Self Comes to Mind Quotes

“We all woke up this morning and we had with it the amazing return of our conscious mind. We recovered minds with a complete sense of self and a complete sense of our own existence — yet we hardly ever pause to consider this wonder.”
― Antonio Damasio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

“While emotions are actions accompanied by ideas and certain modes of thinking, emotional feelings are mostly perceptions of what our bodies do during the emoting, along with perceptions of our state of mind during that same period of time.”
― António R. Damásio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

“We have our body in mind because it helps govern behavior in all manner of situations that could threaten the integrity of the organism and compromise life.”
― António R. Damásio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

“Once it becomes clear that feelings of emotion are primarily perceptions of our body state during a state of emotion, it is reasonable to say that all feelings of emotion contain a variation on the theme of primordial feelings, whatever the primordial feelings of the moment are, augmented by other aspects of body change that may or not be related to interoception.”
― António R. Damásio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

“Emotions are complex, largely automated programs of actions concocted by evolution. The actions are complemented by a cognitive program that includes certain ideas and modes of cognition, but the world of emotions is largely one of actions carried out in our bodies, from facial expressions and postures to changes in viscera and internal milieu. Feelings of emotion, on the other hand, are composite perceptions of what happens in our body and mind when we are emoting. As far as the body is concerned, feelings are images of actions rather than actions themselves; the world of feelings is one of perceptions executed in brain maps.”
― António Damásio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

“Body and brain are engaged in a continuous interactive dance. Thoughts implemented in the brain can induce emotional states that are implemented in the body, while the body can change the brain’s landscape and thus the substrate for thoughts. The brain states, which correspond to certain mental states, cause particular body states to occur; body states are then mapped in the brain and incorporated into the ongoing mental states. A small alteration on the brain side of the system can have major consequences for the body state (think of the release of any hormone); likewise, a small change on the body side (think of a broken tooth filling) can have a major effect on the mind once the change is mapped and perceived as acute pain.”
― António Damásio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

“The body tells the brain: this is how I am built and this is how you should see me now. The brain tells the body what to do to maintain its even keel. Whenever it is called for, it also tells the body how to construct an emotional state.”
― António Damásio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

“Brain maps are mercurial, changing from moment to moment to reflect the changes that are happening in the neurons that feed them, which in turn reflect changes in the interior of our body and in the world around us. The changes in brain maps also reflect the fact that we ourselves are in constant motion. We come close to objects or move away from them; we can touch them and then not; we can taste a wine, but then the taste goes away; we hear music, but then it comes to an end; our own body changes with different emotions, and different feelings ensue. The entire environment offered to the brain is perpetually modified, spontaneously or under the control of our activities. The corresponding brain maps change accordingly.”
― António Damásio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

“The ideal homeostatic range is not absolute—it varies according to the context in which an organism is placed. But toward the extremes of the homeostatic range, the viability of living tissue declines and the risk of disease and death increases; within a certain sector of the range, however, living tissues flourish and their function becomes more efficient and economic. Operating near the extremes of the range, if only for brief periods of time, is actually an important advantage in unfavorable life conditions, but nonetheless life states operating close to the efficient range are preferable. It is reasonable to conclude that the primitive of organism value is inscribed in the configurations of physiological parameters.”
― António Damásio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

“Things are not always what they seem. White light is a composite of the colors of the rainbow, although that is not apparent to the naked eye.”
― António Damásio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

“What the brain needs in order to become conscious is to acquire a new property—subjectivity—and a defining trait of subjectivity is the feeling that pervades the images we experience subjectively. ... In keeping with this idea, the decisive step in the making of consciousness is not the making of images and creating the basics of a mind. The decisive step is making the images ours, making them belong to their rightful owners, the singular, perfectly bounded organisms in which they emerge.”
― António Damásio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

“away from accessible consciousness, and that is possibly where and when the self matures, thanks to the gradual sedimentation and reworking of one’s memory. As lived experiences are reconstructed and replayed, whether in conscious reflection or in nonconscious processing, their substance is reassessed and inevitably rearranged, modified minimally or very much in terms of their factual composition and emotional accompaniment. Entities and events acquire new emotional weights during this process. Some frames of the recollection are dropped on the mind’s cutting-room floor, others are restored and enhanced, and others still are so deftly combined either by our wants or by the vagaries of chance that they create new scenes that were never shot. That is how, as years pass, our own history is subtly rewritten. That is why facts can acquire a new significance and why the music of memory plays differently today than it did last year.”
― António R. Damásio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

“Feelings of emotion, on the other hand, are composite perceptions of what happens in our body and mind when we are emoting.”
― António R. Damásio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

“The range of phenomena denoted by the word empathy owes a lot to this arrangement.”
― António R. Damásio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

“But the brain’s representation of the body has another major implication: because we can depict our own body states, we can more easily simulate the equivalent body states of others.”
― António R. Damásio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

“The good news, however, is that the self also has made reason and scientific observation possible, and reason and science, in turn, have been gradually correcting the misleading intuitions prompted by the unaided self. Overcoming”
― António R. Damásio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain