X-Message-Number: 5654
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 1996 13:42:33 +1100 (EST)
From:  (Kitty te Riele)
Subject: brain and body

The book "Descartes' error - emotion, reason and the human brain", by
Antonio Damasio (1994) seems to be relevant to both the uploading and the
neuro vs whole body debates.

>From the blurb, Picador edition:
Damasio "offers a novel perspective on what emotions and feelings actually
are: a direct sensing of our body states, a link between the body and its
survival-oriented regulations, on the one hand, and consciousness, on the
other."

>From the introduction (xvi):
"the body, as represented in the brain, may constitute the indispensable
frame of reference for the neural proceses that we experience as mind.
[.....] our most refined thoughts and best actions, our greatest joys and
deepest sorrows, use the body as a yard stick.
Surprising as it may sound, the mind exists in and for an integrated
organism; our minds would not be the way they are if it were not for the
interplay of body and brain during evolution, during individual
development, and at the current moment. The mind had t obe first about the
body, or it could not have been. On the basis of the ground reference that
the body continuously provides, the mind can then be about many other
things, real and imaginary."

Having only just started reading this book, I am unable to give an opinion.
Has any one else read it and made a judgement?

Kitty


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