Descartes’ Error

Outline

Descartes’ Error (1994) challenges the old idea that reason works best when it is separated from emotion. Antonio Damasio draws on cases such as Phineas Gage and patients with damage to the frontal lobes to show that people who lose access to their feelings also lose the ability to make sound decisions. The book introduces his somatic marker hypothesis and argues that body, emotion, and reason work together to guide human behaviour.

• Reason does not work best when it is cut off from emotion; the two cooperate in good thinking.
• Patients with frontal lobe damage show that losing access to feelings also means losing the ability to decide soundly.
• Phineas Gage is one of the cases Damasio uses to show how brain injury can change judgement and behaviour.
• Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis proposes that signals from the body help guide the choices people make.
• Body, emotion, and reason work together to shape human behaviour, which is why the book challenges Descartes' separation of mind and feeling.

Antonio Damasio is a Portuguese-American neuroscientist and professor at the University of Southern California, where he directs the Brain and Creativity Institute. He is known for his research on emotion, decision-making, and consciousness. His books include The Feeling of What Happens, Looking for Spinoza, and Self Comes to Mind.