelings of sadness instantly follow. In short order, the brain also brings forth the kind of thoughts that normally cause the emotion sadness and feelings of sadness. This is because associative learning has linked emotions with thoughts in a rich two-way network. Certain thoughts evoke certain emotions and vice-versa.” — 2 likes

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