Sadness is generally seen as a negative emotion, a response to distressing and adverse situations. In an aesthetic context, however, sadness is often associated with some degree of pleasure, as suggested by the ubiquity and popularity, throughout history, of music, plays, films and paintings with a sad content. Here, we focus on the fact that music regarded as sad is often experienced as pleasurable. Compared to other art forms, music has an exceptional ability to evoke a wide-range of feelings and (...) is especially beguiling when it deals with grief and sorrow. Why is it, then, that while human survival depends on preventing painful experiences, mental pain often turns out to be explicitly sought through music? In this article we consider why and how sad music can become pleasurable. We offer a framework to account for how listening to sad music can lead to positive feelings, contending that this effect hinges on correcting an ongoing homeostatic imbalance. Sadness evoked by music is found pleasurable: (1) when it is perceived as non-threatening; (2) when it is aesthetically pleasing; and (3) when it produces psychological benefits such as mood regulation, and empathic feelings, caused, for example, by recollection of and reflection on past events. We also review neuroimaging studies related to music and emotion and focus on those that deal with sadness. Further exploration of the neural mechanisms through which stimuli that usually produce sadness can induce a positive affective state could help the development of effective therapies for disorders such as depression, in which the ability to experience pleasure is attenuated. (shrink)

O conceito de Integridade em Pesquisa e Ética em pesquisa estão vinculados aos processos de pesquisa científica e à sua comunicação, porisso apresentar os resultados de forma objetiva é essencial. Acontece que alguns cientistas utilizam a manipulação de resultados e, consequentemente, outros tipos de má conduta como Fabricação, Falsificação de dados e Plágio (FFP). Neste artigo mostramos as definições desses conceitos e diferentes aspectos de comportamento a serem evitados, que afetam os princípios de confiabilidade da pesquisa. Apresentamos, através de uma (...) breve revisão de literatura na Web of Science, o conceito de Research Integrity, FFP, e suas relações com Publish or Perish. As disputas editoriais estão ligadas ao poder que os cientistas têm de permanecer no campo da pesquisa, regidos por regras claras para aumentar seu capital intelectual. Discutimos que os cientistas tendem a querer que seus artigos sejam publicados em periódicos de melhor impacto e melhor avaliados, buscando destaque no setor editorial científico. Vimos que tanto os cientistas quanto os periódicos podem ter consequências e problemas diante do movimento Publish or Perish, o que pode colocar em dúvida a qualidade do processo editorial, da revisão por pares e do próprio periódico. (shrink)

Scientists are rapidly mapping the chemical and physical pathways that constitute biological systems, making the complexity of processes such as inheritance, development, evolution, and even the origin of life increasingly tractable. Through genetics and neuroscience, biological understanding is now being extended deeply into the human sciences and has begun to transform our understanding of behavior, mind, culture, and values. The idea of a science-driven unity of knowledge has reemerged in several forms in both reductionist and nonreductionist frameworks. This volume examines (...) some of the extraordinary empirical discoveries that have caused a revival of this idea and presents theories from thinkers in a variety of disciplines, including E. O. Wilson, Eric Kandel, and Elaine Scarry. (shrink)

Grandes plumes de la science-fiction française ayant participé en 2017 à une anthologie de nouvelles devenue « culte », Au Bal des actifs, Demain le travail, Alain Damasio, Catherine Dufour et Norbert Merjagnan défendent tous trois les principes d’un revenu universel contre la précarisation généralisée du travail salarié. Aujourd’hui plus que jamais, tous trois revendiquent le caractère émancipateur qu’aurait sa mise en place. C’est le message de cette conversation, navigant sans cesse entre dystopie et utopie, et au final pas (...) si pessimiste que ça…. (shrink)

Lo studio dei Lineamenta del prossimo Sinodo, sulla nuova evangelizzazione per la trasmissione della fede cristiana, nella prospettiva della pastorale liturgica, può fornire elementi per un rinnovamento della prassi liturgica nelle comunità all’insegna del 50° anniversario della promulgazione della costituzione conciliare Sacrosanctum concilium (04/12/1963) e delle due recenti encicliche di Papa Benedetto XVI, Sacramentum caritatis (22/02/2007) e Verbum Domini (30/09/2010). In questa linea, l’articolo tenta di mostrare il ruolo pedagogico della liturgia, come risorsa ecclesiale per la trasmissione della fede, nella (...) cultura odierna, contribuendo a formare il volto e le azioni della comunità cristiana capaci di articolare in modo stretto le opere fondamentali della vita di fede: carità, testimonianza, celebrazione, ascolto e condivisione. (shrink)

Statistical Default Logic (SDL) is an expansion of classical (i.e., Reiter) default logic that allows us to model common inference patterns found in standard inferential statistics, e.g., hypothesis testing and the estimation of a population‘s mean, variance and proportions. This paper presents an embedding of an important subset of SDL theories, called literal statistical default theories, into stable model semantics. The embedding is designed to compute the signature set of literals that uniquely distinguishes each extension on a statistical default theory (...) at a pre-assigned error-bound probability. (shrink)

A concepção espinosista das relações entre o corpo e a mente é frequentemente apresentada como um modelo e uma referência na biologia e na neurobiologia contemporâneas, como testemunham as obras de Jean-Pierre Changeux, de Antonio Damasio ou de Henri Atlan. Apesar de suas profundas diferenças, esses pesquisadores expõem de maneira análoga três teses que fazem de Espinosa um precursor: o monismo psicofísico, a dualidade de expressão da unidade corpo/mente e a ausência de interação e de causalidade recíproca. Esse artigo (...) se interroga sobre as razões pelas quais Espinosa é convocado por esses pesquisadores para dar apoio às suas teorias e para abordar os diferentes usos da sua concepção das relações corpo/mente. Trata-se, portanto, de examinar a maneira pela qual eles apreendem sucessivamente essas três teses e de mensurar a pertinência de suas abordagens. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to introduce the debate on some relevant philosophical problems raised by Damasio‟s works. I will start with some critiques against Damasio‟s approach, such as his falling back into cartesianism or into some form of mentalism, his failing to consider the results of psychiatry and neurodynamics, the «mereological fallacy» of his representationalism. I will discuss other issues such as the interpretation of emotional processes, the problem of separation between feelings and emotions, the marginal (...) role of the sensory-motor system in his „sensory-centric‟ theory of emotions. Then I will focus on the problem of consciousness, the different forms of emergency of the self and the role played by emotions in the constitution of mental representations. I will finally analyze some philosophical aspects of the critical debate on Damasio‟s approach and I will briefly hint at the ethical implications raised by the debate. (shrink)

Antonio Damasio’s notion of “core consciousness” suffers from serious defects. It cannot account for phenomena such as dreaming or locked-in-syndrome, which a proper theory of consciousness should explain, because it requires that the organism’s self-representation be affected by the organism’s processing of an object. This requirement cannot be met in those two states. Moreover, in many states in which the organism does take into account the effect of, say, the perception of an external object, that account is unconscious. And (...) lastly, the close connection Damasio makes between consciousness and the self leads to a theoretically untenable division of the self: evolutionary considerations demand that even a primitive self (e.g., a proto-self) exhibit features of an “autobiographical self”. (shrink)

다마지오는 정신을 탈신체화된 것으로 본 “데카르트의 오류”를 지적하고 정신을 신체화된 것으로 본 “스피노자가 옳았다”고 선언한 바 있다. 내가 보기에 스피노자는 정신이 알 수 있는 것을 신체가 할 수 있는 것을 통해 설명한다는 점에서 분명 체화된 마음의 선구자이지만, 신체가 무엇인지에 대해서는 다마지오와 입장이 다르다. 다마지오는 신체를 항상성 유지를 지향하는 합목적적 통일체로 보는 반면, 스피노자는 각 신체를 실체가 아니라 단지 양태적으로만 구별되는 단위로, 즉 운동 방식에 따른 부분들의 잠정적 통일체로 보는 기계론적 관점에서 벗어나지 않는다. 이 글에서 나는 심신관계(정신은 신체에 대한 관념)와 감정(신체 (...) 상태의 변화), 코나투스(항상성 유지의 경향) 등 스피노자 사상에 대한 다마지오의 신경생물학적 해석의 요점을 짚어보고, 이렇게 해석된 스피노자의 이론이 실은 다마지오가 비판하는 데카르트의 이론과 더 가까우며, 이런 오해의 뿌리에 ‘인간 신체’에 대한 관점 차이가 있음을 보여준다. (shrink)

뇌과학자 안토니오 다마지오(Antonio Damasio, 1944 ～)는 스피노자의 신체론을 ‘신체화된 마음’으로 재구성하여 신경생물학적 해석을 한다. 뇌의 인지과정을 스피노자의 신체론에 근거하여 다루고 있는 그의 대표적인 책이 Looking For Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow And The Feeling Brain(2003)(『스피노자의 뇌』(2007)이다. 본 연구는 다마지오의 책 『스피노자의 뇌』에서 제시된 ‘신체화된 마음(embodied mind)’이론이 과연 스피노자를 올바르게 이해하는지를 비판적으로 검토한다. 연구자가 보기에, 다마지오의 스피노자 이해는 전체적으로는 크게 문제가 없어 보인다. 그러나 그의 전략적 방법에는 여전히 논란의 여지가 있다. 본 연구는 다마지오가 스피노자를 전체적으로 어떻게 이해하고 있는지를 살펴보고, 그의 전략적 모호성에 (...) 관해 평가할 것이다. (shrink)

The philosophy of mind is intimately connected with the philosophy of action. Therefore, concepts like free will, motivation, emotions (especially positive emotions), and also the ethical issues related to these concepts are of abiding interest. However, the concepts of consciousness and free will are usually discussed solely in linguistic, ideational and cognitive (i.e. "left brain") terms. Admittedly, consciousness requires language and the left-brain, but the aphasic right brain is equally conscious; however, what it "hears" are more likely to be music (...) and emotions. Joy can be as conscious as the conscious motivation produced by the left-brain reading a sign that says, "Danger mines!!" However, look in the index of a Western textbook of psychology, psychiatry or philosophy for positive emotions located in the limbic system. Notice how discussion of positive spiritual/emotional issues in consciousness and motivation are scrupulously ignored. For example, the popular notions of "love" being either Eros (raw, amoral instinct) or agape (noble, non-specific valuing of all other people) miss the motivational forest for the trees. Neither Eros (hypothalamic) nor agape (cortical) has a fraction of the power to relieve stress as attachment (limbic love), yet until the 1950s attachment was neither appreciated nor discussed by academic minds. This paper will point out that the prosocial, "spiritual" positive emotions like hope, faith, forgiveness, joy, compassion and gratitude are extremely important in the relief of stress and in regulation of the neuroendocrine system, protecting us against stress. The experimental work reviewed by Antonio Damasio and Barbara Fredrickson, and the clinical example of Alcoholics Anonymous, will be used to illustrate these points. (shrink)

This chapter presents emotion as a function of brain‐body interaction, as a vital part of a multi‐tiered phylogenetic set of neural mechanisms, evoked by both instinctive processes and learned appraisal systems, and argues to establish the primacy of emotion in relation to cognition. Primarily based on Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis, but also incorporating elements of Lazarus' appraisal theory, this paper presents a neuropedagogical model of emotion, the somatic appraisal model of affect. SAMA identifies quintessential components, facets, and functions of (...) affect necessary to provide a new domain, namely educational neuroscience, with a basis on which to build a dynamic model of affect serving to critique traditional cognitivist‐oriented curricula and instruction, and to inform an alternative: neuropedagogy. (shrink)

This chapter presents emotion as a function of brain-body interaction, as a vital part of a multi-tiered phylogenetic set of neural mechanisms, evoked by both instinctive processes and learned appraisal systems, and argues to establish the primacy of emotion in relation to cognition. Primarily based on Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis, but also incorporating elements of Lazarus' appraisal theory, this paper presents a neuropedagogical model of emotion, the somatic appraisal model of affect (SAMA). SAMA identifies quintessential components, facets, and functions (...) of affect necessary to provide a new domain, namely educational neuroscience, with a basis on which to build a dynamic model of affect serving to critique traditional cognitivist-oriented curricula and instruction, and to inform an alternative: neuropedagogy. (shrink)

This study investigated the performance of boys with psychopathic tendencies and comparison boys, aged 9 to 17 years, on two tasks believed to be sensitive to amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex func- tioning. Fifty-one boys were divided into two groups according to the Psychopathy Screening Device (PSD, P. J. Frick & R. D. Hare, in press) and presented with two tasks. The tasks were the gambling task (A. Bechara, A. R. Damasio, H. Damasio, & S. W. Anderson, 1994) and (...) the Intradimensional/ Extradimensional (ID/ED) shift task (R. Dias, T. W. Robbins, & A. C. Roberts, 1996). The boys with psychopathic tendencies showed impaired performance on the gambling task. However, there were no group differences on the ID/ED task either for response reversal or extradimensional set shifting. The implications of these results for models of psychopathy are discussed. (shrink)

Although risky decision-making has been posited to contribute to the maladaptive behavior of individuals with psychopathic tendencies, the performance of psychopathic groups on a common task of risky decision-making, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT; Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Anderson, 1994), has been equivocal. Different aspects of psychopathy (personality traits, antisocial deviance) and/or moderating variables may help to explain these inconsistent findings. In a sample of college students (N = 129, age 18–27), we examined the relationship between primary and (...) secondary psychopathic features and IGT performance. A measure of impulsivity was included to investigate its potential as a moderator. In a joint model including main effects and interactions between primary psychopathy, secondary psychopathy and impulsivity, only secondary psychopathy was significantly related to risky IGT performance, and this effect was not moderated by the other variables. This finding supports the growing literature suggesting that secondary psychopathy is a better predictor of decision-making problems than the primary psychopathic personality traits of lack of empathy and remorselessness. (shrink)

This article develops some of the many ways in which Leonardo and Descartes, throughout the prolific period of human valuation from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, seem to have approached and anchored their seminal contributions on the Cartesian body and metaphysical mind. While Leonardo masterfully developed an iterative thinking system of visual design applied to nature and artifacts, Descartes laid the groundwork for methodical critical thinking in dimensions that ironically ranged from dreams to the controlled narrative, from a deceptive (...) body to a rational man. In an interdisciplinary articulation of historical and neurobiological leanings, contemporary concepts of the cognitive emotional brain, led by Damasio as the basis for his conclusions about the "Descartes Error", as well as a torrent of growing evidence that supports high cognitive abilities in associative processes mediated by action/body lead us to a re-evaluation today of the legacies of Leonardo and Descartes, rescuing a scientific mind/brain/body process that underlies the human mastering of a universal technology of discourse that would revolutionize science. (shrink)

William Connolly has made important interventions in political theory over a period of four decades, and the past few years have seen a surge in recognition of his contribution. Those who are familiar with Connolly’s ideas will know the role that continental theorists—especially Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze—have played in the development of his thought, and more recently the uses he has made of advances in the natural sciences, for example in complexity theory, in the work of the (...) neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, and the Nobel Prize–winning chemist Ilya Prigogine. With reference to these innovations, a consensus has emerged in recent discussions, that there is a basic discontinuity between Connolly’s “postmodern” theory of pluralism and the “old” pluralism of the generation of post-war political scientists. By way of contrast, in this essay I outline the congruity between Connolly’s ideas and earlier iterations of pluralism. I trace the essential continuities between Connolly and the leading post-war writers, especially Robert Dahl, Charles Lindblom, David Truman, and David Easton, and also his proximity to a tradition of pluralism that flourished in the early part of the twentieth century and was exemplified in the work of Arthur Bentley. Indeed, I make the case that Connolly’s work is best understood as the resumption and enhancement of a distinct canon of pluralism in American political thought. (shrink)

A partire dalle ricerche storico-filosofiche di Emanuela Scribano, studiose e studiosi di fama internazionale si confrontano con i grandi temi metafisici, teologici, epistemologici, etico-politici ed estetici delpensiero moderno e contemporaneo: la teoria del soggetto, il problema mente-corpo, il punto di vista delle neuroscienze, la follia, la memoria, l'amore, il desiderio, l'inquietudine, il controllo delle passioni, il fatalismo, l'inganno divino, la creazione delle verità eterne, la profezia, gli angeli, l'ateismo virtuoso, la tolleranza, la verità rivelata, la critica dell'irrazionalismo, la musica, l'impegno (...) civile e lumanesimo cosmopolitico. Tra gli autori discussi: Leone Ebreo, Montaigne, Charron, Descartes, Clerselier, La Forge, Pascal, Spinoza, Bayle, Sturm, Locke, Penn, Smith, Mandeville, La Mettrie, Kant, Swedenborg, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Luporini e Damasio. (shrink)

Chapter 1 First Person Access to Mental States. Mind Science and Subjective Qualities -/- Abstract. The philosophy of mind as we know it today starts with Ryle. What defines and at the same time differentiates it from the previous tradition of study on mind is the persuasion that any rigorous approach to mental phenomena must conform to the criteria of scientificity applied by the natural sciences, i.e. its investigations and results must be intersubjectively and publicly controllable. In Ryle’s view, philosophy (...) of mind needs to adopt an antimentalist stance to achieve this aim. Antimentalism not only definitively rejects the idea that mind is a substance separated from the body, it also denies that mental phenomena radically differ from physical phenomena by virtue of several unique features. Most problematically, mental phenomena have a conscious character (mental states are related to specific qualitative feelings) and are accessible only to the first-person (only the subject knows directly what s/he is experiencing inside his/her mind). Ryle takes a strong stance on antimentalism going so far as to maintain that an approach to mind which aims to meet the criteria of scientificity set by the natural sciences must avoid any reference to internal, unobservable mental states. In his view (which is considered a specifically philosophical version of psychological behaviorism and also addresses questions put forward in psychological research), mental states can be redescribed in terms of behavioral dispositions. In this chapter, we address the historical roots of the antimentalist view and analyze its relation to the later tradition of research on mind. We show that, compared to the antimentalist stance, functionalism and cognitivism take a step back when they maintain that direct reference to mental states is necessary since mental states cause and therefore explain human behavior. This step backwards is often interpreted as a return to mentalism. However, this is only partially true. Indeed, we suggest that these later traditions retain one important element of Ryle’s antimentalism, i.e. the idea that mental states must be uniquely identified using external and publicly observable criteria, while excluding any reference to introspection and those qualitative dimensions of a mental state, which are accessible only to the first-person. According to the perspective we put forward, this epistemological stance has continued to influence contemporary research on mind and current philosophical and psychological theories which both tend to exclude the subjective qualities of human experience from their accounts of how the mind works. The issue we raise here is whether this is legitimate or whether subjective qualities do play a role with respect to the way our mind works. The conclusion of this chapter anticipates the argument the book makes in in favor of this latter position, starting from a particular angle, i.e. the problem of how we categorize concepts related to our internal states. -/- Chapter 2 The Misleading Aspects of the Mind/Computer Analogy. The Grounding Problem and the Thorny Issue of Propriosensitive Information -/- Abstract. After the crisis of behaviorism, cognitivism and functionalism became the predominant models in the field of psychology and of philosophy, respectively. Their success is mainly due to the new key they use for interpreting mental processes: the mind/computer analogy. On the basis of this analogy, mental operations are seen as cognitive processes based on computations, i.e. on manipulations of abstract symbols which are in turn understood as informational unities (representations). This chapter identifies two main problems with this model. The first is how these symbols can relate to and communicate with perception and thus allow us to identify and classify what we perceive through the senses. Here we limit ourselves to presenting this issue in relation to the classical symbol grounding problem originally put forward by Harnad on the basis of Searle’s Chinese room argument. An attempt to address the problem raised here will be made in chap. 3. The second point we discuss in relation to the mind/computer analogy concerns the idea of information it fosters. Indeed, following this analogy, information is something available in the external world which can be captured by the senses and transmitted to the central system without being influenced or modified by the procedures of transmission. This perspective does not take into account that – unlike computers – in living beings information is acquired by means of the body. As Ulric Neisser has already pointed out, the body is itself an informational source that provides us with additional sensory experience that influences (modifies or complements) the information extracted from the external world by the senses. To develop this line of analysis and to determine exactly what information is provided by the body and how this might influence cognition, we examine Sherrington’s and Gibson’s positions. Moving on from their views, we qualify bodily information in terms of ‘proprioception’. We use ‘proprioception’ in a broad sense to describe any kind of experience we have of our internal states (including postural information as well as sensations related to the general state of the body and its parts). Following Damasio’s and Craig’s studies, we further elaborate this position, arguing that living beings are equipped with an internal propriosensitive monitoring system which maps all the changes that constantly occur in our body and that give us perceptual (‘proprioceptive’ or propriosensitive) information about what happens inside us. Moreover, relying on Goldie’s and Ratcliffe’s view, we show that emotional information can also be considered as a form of ‘proprioception’ which contributes to determining everything we perceive. This analysis leads us to the second main thesis of this book: ‘proprioception’ is a form of internal perception and it is an essential component of the sensory information we can access and use for all cognitive purposes. -/- Chapter 3 Semantic Competence from the Inside: Conceptual Architecture and Composition -/- Abstract. Concepts are essential constituents of thought: they are the instruments we use to categorize our experience, i.e. to classify things and group them together in homogeneous sets. Here we define concepts as the internal mental information (representations) that allows us, among other things, to master words in natural language. By analyzing the way in which individuals master word meanings we explore a number of hypotheses regarding the nature of concepts. Following Diego Marconi’s research, we differentiate between two kind of abilities that underpin lexical competence – so-called ‘referential’ and ‘inferential competence’ – and we suggest that, in order to support these abilities, concepts must also include two corresponding kinds of information, i.e. inferential and referential information. We point out that the most widely used and acknowledged theories of concepts do not make this distinction, instead broadly characterizing the information used for categorization in terms of propositionally described feature lists. However, we show that while feature lists can explain inferential competence, they do not account for referential competence. To address the issue of referential competence we examine Ray Jackendoff’s hypothesis that to account for the possibility of linking perceptual and conceptual information we need to assume the existence of a (visual) representation that encodes the geometric and topological properties of objects and bridges the gap between the percept and the concept. Furthermore, we analyze the extension of this work by Jesse Prinz who introduced the notion of a proxytype, a perceptual representation of a class of objects that incorporates structural and parametric information related to their appearance. However, as we point out, proxytypes can only explain the relationship between perception and concepts with respect to instances that can be perceived through the senses and that belong to the same class by virtue of their physical similarity. We suggest that this notion be extended to include larger conceptual classes. To accomplish this, we further develop Mark Johnson, George Lakoff and Jean Mandler’s idea of a schematic image and argue that conceptual representations include a perceptual schema. Perceptual schemata are non-linguistic, structured experiential gestalts (patterns or maps) that make use of information taken from all sensory modalities, including body perception. They accomplish a quasi-conceptual function: they allow us to recognize and to classify different instances. In this work, we hypothesize that perceptual schemata are an essential component of concepts, but not identical to them. Instead, we suggest that concepts include both perceptual and propositional information with perceptual schemata providing the ‘perceptual core concept’ that grounds related propositional information. -/- Chapter 4 In the Beginning There Were Categories. The Bodily Origin of Prelinguistic Categorical Organization: The Example of Folkbiological Taxonomies -/- Abstract. Studies of categorization in psychology and the cognitive sciences have made use of the notions of ‘category’ and ‘concept’ without precisely defining what is meant by either; in fact, often these terms have been used as synonyms, making it difficult to address specific issues related to conceptual development. This chapter begins by discussing the definitions of, as well as the distinctions between, ‘categories’ and ‘concepts’ in the classical philosophical tradition (Aristotle, Kant and Husserl). We introduce our view of categories with reference to Husserl. Categorization is defined as the way in which our experience is originally (pre-linguistically) organized in a passive and fully unconscious manner on the basis of universal structuring principles. Conceptualization is explained as a later process in which the earlier categorical macro-classes are further subdivided into more specific and detailed sets; this later process also relies on linguistic learning and exposure to culture. On the basis of Ray Jackendoff, Jean Mandler, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s work, we hypothesize that categorization is a two-step process that begins with the formation of homogeneous sets of entities partitioned into regions that describe the ontological boundaries of the objects that humans perceive (categories) and continues at a later stage with the development of more specific classifications (concepts). In this chapter, we mainly address three related issues: Why should we assume that there is categorical organization which precedes the development of a conceptual system? How do categories and concepts relate to each other? Shall we hypothesize that categories are innate or that they are formed before concepts on the basis of information and organizational structure available at a very early developmental stage? We show that categorical partitions are necessary for categorization and, following Mandler, that the general categories we form at an early age do not match our adult superordinate concepts. As for the third issue, we argue that there might be no need to assume that categories are innately present in the human mind, since their formation can be explained – at least in certain cases – by basic mechanisms that work on body (propriosensitive) information. This hypothesis will not be discussed in general, but in relation to a particularly relevant example of categorical partition, i.e. the folk-biological dichotomy between ANIMATE/INANIMATE. This is compared with other dichotomies that derive from it, but are not directly categorical such as LIVING/NON-LIVING and BIOLOGICAL/NON-BIOLOGICAL. -/- Chapter 5 Internal States: From Headache to Anger. Conceptualization and Semantic Mastery -/- Abstract. Here we ask if we can also apply the distinction between referential and inferential competence we introduced in Chapter 3 to words that do not refer to things that are perceived using the external senses, especially to words/concepts that denote bodily experiences (such as pain, thirst, hunger, etc.) or emotions. We introduce and discuss the hypothesis that – even though such words/concepts do not refer to intersubjectively identifiable entities in the external world – they do have a kind of referent that can be accessed via direct perception, more specifically ‘proprioception’, as we have defined it in terms of all propriosensitive information we can consciously access. In the first part of the chapter, we specifically consider terms denoting bodily experiences such as ‘pain’ or ‘hunger’ and argue that their referents are identified and classified from a first-personal point of view on the basis of four main characteristics: their specific intensity, their localization in the body, their co-occurrence with other signals and above all their specific qualitative sensations. Emotions are addressed in the second part of the chapter. We suggest that there is a continuity between bodily experiences and emotions. In particular, we argue for a perceptual theory of emotions in line with that proposed by James and Lange at the end of the 19th century and developed more recently by authors such as Damasio (see also chap. 2§5, §6). The hypothesis we put forward is that the referential information that supports the categorization of emotions and therefore also our mastery of terms referring to emotions consists in the perception (i.e. the ‘proprioception’) of those bodily states and changes in bodily states which constitute our emotional experience. In the context of this discussion we examine some objections to this line of reasoning that arise from a cognitivist perspective and following authors such as Oatley, Johnson-Laird and Frijda, we distinguish between basic emotions that can be identified and classified solely on the basis on how they feel and complex emotions whose identification and classification additionally depends on cognitive factors. To describe how emotions are identified and classified on the basis of how they feel, we rely on Marcel and Lambie’s distinction between an ‘emotion state’ and an ‘emotion experience’. Both notions indicate kinds of feelings that we consciously experience. However, they describe first-order and second order emotion awareness respectively. The emotion state is the feeling we have of the bodily states and changes that occur when we are experiencing an emotion, while the emotion experience is the fully developed and integrated emotion we both experience and are, with reflection, aware of experiencing. On the basis of this differentiation, we also show that the same characteristics that aid in the identification and classification of bodily experiences (specific qualitative sensations; somatic localization; specific intensity; presence/absence of specific concomitant sensations) can also be used for the identification and classification of emotions – at least basic emotions. In the last two sections of the chapter we present some clinical evidence on the semantic competence of people who suffer from Alexithymia and Autism Spectrum Disorder which supports the conclusions of our preceding analyses. -/- Chapter 6 The ‘Proprioceptive’ Component of Abstract Concepts -/- Abstract. In this chapter, we address the issue of whether the mastery of abstract words requires only inferential knowledge and thus, if the concepts that support the mastery of abstract words include only linguistic information. We start by differentiating the notions of ‘abstract’ and ‘general’ which are often erroneously confused. We then identify a strict definition of abstract, as contrasted with ‘concrete’, that applies to words or concepts whose referent cannot be experienced by the senses. We argue that abstract words/concepts would be better described as theoretical, because they are usually conceived as structured sets of inferential knowledge expressed linguistically; that is, as small theories. Pointing out parallels with Carnap’s analysis of this issue in philosophy of science, we hypothesize that words/concepts denoting non-observable entities are not all ‘equally theoretical’, because their link to sensory experience can be stronger or weaker. We revive the distinction, inspired by Quine, between theoretical and intertheoretical concepts/words. This distinction relies on the fact that the former – unlike the latter – retains a strong, although indirect, connection with perception. In Quine’s discussion, perception is understood uniquely in terms of observability, i.e. of external sensory experience. Here we argue, however, that bodily, ‘proprioceptive’ (i.e. propriosensitive) experience can also serve to referentially ground theoretical (i.e. abstract) concepts/words. We frame this issue using the example of the theoretical concept ‘freedom’ and Lakoff’s hypothesis that this concept is developed on the basis of bodily information. We contrast this with the example of ‘democracy’ which more closely resembles an intertheoretical concept/word. Furthermore, we show that one of the classical views put forward in psycholinguistic research to explain how abstract concepts are mentally represented – i.e. Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory – points in the same direction as our analysis. The same is true of Barsalou’s work suggesting that we use internal information to understand at least some abstract words. To sustain this position, we put forward two lines of evidence: the first comes from psycholinguistic studies while the second examines deficits of semantic competence exhibited by people with Autism Spectrum Disorder. On the basis of our analysis, we put forward a classification that distinguishes between different kinds of concreteness and different degrees of abstraction: concepts/words referring to body experiences and basic emotions are described as analogous to concrete concepts/words because they are grounded in perceptual (i.e. propriosensitive) experience, while abstract concepts/words are considered more or less abstract depending on whether they are intratheoretical (and rely entirely on inferential information) or theoretical (and are partially grounded in perceptual – or more often in propriosensitive perceptual – information). In the last section of the chapter we consider two scales that have been used in psycholinguistic research to measure the degree of concreteness vs. abstractness of words and we show that – used conjointly – they can provide a measure of the internal vs. external grounding of specific words. (shrink)

No two individuals with the autism diagnosis are ever the same—yet many practitioners and parents can recognize signs of ASD very rapidly with the naked eye. What, then, is this phenotype of autism that shows itself across such distinct clinical presentations and heterogeneous developments? The “signs” seem notoriously slippery and resistant to the behavioral threshold categories that make up current assessment tools. Part of the problem is that cognitive and behavioral “abilities” typically are theorized as high-level disembodied and modular functions—that (...) are assessed discretely (impaired, normal, enhanced) to define a spectral syndrome. Even as biology reminds us that organic developing bodies are not made up of independent switches, we remain often seduced by the simplicity of mechanistic and cognitive models. Developmental disorders such as autism have accordingly been theorized as due to different modular dysfunctions—typically of cortical origin, i.e., failures of “theory of mind” (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985), of the “mirror neuron system” (Ramachandran and Oberman, 2006), of “weak central coherence” (Happe and Frith, 2006) or of the balance of “empathizing” and “systemizing” (Baron-Cohen, 2009), just to list a few. -/- The broad array of autonomic (Ming et al., 2005; Cheshire, 2012) and sensorimotor (Damasio and Maurer, 1978; Maurer and Damasio, 1982; Donnellan and Leary, 1995; Leary and Hill, 1996; Donnellan and Leary, 2012; Donnellan et al., 2012) differences experienced and reported by people with autism have by such theories typically been sidelined as “co-morbidities,” possibly sharing genetic causes, but rendered as incidental and decisively behaviorally irrelevant symptoms—surely disconnected from cognition. But what if the development of cortically based mental processes and autonomous control relies on the complexities and proper function of the peripheral nervous systems? Through such an “embodied” lens the heterogeneous symptoms of autism invites new interpretations. We propose here that many behavioral-level findings can be re-defined as downstream effects of how developing nervous systems attempt to cope and adapt to the challenges of having various noisy, unpredictable, and unreliable peripheral inputs. (shrink)

Damasio, an eminent neuroscientist explores the science of human emotion and what the great Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza can teach of how and why we feel. Damasio shows how joy and sorrow, those most defining of human feelings, are in fact the cornerstones of our survival and culture.

Linking the process of rational decision making to emotions, an award-winning scientist who has done extensive research with brain-damaged patients notes the dependence of thought processes on feelings and the body's survival-oriented regulators. 50,000 first printing.

Introduction Basic Emotion Theory proper (BET) has only recently begun to make an appearance in musical research (see Juslin, 1998; 2013a&b). However, much theory and research in music psychology has been driven by a more general assumption that musical emotions should be investigated in terms of discrete ad-hoc categories associated with the ways specific neural mechanisms respond to musical stimuli (see Schiavio et al., 2016). This has been problematized, however, by studies that show that the physiological changes associated with musical (...) emotions do not always align clearly with those exhibited in association with everyday emotion categories (Krumhansl, 1997, p. 351; Scherer & Zentner, 2001). Such concerns have led some scholars to posit that musical emotions may be somehow different (or perhaps ‘impoverished’) versions of real emotions (Sloboda, 2000). In response to this, other researchers (e.g., Scherer & Couthino, 2014) have developed models that do away with the notion of basic emotions altogether, preferring instead to describe emotional reactions to music in terms of complex information processing components that combine in various ways to produce relevant outputs (see also Huron, 2006). Still others (Krueger, 2013; Schiavio et al., 2016; van der Schyff, 2013; see also Koelsch, 2013) have suggested that reducing musical experience to a stimulus-response framework - where emotions are thought to be caused in listeners by pre-given stimuli in the environment - may play down the active and creative role living embodied agents play in musical experience.With this in mind, we offer below a brief critique of BET, suggesting that it may not in fact provide the best way forward for research in musical emotions. We then outline an alternative perspective, drawing on research that employs dynamical systems theory (DST) (Colombetti, 2014; Lewis & Granic, 2000). To conclude, we offer some preliminary suggestions for how this approach might be applied in musical contexts. Before we begin, it should be noted that musical research that draws on the idea of ‘basic emotions’ has indeed produced important insights. Such studies are carried out in controlled settings that adhere to high scientific research standards - they offer important sources of data that will have to be taken into consideration by any alternative theoretical orientation. To be clear, then, our aim is not to debunk or discredit the work of researchers endorsing BET. Rather, our goal is simply to outline another perspective that could make important contributions to the dialogue. Basic emotions In folk psychology, the notion of ‘basic emotions’ involves the assumption that emotions come in a group of pre-defined categories such as happy, sad, angry and so on. This idea has been formalized by Basic Emotion Theory (BET) proper, which claims the existence of a small group of ‘discrete’ basic emotions that evolved in response to the challenges our ancestors faced in their everyday life (Ekman, 1980). It is argued that each basic emotion is defined by a dedicated (innate and distinct) neural network, which controls the ‘affect programs’ that give rise to them (Tomkins, 1962, 1963; see also Colombetti, 2014). Here the term ‘affect programs’ refers to the mechanisms that produce “the patterns for these complex organized responses, and which when set off directs their occurrence” (Ekman, 1980a p., 82). Such programs and the responses they trigger (i.e., basic emotions) are thought to be culturally universal and are thus understood to function as “auto appraisals” selected by evolution (Ekman, 1999; Ekman, 2003; Ekman & Friesen, 1971, 1986). It has also been suggested that because of the supposed categorical fixity of these basic emotions, they might form the ‘building blocks’ from which more complex emotions emerge (Prinz, 2004a&b).Some critics have raised the question of how, precisely, alleged basic emotions relate to non-basic ones (Ortony & Turner, 1990). And there is an ongoing debate between those who argue that basic and non-basic emotions are continuous (Clark, 2010; Plutchick, 2001; Prinz, 2004a&b), and those who insist that the two involve distinct processes and should thus be studied separately (Damasio, 1994; LeDoux, 1996). Other authors question BET’s lack of context sensitivity (Barrett, 2006; Russell, 2003): emotions can be expressed and experienced in various ways and their meanings shift depending on the situation. Still others have drawn attention to the BET methodology, which often employs a forced choice approach (generally between facial expressions and a given scenario). Indeed, research has shown that quite different responses may be given when participants are not constrained by emotional labelling (Russell, 1994). It has also been pointed out that the close correlations that are expected to occur between specific brain areas, autonomic nervous system activity, and the putative affect programs associated with basic emotions are often less consistent than hypothesized (Barrett, 2006). While advocates of BET have responded to such criticisms in various ways (e.g., Ekman & Cordaro, 2011), another more general problem remains concerning the rather arbitrary way basic emotion categories were originally introduced. To be clear, all of this does not negate the observation that emotional episodes involve recurring psycho-physical patterns of behavior that are indeed nameable, and that may bear striking similarities across individuals and groups. Rather, it suggests that we need to develop new approaches for studying such phenomena.Emotions as dynamic and emergentResearch based on DST suggests that emotional episodes may not be reducible to pre-given response mechanisms in the brain, but rather emerge through developmental processes spanning an integrated body-brain-environment network (Freeman, 2000; Lewis, 2000; 2005). Colombetti (2014, pp. 57-82) suggests three mutually informing levels of inquiry that may help us better understand how this is so. The first of these involves the development of the muscular linkages and coordinative structures associated with emotional expression (e.g., facial, vocal, limb, and hand movement). And indeed, research shows that the appearance of recurrent and meaningful patterns of expressive behavior in infants is not best understood wholly in terms of predetermined (i.e., genetic) developmental programs, but rather as emergent properties of the dynamic interaction of a range of environmental and bodily factors (Camras & Witherington, 2005; Fogel & Thelen, 1987). The second level draws on existing work in affective neuroscience that highlights the plasticity and self-organizing nature of neural structures (see Freeman, 1999; 2000). Here, emotional episodes are explored as patterns of convergence (basins of attraction) in the neural trajectories of an agent that may both stabilize and transform due to contingent shifts in the global constraints of the brain-body-world system. The third level focusses on environmental concerns, exploring how agents enact meaningful emotional engagements (i.e., recurrent patterns of relational behavior) with the things and people they interact with, and the situations they live through (Hsu & Fogel, 2003; Laible & Thompson, 2000). From this perspective, emotional episodes are not limited to the skull or the skin of the organism. There is, rather, a strong sense in which they ‘extend’ (Krueger, 2014; Krueger & Szanto, 2016; Slaby, 2014) into environments where agents co-enact meaningful worlds through forms of participatory sense-making (such as music; see Schiavio & De Jaegher, 2017). In brief, the DST approach explores the active and self-organizing nature of emotional experience as it develops across bodily, neural, and ecological dimensions, suggesting that while emotional episodes can indeed be unique to an individual organism, they may also emerge in ways that are shared between agents with similar biological/social needs and histories of interaction with the environment. Exploring the dynamics of musical emotionsIt should be noted that work in music cognition has already begun to develop DST approaches. For example, researchers (e.g., Large & Jones, 1999) have investigated how the neural dynamics associated with musical experience actively resonate and self-organize with those of the body and the environment in a recursive or ‘circular’ way. However, such ‘dynamic attending’ to music has been explored mostly in the context of rhythmic entrainment and pitch perception (e.g., Large et al., 2016; see also McGrath & Kelly, 1986). We suggest that future research could develop the emotional implications of this more fully. Indeed, this would contribute to a larger body of inter-disciplinary work that explores the creative, social, embodied, ecological, and developmental aspects of musical experience (DeNora, 2000; Leman, 2007; van der Schyff, 2015). For example, it has been shown that even in contexts that appear to be ‘passive’ (e.g., listening in a concert hall) people play active roles in shaping their engagements with musical environments (Clarke, 2005; Krueger, 2014) - e.g., by developing ‘metaphorical’, cross-modal, and ‘narrative’ relationships between various temporal, spatial, textural, bodily, social, ecological, and affective dimensions (see Johnson, 2005). Here, DST could be useful for exploring how such experiences are enacted, especially when integrated with phenomenological descriptions. This orientation could also be developed in contexts involving the production of music (performance, rehearsal, instrumental practice, and so on). Indeed, because musical performance clearly involves the integration of the three levels of description discussed above (bodily/neural/environmental), DST might be used to investigate and describe situations where two or more individuals participate in realizing the same musical event. This could involve the use of electrophysiological measurements in association with techniques such as functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which are increasingly adopted in the context of social cognition (Osaka et al., 2015; Pu et al., 2016). As fNIRS allows for the measurement of hemodynamic activities in participatory settings it could be particularly useful for exploring music-related activities in terms of interpersonal emotional dynamics. These could be analyzed in conjunction with audio and video recordings (to help capture sonic, bodily, and other environmental aspects); as well as through interviews with the participants to better understand how various forms of musically adaptive behavior might initiate (and be driven by) emotional episodes that are both recurrent and new, and how such episodes are experienced by the participants (e.g., as shared and/or as personal). Examples of similar data collection methods come from work by Walton and colleagues (2014; 2015) who have used DST to study perceptions of creativity in interacting musical improvisers (see also Borgo, 2005; Laroche & Kaddouch, 2015).In all, we suggest that a DST approach may better capture the (inter)active ways people enact emotional relationships with music, and how such experiences develop diachronically. That is, it may help us better understand how musical emotions emerge and transform developmentally in the context of people’s lives - where stable or recurrent patterns of behavior may come to be experienced in similar ways between embodied agents, and thus be subject to ‘loose’ labelling without being wholly pre-determined, fixed, or simply reducible to discrete categories. Likewise, it may also provide insights into the more idiosyncratic ways we engage emotionally with music – e.g., the conscious ways individuals seek out new approaches to music making as a means of creative expression, or as a way of enacting meaningful but highly personal embodied-emotional relationships (aesthetic, social, therapeutic) with the environments they inhabit (DeNora, 2000). ConclusionWhile BET-based approaches will continue to provide many useful insights in more controlled environments, we suggest that the DST perspective may better capture the manifold ways emotional engagement with music unfolds in the complex, embodied, and socially interactive contexts that characterize lived experience. Because this approach sees emotions as emergent and enacted, and not first in terms of pre-given categories or ‘affect programs’, it arguably sidesteps the problematic issue introduced above regarding whether musical emotions correspond with ‘basic’, ‘real’, or ‘everyday’ emotions. In line with this, it would be very interesting to see how the results of musical research that assume a basic emotion approach might be reinterpreted from a DST perspective. Additionally, DST might also shed light on important aspects of musical development in early childhood. Lastly, because DST-based research sees emotionality as inextricable from our embodied and social existence, it could have more general implications for areas such as music education and therapy - perhaps providing ways for teachers, students, therapists, and patients to better understand and discuss their engagements with music and its meaning for their lives. (shrink)

Spinoza speculated on how ethics could emerge from biology and psychology rather than disrupt them and recent evidence suggests he might have gotten it right. His radical deconstruction and reconstruction of ethics is supported by a number of avenues of research in the cognitive and neurosciences. This paper gathers together and presents a composite picture of recent research that supports Spinoza’s theory of the emotions and of the natural origins of ethics. It enumerates twelve naturalist claims of Spinoza that now (...) seem to be supported by substantial evidence from the neurosciences and recent cognitive science. I focus on the evidence provided by Lakoff and Johnson in their summary of recent cognitive science in Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (1999); by Antonio Damasio in his assessment of the state of affective neuroscience in Descartes’ Error (1994) and in The Feeling of What Happens (1999) (with passing references to his recent Looking for Spinoza (2003); and by Giacomo Rizzolatti, Vittorio Gallese and their colleagues in the neural basis of emotional contagion and resonance, i.e., the neural basis of primitive sociality and intersubjectivity, that bear out Spinoza’s account of social psychology as rooted in the mechanism he called attention to and identified as affective imitation. (shrink)

The publication of this book is an event in the making. All over the world scientists, psychologists, and philosophers are waiting to read Antonio Damasio's new theory of the nature of consciousness and the construction of the self. A renowned and revered scientist and clinician, Damasio has spent decades following amnesiacs down hospital corridors, waiting for comatose patients to awaken, and devising ingenious research using PET scans to piece together the great puzzle of consciousness. In his bestselling Descartes' (...) Error, Damasio revealed the critical importance of emotion in the making of reason. Building on this foundation, he now shows how consciousness is created. Consciousness is the feeling of what happens-our mind noticing the body's reaction to the world and responding to that experience. Without our bodies there can be no consciousness, which is at heart a mechanism for survival that engages body, emotion, and mind in the glorious spiral of human life. A hymn to the possibilities of human existence, a magnificent work of ingenious science, a gorgeously written book, The Feeling of What Happens is already being hailed as a classic. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to offer a critical analysis of the political projections that Antonio Damasio has put forward of his specific conception of homeostasis. By starting from a complex conception of homeostasis, one that focuses not only on the maintenance of life but also on flourishing, Damasio argues that certain cultures are contrary to the homeostatic imperative. I will suggest that, even if we adopt the complex interpretation of homeostasis (rather than the deflated one that (...) is usual in most evolutionary approaches), resorting to the concept of homeostasis would lead to a condemnation of modern capitalist societies, not from an ethical or political point of view, but from a strictly evolutionary one (i.e., a point of view that takes into consideration the preservation of the conditions under which our species can survive in the future). (shrink)

La vida entera de muchos ensayistas transcurre sin dar jamás con un tema. Este ensayo no sólo se topa con un tema, sino que incluso se da el lujo de aprovecharlo. El tema es la felicidad. Sin embargo, La herida de Spinoza es un libro de ?losofía, no de autoayuda. Parte de algunas conclusiones recientes de la neurología, en particular de las investigaciones de Antonio Damasio acerca de la impertinencia de la secular división entre mente y cuerpo. El propio (...) Damasio vincula sus investigaciones con las ideas que Spinoza expuso en su Ética. Para Damasio, la tranquila aceptación de la muerte, una de las señas de identidad de la ética de Spinoza –de hecho, la «herida» de Spinoza–, resulta «irritante». Ese comentario de Damasio parece inocuo, pero para Vicente Serrano no lo es, sino que apunta a una especie de «desajuste», a una extraña incomprensión de la diferencia última de la ética spinozista. A partir de ahí el autor no se propone criticar solamente esa y otras lecturas de Spinoza, sino que plantea además una amplia crítica a la modernidad, y también a la posmodernidad. La herida de Spinoza se convierte entonces en una revisión de la historia entera de la ?losofía en esa zona en que ética y metafísica (u ontología) se superponen. Aunque el proyecto parece apabullante, el autor se asegura de estar bien equipado. Por una parte suprime el aparato académico, lo que le permite ser más breve y directo, y por otra echa mano de una erudición notable y, sobre todo, de una capacidad absolutamente inusual de explicación. Si hubiera que buscar parangones a esa capacidad, no quedaría más remedio que acudir a Rüdiger Safranski. El autor, sin embargo, no hace biografías, ni siquiera historia de la ?losofía como tal, sino que intenta ?losofar de la mano de los más grandes pensadores de la historia. El ensayo se completa con la inclusión de una pieza maestra: los afectos. Los afectos serían la respuesta posible de la ?losofía al problema de la biopolítica. La progresión de la modernidad no sólo implica la desaparición de la naturaleza, sino la sustitución absoluta de los afectos por la voluntad (de voluntad). Si la vuelta a la naturaleza es imposible, e incluso indeseable –dado que la naturaleza no fue nunca más que una metáfora–, Serrano se inspira en Foucault para proponer una «vuelta» a los afectos como la pieza fundamental que cierra la reflexión sobre el poder. «Un ensayo en el sentido más ágil del término, obra a mitad de camino entre lo reflexivo y lo literario… Bien pensado y bien escrito, muchísimo más de lo que se ha vuelto habitual en nosotros» (Gabriel Albiac, Leer). «La cuestión de fondo teórica –a qué responde la religión y qué problemas de comprensión existencial atiende o atendía– es algo mucho más complejo y creo que más apasionante. Un buen tratamiento filosófico de la cuestión es el que ofrece Vicente Serrano en La herida de Spinoza, reciente ganador del Premio Anagrama de Ensayo… Serrano explora las consecuencias posmodernas del abandono de las religiones: un tema más sugestivo que la refutación de las iglesias...» (Fernando Savater, El País). «Iniciado como un arroyo para abrirse en un delta que abarca toda la modernidad filosófica, la obra de Serrano analiza, sin pedantería ni falsas oscuridades, las inflexiones que han tenido los conceptos de religión, deseo, naturaleza, esperanza, progreso, poder y felicidad» (Juan Malpartida, ABC). «Entre quienes lo lean sumará cientos de fascinados. Ojalá miles» (Félix Soria, La Voz de Galicia). «La vida entera de muchos ensayistas transcurre sin dar jamás con un tema. Este ensayo no sólo se topa con un tema, sino que incluso se da el lujo de aprovecharlo. El tema es la felicidad… Plantea una amplia crítica a la modernidad, y también a la posmodernidad. La herida de Spinoza se convierte entonces en una revisión de la historia entera de la filosofía en esa zona en que ética y metafísica (u ontología) se superponen» (Diario de León). (shrink)

The second part of the book is dedicated to the philosophy of human affectivity. It further evolves the idea that affectivity plays a fundamental role in the way we exist as subjective, human beings. The arguments carved out in this part of the book build the second pillar in the development of an account of self-feeling. In order to explore what role affectivity may play in self-consciousness this chapter takes a closer look at contemporary philosophy of human affectivity, which has (...) reached an enormous level of detail and complexity today. However, it is mainly concerned with short-term, object-oriented emotions. The reader is introduced to the field, especially to the controversy between feeling vs. cognitive theories of emotions. Moreover, this chapter starts an exploration of more fundamental levels of human affectivity, by using examples from neuroscience (Damasio) and phenomenology (e.g. Voigtländer, Scheler, Waldenfels, Henry). (shrink)

Here we ask if we can also apply the distinction between referential and inferential competence we introduced in Chap. 3 to words that do not refer to things that are perceived using the external senses, especially to words/concepts that denote bodily experiences (such as pain, thirst, hunger, etc.) or emotions. We introduce and discuss the hypothesis that—even though such words/concepts do not refer to intersubjectively identifiable entities in the external world—they do have a kind of referent that can be accessed (...) via direct perception, more specifically ‘proprioception’, as we have defined it in terms of all propriosensitive information we can consciously access. In the first part of the chapter, we specifically consider terms denoting bodily experiences such as ‘pain’ or ‘hunger’ and argue that their referents are identified and classified from a first-personal point of view on the basis of four main characteristics: their specific intensity, their localization in the body, their co-occurrence with other signals and above all their specific qualitative sensations. Emotions are addressed in the second part of the chapter. We suggest that there is a continuity between bodily experiences and emotions. In particular, we argue for a perceptual theory of emotions in line with that proposed by James and Lange at the end of the 19th century and developed more recently by authors such as Damasio (see also Chap. 2, Sects. 5 and 6). The hypothesis we put forward is that the referential information that supports the categorization of emotions and therefore also our mastery of terms referring to emotions consists in the perception (i.e. the ‘proprioception’) of those bodily states and changes in bodily states which constitute our emotional experience. In the context of this discussion we examine some objections to this line of reasoning that arise from a cognitivist perspective and following authors such as Oatley, Johnson-Laird and Frijda, we distinguish between basic emotions that can be identified and classified solely on the basis on how they feel and complex emotions whose identification and classification additionally depends on cognitive factors. To describe how emotions are identified and classified on the basis of how they feel, we rely on Marcel and Lambie’s distinction between an ‘emotion state’ and an ‘emotion experience’. Both notions indicate kinds of feelings that we consciously experience. However, they describe first-order and second order emotion awareness respectively. The emotion state is the feeling we have of the bodily states and changes that occur when we are experiencing an emotion, while the emotion experience is the fully developed and integrated emotion we both experience and are, with reflection, aware of experiencing. On the basis of this differentiation, we also show that the same characteristics that aid in the identification and classification of bodily experiences (specific qualitative sensations; somatic localization; specific intensity; presence/absence of specific concomitant sensations) can also be used for the identification and classification of emotions—at least basic emotions. In the last two sections of the chapter we present some clinical evidence on the semantic competence of people who suffer from Alexithymia and Autism Spectrum Disorder which supports the conclusions of our preceding analyses. (shrink)

By defining consciousness as nothingness or simply as “nothing,” Sartre plays with several meanings of these terms: negativity and negation, distance, indetermination, irreducibility. The nothingness of consciousness takes on an ontological meaning: it is a “tearing away” from being-in-itself, a transcendence understood as the capacity to transcend what is, while retaining an epistemological meaning: it is what cannot be positively determined as “something” or as a property of being. Still, on the epistemological level as well as on the ontological level, (...) it is indeed from “something,” from physical and social being, that the nothingness of consciousness draws its existence and its capacities. In my article, I examine different meanings that can be given to the “nothing” of consciousness in the light of the thought of Sartre himself, emphasizing the difference between two major meanings of negation: as opposition and as indetermination. Then I confront Sartre’s concept of consciousness with more recent considerations of different inspiration, notably from researchers like Chalmers, Damasio, Gallagher, and Zahavi. My thesis is that the Sartrean concept, semi-transcendental and semi-naturalist, does admit the search for a naturalist explanation of consciousness, but assigns its limit precisely through the concept of nothingness. En définissant la conscience comme néant, néantisation, ou simplement comme un « rien », Sartre joue avec plusieurs acceptions de ces termes : négativité et négation, distance, indētefmination, irréductibilité... Le néant de la conscience prend un sens ontologique : c’est un « arrachement » à l’être-en-soi, une transcendance entendue comme capacité de transcender ce qui est, tout en gardant un sens épistémologique : c’est ce qui ne peut pas être déterminé de manière positive comme « quelque chose » ou comme une propriété d’être. D’autre part, sur le plan épistémologique comme sur le plan ontologique, c’est bien de « quelque chore », de l’être physique et social, que le néant de la conscience tire son existence et ses capacités. Dans mon article, j’examine différents sens qu’on peut donner au « rien » de la conscience à la lumière de la pensée de Sartre lui-même, en mettant l’accent sur la différence entre deux sens majeurs de la négation : comme opposition et comme indétermination. Ensuite je confronte le concept sartrien de la conscience avec les considérations plus récentes et d’inspiration différente, notamment chez les chercheurs comme Chalmers, Damasio, Gallagher et Zahavi. Ma thèse est que le concept sartrien, semi-transcendantal et semi-naturaliste, admet bien la recherche d’une explication naturaliste de la conscience, mais lui assigne la limite précisément par le concept du néant. (shrink)

From one of the world's leading neuroscientists--a succinct, illuminating, wholly engaging investigation of the phenomenon of consciousness. In recent decades, many philosophers and cognitive scientists have declared the question of consciousness unsolvable, but Antonio Damasio is convinced that recent findings in neurobiology, psychology, and AI have given us the necessary tools to solve its mystery. Now, he not only elucidates its myriad aspects, but presents his analysis and insights in a way that is faithful to our own intuitive sense (...) of the experience of consciousness. In the 45 brief chapters of the book, he helps us understand the relation between consciousness and mind; why being conscious is not the same as either being awake or sensing; the essential role of feeling; and the biological brain and development of consciousness. He synthesizes the recent findings of various sciences with the outlook of philosophy, and, most significantly, presents his original research which has transformed our understanding of the brain and human behavior. Here is an indispensable guide to understanding consciousness, the fundamental human capacity for informing--and transforming--our experience of the world around us and our perception of our place in it. (shrink)

Embodied approaches to language propose that higher order mental processes, such as meaning construction, rely on the sensorimotor neural devices of our brain (Barsalou in Behav Brain Sci 22:577–660, 1999; Tettamanti et al. in J Cog Neurosci 17:273–281, 2005; Pulvermüller in Symbols and embodiment: debates on meaning and cognition. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 85–116, 2008). According to the Embodied Semantics paradigm, linguistic concepts are represented in the brain within partially overlapping neural substrates recruited to enact and experience the action (...) a word refers to (Kemmerer in Lang Cogn 7(3):450–475, 2015). Mirror neurons are a class of cells capable of discharging congruently both when a person executes an action and when s/he perceives the same action performed by another individual. Recent research has demonstrated the involvement of mirror neurons in motor language processing: perceiving a word such as “to grasp” activates the same brain motor areas triggered as if we were enacting the same action (Buccino et al. in Cogn Brain Res 24:355–363, 2005; Kemmerer & Castillo in Brain and Language 112:54-76, 2010). The debate is open on whether similar somatotopic mirror neuron activations happen also in experiments involving abstract motor language comprehension, with scholars debating this point and trying to ascertain if congruent motor areas are triggered both when the motor component of a sentence is concrete (e.g. “to kick the ball”), and when it is abstract (e.g. “to kick the bucket”, Aziz-Zadeh and Damasio in J Physiol 102:35–39, 2008; Cacciari et al. in Brain Lang 119:149–157, 2011). In this chapter I offer a critical overview of mirror neurons involvement in concrete and abstract motion meaning construction and discuss some of the issues raised against the hypothesis that language comprehension makes use of the mirror neuron system. I also stress the importance that further research be conducted which takes into due account linguistic relativity and second language competence. (shrink)

Pt. 1. Les nouvelles passions de l'âme -- Des passions libérées -- L'amour -- La sexualité -- Des passions récemment apparues -- La consommation -- Le travail -- Le sortilège de la finance -- Des passions qui disparaissent ici, s'affirment là, ou se transmutent -- Le sentiment religieux -- L'attachement à la nation -- L'honneur -- L'humilité -- Des états dont le sens nous reste caché le plus souvent -- Le déni -- L'ennui -- La présence -- Pt. 2. Le (...) problème du corps et de l'esprit aujourd'hui -- L'erreur de Damasio -- L'autre erreur des neurosciences -- Le mirage d'une science prédictive de la pensée -- La question de la diversité des humains -- La descendance de Darwin -- Savoir vieux et savoir neuf -- La redécouverte de l'esprit -- Pt. 3. Règles pour la direction de la vie -- Règle 1 -- Règle 2 -- Règle 3 -- Règle 4 -- Règle 5. (shrink)

Les neurosciences modernes, notamment les découvertes récentes de la recherche sur le cerveau, réclament de plus en plus un changement radical dans leurs tenants et aboutissants philosophiques, loin en particulier de l’anthropologie théologique du Christianisme qui s’appuya pendant de longs siècles sur la conception philosophique dualiste de l’union entre corps et âme. Dans cet essai, A. Ganoczy veut d’abord exposer des acquis de la recherche sur le cerveau qui entraînent, chez les uns, une conception matérialiste et, chez les autres, une (...) description non matérialiste de la personne humaine, les deux camps s’accordant à se situer dans un contexte strictement évolutionniste. S’appuyant sur les travaux et écrits de J.-P. Changeux et Gerhard Vollmer, pour les premiers, de John C. Eccles et Antonio R. Damasio, pour les seconds, A. G. examine les thèses et hypothèses de ces scientifiques qui n’hésitent pas à franchir les frontières évidentes de leurs compétences pour établir une nouvelle anthropologie, sans même une visée ouvertement et méthodiquement interdisciplinaire.Modern neuroscience, notably the recent discoveries of research on the brain, increasingly call for a radical change in their positions and philosophical conclusions, which are particularly distant from the theological anthropology of Christianity, which depended for many centuries on a duelist philosophical conception of the union between body and soul. In this essay, A. Ganoczy wishes first of all to present the results of research on the brain that result in a materialist conception for some, and for others a non-materialist description of the human person. The two camps agreed to place themselves in a strictly evolutionist context. Using the work and writings of J.-P. Changeux and Gerhard Vollmer for the first camp, John C. Eccles and Antonio R. Damasio for the second camp, A. G. examines the theses and hypotheses of these scientists who did not hesitate to go beyond the evident boundaries of their competencies to establish a new anthropology, without even having an openly, methodologically interdisciplinary outlook. (shrink)

Mój tekst przedstawia koncepcję twórczości polskiego neuropsychiatry, Kazimierza Dąbrowskiego (1902-1980), twórcy teorii dezintegracji pozytywnej. Autor ten zakładał, że rozwój psychiczny człowieka ma charakter twórczy. Podmiotem twórczości jest jaźń (osobowość), która jest wynikiem rozwoju pięciu się pięciu typów wrażeń i percepcji – sensytywnej, ruchowej, wyobrażeniowej, intelektualnej i emocjonalnej. Typ wzmożonej pobudliwości psychicznej decyduje o rodzaju twórczości. Niektóre tezy teorii dezintegracji pozytywnej konfrontuję z badaniami mózgu dokonanymi przez Antonio Damasio.

RESUMEN Diversos estudios han concluido que los pacientes con daño en la Corteza Frontal -CF- o Corteza Prefrontal Ventromedial -CPV- muestran una disposición a herir directamente a otra persona con el fin de salvar varias vidas en sus respuestas a los "dilemas morales personales", revelando una posible carencia de empatía. No obstante, cuando evalúan conductas carentes de empatía sin justificación utilitarista, sus respuestas son normales. Defendemos aquí que los pacientes sufren una deficiencia cognitiva relacionada con la hipótesis de marcador somático (...) de Damasio y con juicios de valor. Criticamos la hipótesis del "paciente utilitarista", que se ha atrincherado en la neurociencia cognitiva. ABSTRACT In their answers to questions regarding "personal moral dilemmas", patients with lesions to the Frontal Cortex -FC- or Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex -vmPFC- display a disposition to directly injure another person in order to save lives, thus revealing a possible lack of empathy. However, their answers are normal when they evaluate behaviors lacking in empathy but without a utilitarian justification. We here defend that those patients suffer from a cognitive deficiency associated with Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis and with value judgments. The article critiques the "utilitarian patient" hypothesis that has become deeply rooted in cognitive neuroscience. RESUMO Diversos estudos têm concluído que os pacientes com danos no Córtex Frontal (CF) ou Córtex Pré-frontal Ventromedial (CPV) mostram uma disposição a ferir diretamente a outra pessoa com o objetivo de salvar várias vidas em suas respostas aos "dilemas morais pessoais", o que revela uma possível carência de empatia. Contudo, quando avaliam condutas carentes de empatia sem justificativa utilitarista, suas respostas são normais. Defendemos aqui que os pacientes sofrem uma deficiência cognitiva relacionada com a hipótese de marcador somático de Damásio e com juízos de valor. Criticamos a hipótese do "paciente utilitarista", que vem se refugiando na neurociência cognitiva. (shrink)

The concepts of imagination and consciousness have, very arguably, been inextricably intertwined at least since Aristotle initiated the systematic study of human cognition (Thomas, 1998). To imagine something is ipso facto to be conscious of it (even if the wellsprings of imaginative creativity are in the unconscious), and many have held that our conscious thinking consists largely or entirely in a succession of mental images, the products of imagination (see, e.g., Damasio, 1994 -- or, come to that, see Aristotle, (...) or Hume, or almost any pre-twentieth century cognitive theorist). A venerable tradition also regards perceptual experiences, the main focus of most recent work on consciousness, as products of the imagination, whose primary function is to integrate sensory inputs and render them meaningful (Thomas, 1998, 1999). As Coleridge (1817) famously put it, primary imagination is "the living power and prime agent of all human perception." A better understanding of imagination is likely to deepen our insight into the nature of consciousness (and, probably, vice-versa). (shrink)

ترجمة الفصل الثالث من كتاب البحث عن سبينوزا لمؤلفه أنطونيو داماسيو.