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

by Antonio Damasio

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Last annotated on July 17, 2016

Chapter 1

Enter Feelings 

Feelings of pain or pleasure or some quality in between are the bedrock of our minds. We often fail to notice this simple reality because the mental images of the objects and events that surround us, along with the images of the words and sentences that describe them, use up so much of our overburdened attention. But there they are, feelings of myriad emotions and related states, the continuous musical line of our minds, the unstoppable humming of the most universal of melodies that only dies down when we go to sleep,  Read more at location 86

Of all the mental phenomena we can describe, feelings and their essential ingredients—pain and pleasure—are the least understood in biological and specifically neurobiological terms. This is all the more puzzling considering that advanced societies cultivate feelings shamelessly and dedicate so many resources and efforts to manipulating those feelings with alcohol, drugs of abuse, medical drugs, food, real sex, virtual sex, all manner of feel-good consumption, and all manner of feel-good social and religious practices.  Read more at location 92

As was the case with consciousness, feelings were beyond the bounds of science, thrown outside the door not just by the naysayers who worry that anything mental might actually be explained by neuroscience, but by card-carrying neuroscientists themselves, proclaiming allegedly insurmountable limitations. My own willingness to accept this belief as fact is evidenced by the many years I spent studying anything but feelings.  Read more at location 105

By teasing apart the normal operations of the human brain, often with uncanny precision, neurological disease provides a unique entry into the fortified citadel of the human brain and mind.  Read more at location 115

First, individual feelings could be prevented through damage to a discrete part of the brain; the loss of a specific sector of brain circuitry brought with it the loss of a specific kind of mental event. Second, it seemed clear that different brain systems controlled different feelings; damage to one area of the brain anatomy did not cause all types of feelings to disappear at once. Third, and most surprising, when patients lost the ability to express a certain emotion, they also lost the ability to experience the corresponding feeling. But the opposite was not true: Some patients who lost their ability to experience certain feelings still could express the corresponding emotions.  Read more at location 118

In spite of their close kinship and seeming simultaneity, it seemed that emotion preceded feeling.  Read more at location 123

********  (Note: premise)  The gist of my current view is that feelings are the expression of human flourishing or human distress, as they occur in mind and body. Feelings are not a mere decoration added on to the emotions, something one might keep or discard. Feelings can be and often are revelations of the state of life within the entire organism—a lifting of the veil in the literal sense of the term.  Read more at location 134

If anything in our existence can be revelatory of our simultaneous smallness and greatness, feelings are.  Read more at location 138

Elucidating the neurobiology of feelings and their antecedent emotions contributes to our views on the mind-body problem, a problem central to the understanding of who we are. Emotion and related reactions are aligned with the body, feelings with the mind.  Read more at location 144

why Spinoza? The short explanation is that Spinoza is thoroughly relevant to any discussion of human emotion and feeling. Spinoza saw drives, motivations, emotions, and feelings—an ensemble Spinoza called affects—as a central aspect of humanity.  Read more at location 158

The Hague 

when Spinoza said that love is nothing but a pleasurable state, joy, accompanied by the idea of an external cause, he was separating with great clarity the process of feeling from the process of having an idea about an object that can cause an emotion.3 Joy was one thing; the object that caused joy was another.  Read more at location 201

Spinoza had described a functional arrangement that modern science is revealing as fact: Living organisms are designed with an ability to react emotionally to different objects and events. The reaction is followed by some pattern of feeling and a variation of pleasure or pain is a necessary component of feeling.  Read more at location 205

****  An affect cannot be restrained or neutralized except by a contrary affect that is stronger than the affect to be restrained.4 In other words, Spinoza recommended that we fight a negative emotion with an even stronger but positive emotion brought about by reasoning and intellectual effort. Central to his thinking was the notion that the subduing of the passions should be accomplished by reason-induced emotion and not by pure reason alone.  Read more at location 209

(Note: nonduality)  Of great importance for what I shall be discussing was his notion that both the mind and the body were parallel attributes (call them manifestations) of the very same substance.  Read more at location 213

****  (Note:   embodied cognition. could invert to say body is idea of mind?)  More intriguing, however, was his notion that the human mind is the idea of the human body.  Read more at location 216

(Note: embodied cognition)  I am convinced that mental processes are grounded in the brain's mappings of the body, collections of neural patterns that portray responses to events that cause emotions and feelings.  Read more at location 218

For Spinoza, organisms naturally endeavor, of necessity, to persevere in their own being; that necessary endeavor constitutes their actual essence. organisms come to being with the capacity to regulate life and thereby permit survival. Just as naturally, organisms strive to achieve a "greater perfection" of function, which Spinoza equates with joy. All of these endeavors and tendencies are engaged unconsciously.  Read more at location 222

Moreover, by refusing to recognize a purposeful design in nature, and by conceiving of bodies and minds as made up of components that could be combined in varied patterns across different species, Spinoza was compatible with Charles Darwin's evolutionary thinking. Armed with this revised conception of human nature, Spinoza proceeded to connect the notions of good and evil, of freedom and salvation, to the affects and to the regulation of life. Spinoza suggested that the norms that govern our social and personal conduct should be shaped by a deeper knowledge of humanity, one that made contact with the God or Nature within ourselves.  Read more at location 226

Spinoza is a thinker far more famous than known.  Read more at location 234

his words were deemed heretical and banned for decades and with rare exceptions were quoted only as part of the assault on his work.  Read more at location 239

Looking for Spinoza 

Spinoza prescribed an ideal democratic state, where the hallmarks were freedom of speech—let every man think what he wants and say what he thinks, he wrote—separation of church and state, and a generous social contract that promoted the well-being of citizens and the harmony of government. Spinoza offered this prescription more than a century ahead of the Declaration of Independence and First Amendment.  Read more at location 262

Spinoza was born in the prosperous city of Amsterdam in 1632, literally in the middle of Holland's Golden Age.  Read more at location 275

Descartes, the leading philosopher of the day, then thirty-two, also was living in Amsterdam,  Read more at location 279

Bento was the name Spinoza received at his birth from his parents, Miguel and Hana Debora, Portuguese Sephardic Jews who had resettled in Amsterdam. He was known as Baruch in the synagogue and among friends while he was growing up in Amsterdam's affluent community of Jewish merchants and scholars. He adopted the name Benedictus at age twenty-four after he was banished by the synagogue.  Read more at location 283

The Portuguese name Bento, the Hebrew name Baruch, and the Latin name Benedictus, all mean the same: blessed. So, what's in a name? Quite a lot, I would say.  Read more at location 286

Beware 

Spinoza had told us that every man should think what he wants and say what he thinks, but not so fast, not quite yet. Be careful. Watch out for what you say (and write) or not even your bones will escape.  Read more at location 316

He listed a fictitious printer for the Tractatus, along with an incorrect city of publication (Hamburg). The author's page was blank. Even so, and even though the book was written in Latin rather than Dutch, authorities in Holland prohibited it in 1674. Predictably, it also was placed in the Vatican's Index of dangerous books. The church considered the book an all-out assault on organized religion and the political power structure. After that Spinoza refrained from publishing altogether.  Read more at location 319

****  Spinoza's sense of relative safety came to an abrupt close in 1672 during one of the darkest hours of Holland's golden age. In a sudden turn of events, of the sort that define this politically volatile era, De Witt and his brother were assassinated by a mob, on the false suspicion that they were traitors to the Dutch cause in the ongoing war with France. Assailants clubbed and knifed both De Witts as they dragged them on the way to the gallows, and by the time they arrived there was no need to hang them anymore. They proceeded to undress the corpses, suspend them upside down, butcher-shop style, and quarter them. The fragments were sold as souvenirs, eaten raw, or eaten cooked, amid the most sickening merriment.  Read more at location 334

both had to hide and pretend, and in the case of Descartes, perhaps distort his own thinking. The reason should be clear. In 1633, one year after Spinoza's birth, Galileo was questioned by the Roman Inquisition and placed under house arrest. That same year Descartes withheld publication of his Treatise of Man and, even so, had to respond to vehement attacks on his views of human nature. By 1642, in contradiction with his earlier thinking, Descartes was postulating an immortal soul separate from the perishable body, perhaps as a preemptive measure to forestall further attacks.  Read more at location 349

****  he never became a proper Christian, Protestant or Catholic, and in the eyes of many he was an atheist. And how fitting it all is. Spinoza's God was neither Jewish nor Christian. Spinoza's God was everywhere, could not be spoken to, did not respond if prayed to, was very much in every particle of the universe, without beginning and without end.  Read more at location 360

In the Paviljoensgracht  Read more at location 369

Chapter 2

Of Appetites and Emotions Trust Shakespeare 

It is true that the common usage of the word emotion tends to encompass the notion of feeling. But in our attempt to understand the complex chain of events that begins with emotion and ends up in feeling, we can be helped by a principled separation between the part of the process that is made public and the part that remains private. For the purposes of my work I call the former part emotion and the latter part feeling in  Read more at location 391

****  In the context of this book then, emotions are actions or movements, many of them public, visible to others as they occur in the face, in the voice, in specific behaviors.  Read more at location 396

****  Emotions play out in the theater of the body. Feelings play out in the theater of the mind.  Read more at location 401

Emotions and related reactions seem to precede feelings in the history of life. Emotions and related phenomena are the foundation for feelings, the mental events that form the bedrock of our minds and whose nature we wish to elucidate. Emotions and feelings are so intimately related along a continuous process that we tend to think of them, understandably, as one single thing.  Read more at location 403

Emotions Precede Feelings 

****  It turns out that it is feelings that are mostly shadows of the external manner of emotions.  Read more at location 422

(Note: emotional equivalent to epiphenomenalism as it relates to consciousness?)  We have emotions first and feelings after because evolution came up with emotions first and feelings later. Emotions are built from simple reactions that easily promote the survival of an organism and thus could easily prevail in evolution.  Read more at location 426

All living organisms from the humble amoeba to the human are born with devices designed to solve automatically, no proper reasoning required, the basic problems of life. Those problems are: finding sources of energy; incorporating and transforming energy; maintaining a chemical balance of the interior compatible with the life process; maintaining the organism's structure by repairing its wear and tear; and fending off external agents of disease and physical injury. The single word homeostasis is convenient shorthand for the ensemble of regulations and the resulting state of regulated life.5  Read more at location 431

At the bottom of the organization of homeostasis we find simple responses such as approaching or withdrawing of an entire organism relative to some object; or increases in activity (arousal) or decreases in activity (calm or quiescence). Higher up in the organization we find competitive or cooperative responses. 6 We can picture the homeostasis machine as a large multibranched tree of phenomena charged with the automated regulation of life.  Read more at location 436

working our way from the ground up, here is what we will find in the tree. In the lowest branches

• The process of metabolism. 

• Basic reflexes. 

• The immune system. 

In the middle-level branches

• Behaviors normally associated with the notion of pleasure (and reward) or pain (and punishment). 

In the next level up

• A number of drives and motivations. Major examples include hunger, thirst, curiosity and exploration, play and sex.  Read more at location 475

Near the top but not quite

• Emotions-proper. This is where we find the crown jewel of automated life regulation: emotions in the narrow sense of the term—from joy and sorrow and fear, to pride and shame and sympathy. 

at the very top,

the answer is simple: feelings, 

The entire collection of homeostatic processes governs life moment by moment in every cell of our bodies. This governance is achieved by means of a simple arrangement: First, something changes in the environment of an individual organism, internally or externally. Second, the changes have the potential to alter the course of the life of the organism (they can constitute a threat to its integrity, or an opportunity for its improvement). Third, the organism detects the change and acts accordingly, in a manner designed to create the most beneficial situation for its own self-preservation and efficient functioning. All reactions operate under this arrangement and are thus a means to appraise the internal and external circumstances of an organism and act accordingly.  Read more at location 496

In Spinoza's own words: "Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being"  Read more at location 508

A Nesting Principle 

our homeostasis we glean a curious construction plan. It consists of having parts of simpler reactions incorporated as components of more elaborate ones, a nesting of the simple within the complex. Some of the machinery of the immune system and of metabolic regulation is incorporated in the machinery of pain and pleasure behaviors. Some of the latter is incorporated in the machinery of drives and motivations (most of which revolve around metabolic corrections and all of which involve pain or pleasure). Some of the machinery from all the prior levels—reflexes, immune responses, metabolic balancing, pain or pleasure behaviors, drives—is incorporated in the machinery of the emotions-proper. As we shall see, the different tiers of emotions-proper are assembled on the very same principle.  Read more at location 523

A better image is that of a tall, messy tree with progressively higher and more elaborate branches coming off the main trunks and thus maintaining a two-way communication with their roots.  Read more at location 536

More on the Emotion-Related Reactions: From Simple Homeostatic Regulation to Emotions-Proper 

The range of reactions encompasses not only highly visible emotions such as fear or anger, but also drives, motivations, and behaviors associated with pain or pleasure. They all occur within an organism, a body limited by a boundary, within which life ticks away. All of the reactions, directly or indirectly, exhibit an apparent aim: making the internal economy of life run smoothly.  Read more at location 543

the fact that the deployment of some emotions in current human circumstances may be maladaptive does not deny their evolutionary role in advantageous life regulation. Anger is mostly counterproductive in modern societies, and so is sadness. Phobias are a major hindrance. And yet think of how many lives have been saved by fear or anger in the right circumstances. These reactions are likely to have prevailed in evolution because they automatically supported survival.  Read more at location 554

The Emotions of Simple Organisms 

Think of a lone paramecium, a simple unicellular organism, all body, no brain, no mind, swimming speedily away from a possible danger in a certain sector of its bath—maybe a poking needle, or too many vibrations, or too much heat, or too little. Or the paramecium may be swimming speedily along a chemical gradient of nutrients toward the sector of the bath where it can have lunch. This simple organism is designed to detect certain signs of danger—steep variations in temperature, excessive vibrations, or the contact of a piercing object that might rupture its membrane—and react by proceeding to a safer, more temperate, quieter place.  Read more at location 567

The ability to react in this manner was not taught—there is not much pedagogy going on in paramecium school. It is contained in the apparently simple and yet so complicated gene-given machinery inside the unbrained paramecium. This shows that nature has long been concerned with providing living organisms with the means to regulate and maintain their lives automatically, no questions asked, no thoughts needed.  Read more at location 574

****  Think of a tiny fly—a small creature with a small nervous system but no spine. You can make the fly quite angry if you swat it repeatedly and unsuccessfully. It will buzz around you in daredevil supersonic dives and avoid the fatal swat. But you also can make the fly happy if you feed it sugar. You can see how its movements slow down and round themselves in response to comfort food. And you can make the fly giddily happy if you give it alcohol. I am not inventing: The experiment has been carried out on a fly species known as Drosophila Melanogaster.8 After exposure to ethanol vapor the flies are as uncoordinated as we would be, given a comparable dose. They walk with the abandon of contented inebriation, and fall down an experimental tube like drunks staggering to a lamppost.  Read more at location 578

consider the sleep mechanisms of the fly described by Ralph Greenspan and his colleagues.9 Tiny Drosophila has the equivalent of our day-night cycles, periods of intense activity and restorative sleep, and even the sort of response to sleep deprivation that we show when we are jet-lagged.  Read more at location 586

think of the marine snail Aplysia Californica—again no spine, little brain, and much sloth. Touch it in the gill and it will fold into itself, increase its blood pressure, and jump up its heart rate. The snail produces a number of concerted reactions that, transposed to you or me, probably would be recognized as important components of the emotion fear.  Read more at location 589

It would be incorrect to call these reactions reflexes because classical reflexes are simple responses, whereas these reactions are complex packages of responses. The multiplicity of components and the coordination of the components distinguish emotion-related reactions from reflexes. Better to say that they are collections of reflex responses, some quite elaborate and all quite well coordinated.  Read more at location 595

The Emotions-Proper

For the time being, I find it helpful to classify the emotions-proper in three tiers: background emotions, primary emotions, and social emotions.  Read more at location 602

background emotions are not especially prominent in one's behavior, although they are remarkably important. You may never have paid much attention to it, but you probably are a good reader of background emotions if you accurately detect energy or enthusiasm in someone you have just met; or if you are capable of diagnosing subtle malaise or excitement, edginess or tranquillity, in your friends and colleagues. If you are really good, you can do the diagnostic job without a single word being uttered by your victim. You assess the contour of movements in the limbs and the entire body.  Read more at location 603

The primary (or basic) emotions are easier to define because there is an established tradition of lumping certain prominent emotions in this group. The frequent listing includes fear, anger, disgust, surprise, sadness, and happiness—the emotions that first come to mind whenever the term emotion is invoked. There are good reasons for this centrality. These emotions are easily identifiable in human beings across several cultures and in nonhuman species as well.  Read more at location 623

The social emotions include sympathy, embarrassment, shame, guilt, pride, jealousy, envy, gratitude, admiration, indignation, and contempt. The nesting principle applies to social emotions as well.  Read more at location 634

The nested incorporation of components from lower tiers is apparent. Think of how the social emotion "contempt" borrows the facial expressions of "disgust," a primary emotion that evolved in association with the automatic and beneficial rejection of potentially toxic foods. Even the words we use to describe situations of contempt, and moral outrage—we profess to be disgusted—revolve around the nesting. Pain and pleasure ingredients also are evident under the surface of social emotions,  Read more at location 636

social emotions are by no means confined to humans. Look around and you will find examples of social emotions in chimpanzees, baboons, and plain monkeys; in dolphins and lions; in wolves; and, of course, in your dog and cat.  Read more at location 642

One of the many reasons why some people become leaders and others followers, why some command respect and others cower, has little to do with knowledge or skills and a lot to do with how certain physical traits and the manner of a given individual promote certain emotional responses in others.  Read more at location 671

these two sets of nondeliberate, nonconscious reactions—those innate and those learned—may well be interrelated in the bottomless pit of our unconscious.  Read more at location 679

Emotions-proper influence appetites, and vice versa.  Read more at location 698

Also, as noted earlier, the composite of the daily unfolding of adaptive reactions, e.g., homeostatic adjustments and drives, constitutes the ongoing background emotions and helps define mood over extended periods of time.  Read more at location 700

To the best of our knowledge, most of the living creatures equipped to emote for the sake of their lives have no more brain equipment to feel those emotions than they do to think of having such emotions in the first place. They detect the presence of certain stimuli in the environment and respond to them with an emotion. All they require is a simple perceptual apparatus—a  Read more at location 703

Our organisms gravitate toward a "good" result of their own accord, sometimes directly as in a response of happiness, sometimes indirectly as in a response of fear that begins by avoiding "evil" and then results in "good."  Read more at location 715

By controlling our interaction with objects that cause emotions we are in effect exerting some control over the life process and leading the organism into greater or lesser harmony, as Spinoza would wish. We are in effect overriding the tyrannical automaticity and mindlessness of the emotional machinery.  Read more at location 725

A Hypothesis in the Form of a Definition 

1. An emotion-proper, such as happiness, sadness, embarrassment, or sympathy, is a complex collection of chemical and neural responses forming a distinctive pattern.  Read more at location 738

2. The responses are produced by the normal brain when it detects an emotionally competent stimulus (an ECS), the object or event whose presence, actual or in mental recall, triggers the emotion. The responses are automatic.  Read more at location 739

3. The brain is prepared by evolution to respond to certain ECSs with specific repertoires of action. However, the list of ECSs is not confined to those prescribed by evolution. It includes many others learned in a lifetime of experience.  Read more at location 741

4. The immediate result of these responses is a temporary change in the state of the body proper, and in the state of the brain structures that map the body and support thinking.  Read more at location 743

5. The ultimate result of the responses, directly or indirectly, is the placement of the organism in circumstances conducive to survival and well-being.21  Read more at location 745

The Brain Machinery of Emotion 

one of the key purposes of our educational development is to interpose a nonautomatic evaluative step between causative objects and emotional responses.  Read more at location 762

by the time we are old enough to write books, few if any objects in the world are emotionally neutral. The emotional distinction among objects is a distinction of grades: Some objects evoke weak, barely perceptible emotional reactions, some objects evoke strong emotional reactions, and there is every other grade in between. We even are beginning to uncover the molecular and cellular mechanisms necessary for emotional learning to occur.  Read more at location 781

Conscious knowledge of the context and awareness of the future consequences of every aspect of your own behavior help you decide to suppress the natural expression of emotion. But try to avoid it as you get older. It is very energy consuming.  Read more at location 792

Emotionally competent objects can be actual or recalled from memory.  Read more at location 794

Whether actually present, as a freshly minted image, or as a reconstructed image recalled from memory, the kind of effect is the same. If the stimulus is emotionally competent an emotion ensues, and only the intensity varies. Actors of every sort of schooling rely on this so-called emotional memory for their trade.  Read more at location 796

Our ever-observant Spinoza did not leave this one alone either: A man is as much affected pleasurably or painfully by the image of a thing past or future, as by the image of a thing present [Ethics, Part III, Proposition 28].  Read more at location 799

Triggering and Executing Emotions 

In neural terms, images related to the emotionally competent object must be represented in one or more of the brain's sensory processing systems, such as the visual or auditory regions. Let us call this the presentation stage of the process. Regardless of how fleeting the presentation, signals related to the presence of that stimulus are made available to a number of emotion-triggering sites elsewhere in the brain. You can conceive of those sites as locks that open only if the appropriate keys fit. The emotionally competent stimuli are the keys, of course. Note that they select a preexisting lock, rather than instruct the brain on how to create one. The emotion-triggering sites subsequently activate a number of emotion-execution sites elsewhere in the brain. The latter sites are the immediate cause of the emotional state that occurs in the body and in brain regions that support the emotion-feeling process. Eventually, the process can reverberate and amplify itself, or shrivel away and close down. In the language of neuroanatomy and neurophysiology, this process begins when neural signals of a certain configuration (that originate in visual cortices that are holding neural patterns corresponding to the fast approach of a threatening object) are relayed in parallel along several pathways to several brain structures. Some of the recipient structures, for example, the amygdala, will become active when they "detect" a certain configuration—when the key fits the lock—and initiate signals toward other brain regions, thus giving rise to a cascade of events that will become an emotion.  Read more at location 805

Some of the brain regions now identified as emotion-triggering sites are the amygdala, deep in the temporal lobe; a part of the frontal lobe known as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex; and yet another frontal region in the supplementary motor area and cingulate. They are not the only triggering sites, but so far they are the best understood. These "triggering" sites are responsive to both natural stimuli, the electrochemical patterns that support the images in our minds, and to very unnatural stimuli, such as an electric current applied to the brain. But the sites should not be seen as rigid, delivering the same stereotyped performance time after time, because a number of influences can modulate their activity.  Read more at location 822

Those studies suggest that the amygdala is an important interface between visual and auditory emotionally competent stimuli and the triggering of emotions, in particular, though not exclusively, fear and anger. Neurological patients with damage to the amygdala cannot trigger those emotions and as a result do not have the corresponding feelings either.  Read more at location 836

studies also show that when recordings are made directly from single neurons in the human amygdala, a larger proportion of neurons are tuned to unpleasant stimuli than to pleasant.  Read more at location 839

Evidence for the amygdala's ability to detect emotionally competent stimuli nonconsciously first came from the work of Paul Whalen. When he showed such stimuli very rapidly to normal people who were entirely unaware of what they were seeing, brain scans revealed that the amygdala became active.26 Recent work from Arnie Ohman and Raymond Dolan has shown that normal subjects can learn, covertly, that a certain stimulus but not another (e.g., a particular angry face but not another angry face) is associated with an unpleasant event. The covert representation of the face associated with the bad event prompts the activation of the right amygdala; but the covert representation of the other face does not.  Read more at location 842

********  Emotionally competent stimuli are detected very fast, ahead of selective attention, as shown by an impressive finding: after lesions of the occipital lobe or parietal lobe cause a blind field of vision (or a field of vision in which stimuli are not detected due to neglect), emotionally competent stimuli (e.g., angry or happy faces) nevertheless "break through" the barrier of blindness or neglect and are indeed detected.28 The triggering emotional machinery captures these stimuli because they bypass the normal processing channels—channels that might have led to cognitive appraisal but simply could not do so because of blindness or neglect.  Read more at location 848

whether one is paying attention, emotionally competent stimuli can be detected. Subsequently, attention and proper thought can be diverted to those stimuli.  Read more at location 853

Another important triggering site is in the frontal lobe, especially in the ventromedial prefrontal region. This region is tuned to detecting the emotional significance of more complex stimuli, for example objects and situations, natural as well as learned, competent to trigger social emotions.  Read more at location 855

(Note: my own laughter as inappropriate at times?)  damage to the frontal lobe alters the ability to emote when the emotionally competent stimulus is social in nature, and when the appropriate response is a social emotion such as embarrassment, guilt, or despair. Impairments of this sort compromise normal social behavior.29  Read more at location 860

Single-cell recordings from the ventromedial prefrontal region of neurological patients being assessed for the surgical treatment of seizures reveal that numerous neurons in this region, and more so in the right frontal region than in the left, respond dramatically to pictures capable of inducing unpleasant emotions. They begin to react as early as 120 milliseconds after the stimulus is presented. First they suspend their spontaneous firing pattern; then, after a silent interval, they fire more intensely and more frequently.  Read more at location 864

The right-left brain asymmetry is more extreme than I would have predicted, but it is in keeping with a proposal made by Richard Davidson several years ago. Based on electroencephalographic studies conducted in normal individuals, Davidson suggested that the right frontal cortices were more associated with negative emotions than the left.  Read more at location 869

The hypothalamus is the master executor of many chemical responses that are part and parcel of emotions. Directly or via the pituitary gland it releases into the bloodstream chemical molecules that alter the internal milieu, the function of viscera, and the function of the central nervous system itself.  Read more at location 874

Likewise, the local brain availability of molecules such as dopamine and serotonin, which modulate neural activity, causes certain behaviors to occur.  Read more at location 878

In all emotions, multiple volleys of neural and chemical responses change the internal milieu, the viscera, and the musculoskeletal system for a certain period and in a particular pattern. Facial expressions, vocalizations, body postures, and specific patterns of behavior (running, freezing, courting, or parenting) are thus enacted. The body chemistries as well as viscera such as the heart and lungs help along. Emotion is all about transition and commotion, sometimes real bodily upheaval.  Read more at location 886

The processing of emotions involves this dual track: the flowing of mental contents that bring along the triggers for the emotional responses, and the executed responses themselves, those that constitute emotions, which eventually lead to feelings.  Read more at location 905

Out of the Blue 

Parkinson's disease is a common neurological disorder that compromises the ability to move normally. Rather than causing paralysis, the condition causes rigidity of the muscles, tremors, and, perhaps most importantly, akinesia, a difficulty in initiating movements.  Read more at location 915

Dopamine is missing in certain brain circuits of Parkinson's patients, much as insulin is missing in the bloodstream of patients with diabetes. (The neurons that produce dopamine in the pars compacta of the substantia nigra die away  Read more at location 919

implanting tiny electrodes in the brain stem of Parkinson's patients so that the passage of a low-intensity, high-frequency electrical current can change the way in which some of the motor nuclei operate. The results usually are stunning. As the current passes, the symptoms vanish magically. The patients can move their hands with precision and walk so normally that a stranger might not be able to tell that something had previously been wrong.  Read more at location 924

The precise placement of the array of electrode contacts is a key to the success of the treatment.  Read more at location 927

the electrodes into the part of the brain stem known as the mesencephalon.  Read more at location 929

The patient was a sixty-five-year-old woman with a long history of parkinsonian symptoms that no longer responded to levodopa. She had no history of depression before or after the onset of the disease, and she had not even experienced mood changes, a common side effect of levodopa. She had no history of psychiatric disorder, personally or in her family. Once the electrodes were in place, the procedure initially went the same way it had for nineteen other patients treated by the same group. 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. Asked about what was happening, her words were quite telling: I'm falling down in my head, I no longer wish to live, to see anything, hear anything, feel anything... I'm fed up with life, I've had enough ... I don't want to live anymore, I'm disgusted with life... Everything is useless ... I feel worthless. I'm scared in this world. I want to hide in a corner ... I'm crying over myself, of course ... I'm hopeless, why am I bothering you? 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. The sobbing stopped as abruptly as it had begun. The sadness vanished from the patient's face.  Read more at location 934

Very rapidly, she smiled, appeared relaxed, and for the next five minutes was quite playful, even jocular. What was that all about? she asked. She had felt awful but did not know why.  Read more at location 951

The electrical current had not passed into the general motor control structures as intended, but had flowed instead into one of the brain stem nuclei that control particular types of action.  Read more at location 953

****  the presence of thoughts capable of causing sadness—the presence of emotionally competent stimuli. Except, of course, that no such thoughts had been present prior to the unexpected incident, nor was the patient even prone to having such thoughts spontaneously. Emotion-related thoughts only came after the emotion began.  Read more at location 959

The display of sadness, in all its spectacular complexity, came truly out of nowhere. No less importantly, sometime after the display of sadness was fully organized and in progress, the patient began to have a feeling of sadness. And, just as importantly, after she reported feeling sad she began having thoughts consonant with sadness—concern for her medical condition, fatigue, disappointment with her life, despair, and a wish to die. The sequence of events in this patient reveals that the emotion sadness came first. The feeling of sadness followed, accompanied by thoughts of the type that usually can cause and then accompany the emotion sadness, thoughts that are characteristic of the states of mind we colloquially describe as "feeling sad."  Read more at location 968

The importance of this rare neurological incident is apparent. In normal conditions the speed with which emotions arise and give way to feelings and related thoughts makes it difficult to analyze the proper sequence of phenomena.  Read more at location 975

This woman's case helps us see through the conflation. She had no thoughts causative of sadness or any feelings of sadness prior to having an emotion called sadness. The evidence speaks both to the relative autonomy of the neural triggering mechanism of emotion and to the dependence of feeling on emotion.  Read more at location 982

***********  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. Cognitive and emotional levels of processing are continuously linked in this manner. This effect can be demonstrated experimentally as shown in a study by Paul Ekman and his colleagues.  Read more at location 987

****  Psychologically unmotivated and "acted" emotional expressions have the power to cause feeling. The expressions conjure up the feelings and the kinds of thoughts that have been learned as consonant with those emotional expressions.  Read more at location 997

(Note: Neither placebo nor nocebo)  Stimulation at any of the other electrode contacts implanted in this same patient caused nothing unexpected, and as noted, this reaction did not occur in any other of the nineteen patients treated the same way. On two other occasions, and with the patient's appropriate consent, the doctors established the following facts. First, when they told the patient they were stimulating the problematic electrode contact, but actually were only clicking the switch for another electrode, no behavior whatsoever ensued. They observed nothing unusual and the patient reported nothing unusual. Second, when the problematic contact was switched on again, without warning, they reproduced the same set of events as in the original, unexpected observation. Electrode placement and electrode activation clearly were linked to the appearance of the phenomenon.  Read more at location 1010

a fundamental notion of cognitive neuroscience: Any complex mental function results from concerted contributions by many brain regions at varied levels of the central nervous system rather than from the work of a single brain region conceived in a phrenological manner.  Read more at location 1022

The Brain Stem Switch 

Instead of beginning in the cerebral cortex, the chain of events began in a subcortical region. But the effects were similar to those that would have been produced by thinking of a tragic event or witnessing it.  Read more at location 1035

Out-of-the-Blue Laughter 

a phenomenon equivalent to the one we have just analyzed can be produced for laughter, as shown in a study led by Itzhak Fried.34 The circumstances also involved a patient undergoing electrical brain stimulation.  Read more at location 1041

Remarkably, and precisely as noted in the crying patient, laughter was followed "by a sensation of merriment or mirth" in spite of its unmotivated nature. Just as interestingly, the cause of the laughter was attributed to whichever object the patient was concentrating on at the time of the stimulation. For example, if the patient was being shown a picture of a horse, she would say, "The horse is funny."  Read more at location 1050

In both laughter and crying, the main execution sites are in brain stem nuclei. Incidentally, the evidence uncovered in the laughter study is in accordance with our own observations in patients with damage to the SMA and anterior cingulate.  Read more at location 1064

Laughter and Some More Crying 

Patient C., whom I studied in collaboration with Josef Parvizi and Steven Anderson, provides a perfect illustration of the problem.  Read more at location 1077

the patient was not wired to any electrical current and no one was pulling a switch on him. Yet the outcome was the same. As a result of an area of damage in the neural system constituted by nuclei in the brain stem and in the cerebellum, C. would engage these emotions without a proper mental cause and would find it difficult to rein in those emotions. No less importantly, C. would end up feeling somewhat sad or somewhat giddy, although at the start of an episode he would be neither happy nor sad, and would be having neither felicitous nor troubling thoughts. Once again, an unmotivated emotion caused a feeling and brought on a mental state consonant with the valence of a repertoire of body actions. The fine mechanism that allows us to control laughter and crying according to the social and cognitive context has been a mystery. The study of this patient lifted part of the mystery and revealed that nuclei in the pons and in the cerebellum seem to play an important role in the control mechanism. Subsequent investigations of other patients with the same situation and comparable lesions have strengthened the conclusions.  Read more at location 1088

this case reveals how those processes depend on a complicated interplay among those components. We are far away from single "centers" and far away from the idea that neural pathways work in a single direction.  Read more at location 1105

From the Active Body to the Mind 

Spinoza intuited that congenital neurobiological wisdom and encapsulated the intuition in his conatus statements, the notion that, of necessity, all living organisms endeavor to preserve themselves without conscious knowledge of the undertaking and without having decided, as individual selves, to undertake anything. In short, they do not know the problem they are trying to solve. When the consequences of such natural wisdom are mapped back in the central nervous system, subcortically and cortically, the result is feelings, the foundational component of our minds. Eventually, as we shall see, feelings can guide a deliberate endeavor of self-preservation and assist with making choices regarding the manner in which self-preservation should take place.  Read more at location 1110

The first device, emotion, enabled organisms to respond effectively but not creatively to a number of circumstances conducive or threatening to life—"good for life" or "bad for life" circumstances, "good for life" or "bad for life" outcomes. The second device, feeling, introduced a mental alert for the good or bad circumstances and prolonged the impact of emotions by affecting attention and memory lastingly. This happens in both animals and humans.  Read more at location 1119

Chapter 3

Feelings 

What Feelings Are 

Feeling, in the pure and narrow sense of the word, was the idea of the body being in a certain way.  Read more at location 1152

Feelings, in the sense used in this book, arise from any set of homeostatic reactions, not just from emotions-proper. They translate the ongoing life state in the language of the mind.  Read more at location 1157

Feelings are perceptions, and I propose that the most necessary support for their perception occurs in the brain's body maps. These maps refer to parts of the body and states of the body.  Read more at location 1161

****  (Note:   premise)  a feeling is the perception of a certain state of the body along with the perception of a certain mode of thinking and of thoughts with certain themes.  Read more at location 1168

Feelings emerge when the sheer accumulation of mapped details reaches a certain stage.  Read more at location 1169

(Note: Feelings as body states, physical, embodiment, not thoughts or ideas of a certain kind)  The above hypothesis is not compatible with the view that the essence of feelings (or the essence of emotions when emotions and feelings are taken as synonyms) is a collection of thoughts with certain themes consonant with a certain feeling label, such as thoughts of situations of loss in the case of sadness.  Read more at location 1172

As I see it, the origin of the perceptions that constitute the essence of feeling is clear: There is a general object, the body, and there are many parts to that object that are continuously mapped in a number of brain structures. The contents of those perceptions also are clear: varied body states portrayed by the body-representing maps along a range of possibilities.  Read more at location 1181

The immediate substrates of feelings are the mappings of myriad aspects of body states in the sensory regions designed to receive signals from the body.  Read more at location 1188

We do experience some of them quite specifically and not always pleasantly—a disturbed heart rhythm, a painful contraction of the gut, and so forth. But for most other components, I hypothesize that we experience them in "composite" form. Certain patterns of internal milieu chemistry, for example, register as background feelings of energy, fatigue, or malaise.  Read more at location 1191

****  A feeling in essence is an idea—an idea of the body and, even more particularly, an idea of a certain aspect of the body, its interior, in certain circumstances.  Read more at location 1202

Is There More to Feelings than the Perception of Body State?  Read more at location 1206

Feelings Are Interactive Perceptions 

************  Feelings are perceptions and, in some ways, they are comparable to other perceptions.  Read more at location 1227

****  in the case of feelings, the objects and events at the origin are well inside the body rather than outside of it. Feelings may be just as mental as any other perception, but the objects being mapped are parts and states of the living organism in which feelings arise.  Read more at location 1232

This important difference begets two others. First, in addition to being linked to an object at the origin—the body—feelings also are linked to the emotionally competent object that initiated the emotion-feeling cycle.  Read more at location 1234

The sight of a spectacular seascape is an emotionally competent object. The body state that results from beholding that seascape x is the actual object at the origin x, which is then perceived in the feeling state. Second, and no less importantly, the brain has a direct means to respond to the object as feelings unfold because the object at the origin is inside the body, rather than external to it. The brain can act directly on the very object it is perceiving. It can do so by modifying the state of the object, or by altering the transmission of signals from it.  Read more at location 1237

When we talk of the "feeling" of a certain shade of blue or of the "feeling" of a certain musical note, we actually are referring to the affective feeling that accompanies our seeing that shade of blue or hearing the sound of that note, regardless of how subtle the aesthetic perturbation may be. 3 Even when we somewhat misuse the notion of feeling—as in "I feel I am right about this" or "I feel I cannot agree with you"—we are referring, at least vaguely, to the feeling that accompanies the idea of believing a certain fact or endorsing a certain view. This is because believing and endorsing cause a certain emotion to happen.  Read more at location 1254

Mixing Memory with Desire: An Aside 

Are hunger and thirst that different from sexual desire? Simpler, no doubt, but not really different in mechanism. That is the reason why all three can blend so easily and at times even compensate mutually.  Read more at location 1285

there is a rich interplay between the object of desire and a wealth of personal memories pertinent to the object—past occasions of desire, past aspirations, and past pleasures, real or imagined.  Read more at location 1289

We can certainly separate sex from attachment, thanks to the investigation of how two hormones we regularly manufacture in our bodies, the peptides oxytocin and vasopressin, affect the sexual and attachment behavior of a charming species, the prairie voles.  Read more at location 1292

Feelings in the Brain: New Evidence 

We told the group we wished to study the patterns of activity in their brains while they experienced one of four possible feelings: happiness, sadness, fear, or anger. The investigation depended on measuring the amount of blood flow in multiple brain areas using a technique known as PET (for positron-emission tomography). It is known that the amount of blood flowing into any region of the brain is closely correlated with the metabolism of the neurons in that region, and the metabolism, in turn, correlates with the amount of local activity of the neurons.  Read more at location 1319

Not only have most adults experienced these episodes, but, as it turns out, most also can conjure up fine details and literally relive those emotions and feelings with surprising intensity.  Read more at location 1329

The analysis of the data offered ample support for our hypothesis. All the body-sensing areas under scrutiny—the cingulate cortex, the somatosensory cortices of insula and SII, the nuclei in the brain stem tegmentum—showed a statistically significant pattern of activation or deactivation. This indicated that the mapping of body states had been significantly modified during the process of feeling. Moreover, as we expected, these patterns of activation or deactivation varied among the emotions. In the same way that one can sense that our bodies are differently conformed during the feeling of joy or sadness, we were able to show that the brain maps corresponding to those body states were different as well.  Read more at location 1338

We had monitored the subjects' physiological responses continuously and were able to note that the changes in skin conductance always preceded the signal that a feeling was being felt. In other words, the electrical monitors registered the seismic activity of emotion unequivocally before the subjects moved their hand to indicate the experience had begun. Although we had not planned to look into this issue, the experiment offered still more evidence that emotional states come first and feelings after.  Read more at location 1356

A Comment on Related Evidence 

the point to be made here is that changed activity in the somatosensing regions is correlated with feeling states.  Read more at location 1377

There is an intimate and telling three-way connection between certain kinds of music, feelings of either great sorrow or great joy, and the body sensations we describe as "chills" or "shivers" or "thrills." For curious reasons, certain musical instruments, particularly the human voice, and certain musical compositions, evoke emotive states that include a host of skin responses such as making the hair stand on end, producing shudders, and blanching the skin.  Read more at location 1379

These results reveal with some clarity a separate physiological arrangement for feelings that relates to pain or pleasure and for "feelings" of tactile or vibratory sensations. Insula and SII are strongly associated with the former, SI with the latter. Elsewhere I have noted that the physiological support of emotion and pain sensation can be dissociated by drugs such as Valium, which remove the affect component of pain but leave the sensation of pain intact. The apt description for such situations is that you "feel" pain but do not care.  Read more at location 1399

The Substrate of Feelings 

Until recently, many scientists have been reluctant to accept that the somatosensory system could be a critical substrate of feeling. This is perhaps the last remnant of resistance to William James's conjecture that when we feel emotions we perceive body states.  Read more at location 1421

****  (Note:  neuro details)  Yes, somatosensing regions are involved in the feeling process, and yes, a major partner in the firm of somatosensory cortices, the insula, is involved perhaps more significantly than any other structure. SII, SI, and the cingulate cortex also are involved, and so are subcortical structures, but their participation is at a different level. The above facts bring together two strands of evidence: From the introspective analysis of feeling states, it stands to reason that feelings ought to depend on somatosensory processing. From neurophysiological/imaging evidence, a structure such as the insula is indeed differentially engaged in feeling states, as we have just seen.19 But another strand of recent evidence makes this convergence even more powerful. It so happens that the peripheral nerve fibers and neural pathways dedicated to conveying information from the body's interior to the brain do not terminate, as once thought, in the cortex that receives signals related to touch (SI, the primary somatosensory cortex). Instead, those pathways terminate in their own dedicated region, the insular cortex itself, precisely the same region whose activity patterns are perturbed by feelings of emotion.  Read more at location 1425

********  the very same region that both theoretical proposals and functional imaging studies relate to feelings turns out to be the recipient of the class of signals most likely to represent the content of feelings: signals related to pain states; body temperature; flush; itch; tickle; shudder; visceral and genital sensations; the state of the smooth musculature in blood vessels and other viscera; local pH; glucose; osmolality; presence of inflammatory agents; and so forth. From a variety of perspectives, then, the somatosensing regions appear to be a critical substrate for feelings, and the insular cortex appears to be the pivotal region of the set.  Read more at location 1437

Who Can Have Feelings? 

First, an entity capable of feeling must be an organism that not only has a body but also a means to represent that body inside itself.  Read more at location 1468

Plants react to many stimuli—to light, heat, water, and nutrients. Some people with green fingers even believe they react to kind words of encouragement. But they seem to lack the possibility of being conscious of a feeling. The first requirement for feeling, then, comes down to the presence of a nervous system.  Read more at location 1470

The relation between feeling and consciousness is tricky. In plain terms, we are not able to feel if we are not conscious. But it so happens that the machinery of feeling is itself a contributor to the processes of consciousness, namely to the creation of the self, without which nothing can be known. The way out of the difficulty comes from realizing that the process of feeling is multitiered and branched. Some of the steps necessary to produce a feeling are the very same necessary to produce the protoself, on which self and eventually consciousness depend. But some of the steps are specific to the set of homeostatic changes being felt, i.e., specific to a certain object.  Read more at location 1477

the brain of an organism that feels creates the very body states that evoke feelings as it reacts to objects and events with emotions or appetites. In organisms capable of feeling, then, the brain is a double necessity. To be sure, it must be there to provide body mappings. Even before that, however, the brain must have been there either to command or construct the particular emotional body state that ends up being mapped as feeling. Most animals with complex brains satisfy these conditions, in all probability.  Read more at location 1483

****  (Note:  evolutionary origin of feeling)  Feelings probably became possible because there were brain maps available to represent body states. Those maps became possible because the brain machinery of body regulation required them in order to make its regulatory adjustments, namely those adjustments that occur during the unfolding of an emotional reaction. That means feelings depend not just on the presence of a body and brain capable of body representations, they also depend on the prior existence of the brain machinery of life regulation, including the part of the life-regulating mechanism that causes reactions such as emotions and appetites. Without the prior existence of the brain machinery behind emotions there might be nothing interesting to feel.  Read more at location 1487

Body States versus Body Maps 

Our hypothesis is that whatever we feel must be based on the activity pattern of the body-sensing brain regions.  Read more at location 1495

****  Feelings do not arise necessarily from the actual body states—although they can—but rather from the actual maps constructed at any given moment in the body-sensing regions.  Read more at location 1511

Actual Body States and Simulated Body States

As far as our conscious mind is concerned there is only one source of knowledge for what is going on in the body: the pattern of activity present at any given moment in the body-sensing regions. Consequently, any interference with this mechanism can create a "false" map of what is transpiring in the body at a particular moment.  Read more at location 1518

NATURAL ANALGESIA 

"false" body mapping occurs under certain circumstances when the brain filters out nociceptive body signals. The brain effectively eliminates from the central body maps the patterns of activity that would permit the experience of pain. There are good reasons why the mechanisms of "false" representation would have prevailed in evolution. During an attempt to run away from danger it is helpful not to feel the pain that may come from wounds inflicted by the cause of danger (e.g., a bite from a predator) or by the very act of fleeing from danger (running away and being hurt by obstacles).  Read more at location 1522

EMPATHY 

the brain can simulate certain emotional body states internally, as happens in the process of turning the emotion sympathy into a feeling of empathy. Think, for example, of being told about a horrible accident in which someone was badly injured. For a moment you may feel a twinge of pain that mirrors in your mind the pain of the person in question.  Read more at location 1550

certain brain regions, such as the pre-frontal/premotor cortices, directly signal the body-sensing brain regions. The existence and location of comparable types of neurons has been established recently. Those neurons can represent, in an individual's brain, the movements that very brain sees in another individual, and produce signals toward sensorimotor structures so that the corresponding movements are either "previewed," in simulation mode, or actually executed. These neurons are present in the frontal cortex of monkeys and humans, and are known as "mirror neurons."  Read more at location 1555

Other supporting evidence comes from studies in which normal individuals who were viewing photographs depicting emotion immediately and subtly activated the muscular groups of their own faces that would have been necessary for them to make the emotional expressions depicted in the photographs. The individuals were not aware of this mirror-image "presetting" of their own muscles but electrodes distributed across their faces picked up on electromyographic changes.  Read more at location 1585

****  (Note:   evolutionary origin of feeling)  In summary, the body-sensing areas constitute a sort of theater where not only the "actual" body states can be "performed," but varied assortments of "false" body states can be enacted as well, for example, as-if-body states, filtered body states, and so on. The commands for producing as-if-body states are likely to come from a variety of prefrontal cortices as suggested by recent work on mirror-neurons in both animals and humans.  Read more at location 1589

Long before the days of Prozac, however, alcohol, narcotics, analgesics, and hormones such as estrogens and testosterone, along with a host of psychotropic drugs, had shown that feelings can be altered by chemical substances.  Read more at location 1612

If feelings arise from neural patterns that map myriad aspects of the ongoing body state, then the parsimonious hypothesis is that mood-altering chemicals produce their magic by changing the pattern of activity in those body-sensing maps. They can do so by means of three different mechanisms, working separately or in conjunction: One mechanism interferes with the transmission of signals from the body; another works by creating a particular pattern of activity within the body maps; yet another works by changing the very state of the body. All these mechanisms are open for drugs to perform their sleight of hand.  Read more at location 1635

All of these accounts report a remarkably uniform set of changes in the body—relaxation, warmth, numbness, anesthesia, analgesia, orgastic release, energy. Again, it makes no difference whether these changes actually occur in the body and are conveyed to somatosensing maps, or are directly concocted in these maps, or both. The sensations are accompanied by a set of syntonic thoughts—thoughts of positive events, an increased capacity "to understand," physical and intellectual power, removal of barriers and preoccupations. Curiously, the first four accounts came after cocaine highs. Ecstasy users reported the next three, and heroin users reported the last five. Alcohol produces more modest but comparable effects. The fact that the effects share a body core is all the more impressive considering that the substances that caused them are chemically different and act on different chemical systems in the brain. All of these substances act by occupying brain systems as if the molecules were being created from the inside.  Read more at location 1656

For example, cocaine and amphetamine act on the dopamine system. But the currently fashionable variant of amphetamine known as ecstasy (a mouthful of a molecule known as methylenedioxymethamphetamine or MDMA) acts on the serotonin system.  Read more at location 1663

****  Feeling pain or feeling pleasure consists of having biological processes in which our body image, as depicted in the brain's body maps, is conformed in a certain pattern. Drugs such as morphine or aspirin alter that pattern. So do ecstasy and scotch. So do anesthetics. So do certain forms of meditation. So do thoughts of despair. So do thoughts of hope and salvation.  Read more at location 1678

Consider, first of all, that literally every region of the body is being mapped at the very same time because every region of the body contains nerve endings that can signal back to the central nervous system as to the state of the living cells that constitute that particular region. The signaling is complex. It is not a matter of "zeros" or "ones" indicating, for example, that a living cell is on or off. The signals are highly variegated. For example, nerve endings can indicate the magnitude of the concentration of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the vicinity of a cell. They can index the pH of the chemical bath in which every living cell is immersed. They can signal the presence of toxic compounds, external or internal. They also can detect the appearance of internally generated chemical molecules such as cytokines that indicate distress and impending disease for a living cell. In addition, nerve endings can indicate the state of contraction of muscle fibers, all the way from the smooth muscle fibers that constitute the wall of every artery, big or small, anywhere in the body, to the large, striated muscle fibers that constitute the muscles of our limbs, chest wall, or face. Nerve endings can thus indicate to the brain what viscera such as the skin or the gut are doing at any given moment. Moreover, in addition to the information they get from nerve endings, the body mappings that constitute the substrates of feelings in the brain are also directly informed about myriad variations in the concentration of chemical molecules in the bloodstream, via a nonneural route. For example, in the part of the brain known as the hypothalamus, groups of neurons directly read the concentration of glucose (sugar) or water in your blood and take action accordingly. The action they take, as mentioned earlier, is designated as a drive or appetite.  Read more at location 1687

Likewise, a diminishing concentration of water molecules leads to thirst and water conservation. This is achieved by ordering the kidneys not to eliminate as much water and by changing the respiratory pattern so that less water is lost in the air we exhale.  Read more at location 1701

****  As the brain surveys the entire organism, locally and directly—via nerve endings—and globally and chemically—via the bloodstream—the detail of these maps and their variegation are quite remarkable. They perform samplings of the state of life throughout the living organism, and from those amazingly extensive samplings they can distill integrated state maps. I suspect that when we say that we feel well or that we feel rotten, the sensation we experience is drawn from composite samplings based on the mapping of the internal milieu chemistries.  Read more at location 1705

****  (Note:   artificial intelligence)  Our brains and minds have a global concern for the integrity of our entire living real estate, every nook and cranny of it, and underneath it all, every nook and cranny has a local, automated concern with itself. These distinctions are chronically glossed over whenever living organisms and intelligent machines, e.g., robots, are compared.  Read more at location 1742

****  (Note:   recursive)  The nerve sensors that convey the requisite information to the brain and the nerve nuclei and nerve sheaths that map the information inside of it are living cells themselves, subject to the same life risk of other cells, and in need of comparable homeostatic regulation. These nerve cells are not impartial bystanders. They are not innocent conveyances or blank slates or mirrors waiting for something to reflect.  Read more at location 1751

Feelings are based on composite representations of the state of life in the process of being adjusted for survival in a state of optimal operations. The representations range from the myriad components of an organism to the level of the whole organism. The way feelings feel is tied to: 1. The intimate design of the life process in a multicellular organism with a complex brain. 2. The operation of the life process. 3. The corrective reactions that certain life states automatically engender, and the innate and acquired reactions that organisms engage given the presence, in their brain maps, of certain objects and situations. 4. The fact that when regulatory reactions are engaged due to internal or external causes, the flow of the life process is made either more efficient, unimpeded, and easier, or less so. 5. The nature of the neural medium in which all of these structures and processes are mapped.  Read more at location 1767

Perhaps we can say with some confidence that positive and negative feelings are determined by the state of life regulation. The signal is given by the closeness to, or departure from, those states that are most representative of optimal life regulation. Incidentally, the "intensity" of feelings also is likely to be related to the degree of corrections necessary in negative states, and to the degree to which positive states exceed the homeostatic set point in the optimal direction.  Read more at location 1782

Chapter 4

Ever Since Feelings 

Of Joy and Sorrow 

We can agree with Spinoza when he said that joy (laetitia in his Latin text) was associated with a transition of the organism to a state of greater perfection.1 That is greater perfection in the sense of greater functional harmony, no doubt, and greater perfection in the sense that the power and freedom to act are increased.2 But we should be mindful of the fact that the maps of joy can be falsified by a host of drugs and thus fail to reflect the actual state of the organism.  Read more at location 1824

The maps related to sorrow, in both the broad and narrow senses of the word, are associated with states of functional disequilibrium. The ease of action is reduced. There is pain of some kind, signs of disease or signs of physiological discord—all of which are indicative of a less than optimal coordination of life functions. If unchecked, the situation is conducive to disease and death.  Read more at location 1829

For example, it is reported that the drug ecstasy produces highs characterized by a quietly pleasurable state and benign accompanying thoughts. Repeated use of the drug, however, induces more and more severe depressions, which follow highs that become less and less so. The normal operation of the serotonin system appears to be directly affected,  Read more at location 1835

****  Feelings are the mental manifestations of balance and harmony, of disharmony and discord.  Read more at location 1853

Joy and sorrow are mental revelations of the state of the life process, except when drugs or depression corrupt the fidelity of the revelation (although it could be argued that the sickness revealed by depression is, after all, faithful to the true state of life). How intriguing that feelings bear witness to the state of life deep within.  Read more at location 1856

Feelings and Social Behavior 

In a number of studies published over the past two decades, our research team and others have shown that when previously normal individuals sustain damage to brain regions necessary for the deployment of certain classes of emotions and feelings, their ability to govern their lives in society is extremely disturbed. Their ability to make appropriate decisions is compromised in situations in which the outcomes are uncertain, such as making a financial investment or entering an important relationship.  Read more at location 1862

After the onset of their brain lesion these patients are generally not able to hold on to their premorbid social status, and all of them cease to be financially independent. They usually do not become violent, and their misbehavior does not tend to violate the law. Nonetheless, the proper governance of their lives is profoundly affected.  Read more at location 1867

The typical patient with this condition was a hardworking and successful individual who performed a skilled job and earned a good living until the onset of the disease. Several patients we studied were active in social affairs and were even perceived by others as community leaders. After the onset of prefrontal damage, a completely changed person emerges. The patients remained skilled enough to hold a job but could not be counted on to report to work reliably or to execute all the tasks necessary for a goal to be accomplished. The ability to plan activities was impaired on a daily basis as well as in the long-term. Financial planning was especially compromised.  Read more at location 1870

The immediate cause of the problem is brain damage in a specific region. In the most serious and telling cases, those in which the disturbances of social behavior dominate the clinical picture, there is damage to some regions of the frontal lobe. The prefrontal sector, especially the part known as ventromedial, is involved in most, though not all, such cases.  Read more at location 1882

Damage to a few other brain regions, namely the parietal sector of the right cerebral hemisphere, causes a similar problem, although less pure, in the sense that other prominent neurological symptoms also are present. The parietal patients with comparable problems are usually paralyzed on the left side of their bodies, at least in part. The distinction of the patients with damage to the ventromedial sector of the frontal lobe is that their problems seem confined to their strange social behavior. For all intents and purposes they look normal.  Read more at location 1886

They are intelligent in the technical sense of the term, that is, they can score highly on IQ measurements. They can solve logical problems. For a long time, attempts were made to account for these patients' poor decision-making on the basis of cognitive failures.  Read more at location 1900

These patients exhibit extensive knowledge about the social situations that they so egregiously mismanaged in reality. They know the premises of the problem, the options of action, the likely consequences of those actions immediately and in the long-term, and how to navigate such knowledge logically. 7 But all of this is to no avail when they need it most in the real world.  Read more at location 1909

Inside a Decision-Making Mechanism 

The patients were not making use of the emotion-related experience they had accumulated in their lifetimes. Decisions made in these emotion-impoverished circumstances led to erratic or downright negative results, especially so in terms of future consequences. The compromise was most notable for situations involving markedly conflicting options and uncertainty of outcomes. Choosing a career, deciding whether to marry, or launching a new business are examples  Read more at location 1922

as personal experience is accumulated, varied categories of social situation are formed. The knowledge we store regarding those life experiences includes: 1. The facts of the problem presented; 2. The option chosen to solve it; 3. The factual outcome to the solution, and, importantly, 4. The outcome of the solution in terms of emotion and feeling.  Read more at location 1929

In neural terms, the mechanism works like this: When circuits in posterior sensory cortices and in temporal and parietal regions process a situation that belongs to a given conceptual category, the prefrontal circuits that hold records pertinent to that category of events become active. Next comes activation of regions that trigger appropriate emotional signals, such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortices, courtesy of an acquired link between that category of event and past emotional-feeling responses. This arrangement allows us to connect categories of social knowledge—whether acquired or refined through individual experience—with the innate, gene-given apparatus of social emotions and their subsequent feelings. Among these emotions/feelings, I accord special importance to those that are associated with the future outcome of actions, because they come to signal a prediction of the future, an anticipation of the consequence of actions.  Read more at location 1953

What the Mechanism Accomplishes

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." The emotional signal can also produce the contrary of an alarm signal, and urge the rapid endorsement of a certain option because, in the system's history, it has been associated with a positive outcome. In brief, the signal marks options and outcomes with a positive or negative signal that narrows the decision-making space and increases the probability that the action will conform to past experience. Because the signals are, in one way or another, body-related, I began referring to this set of ideas as "the somatic-marker hypothesis."  Read more at location 1966

The emotional signal is not a substitute for proper reasoning. It has an auxiliary role, increasing the efficiency of the reasoning process and making it speedier.  Read more at location 1971

First, it is possible to produce gut feelings without actually using the body, drawing instead on the as-if-body-loop that I discussed in the previous chapter. Second, and more importantly, the emotional signal can operate entirely under the radar of consciousness. It can produce alterations in working memory, attention, and reasoning so that the decision-making process is biased toward selecting the action most likely to lead to the best possible outcome, given prior experience. The individual may not ever be cognizant of this covert operation.  Read more at location 1977

Although hardly mainstream, the idea that emotions are inherently rational has a long history. Both Aristotle and Spinoza obviously thought that at least some emotions, in the right circumstances, were rational. In a way, so did David Hume and Adam Smith. The contemporary philosophers Ronald de Sousa and Martha Nussbaum also have argued persuasively for the rationality of emotion. In this context the term rational does not denote explicit logical reasoning but rather an association with actions or outcomes that are beneficial to the organism exhibiting emotions.  Read more at location 1994

The Breakdown of a Normal Mechanism 

Given the cognitive and neural setup we discussed earlier, we can understand why sustaining damage to the prefrontal region early in life has devastating consequences. The first consequence is that the innate social emotions and feelings are not deployed normally. At the very least, this leads the young patients to abnormal interactions with others. They react inappropriately in a host of social situations, and, in turn, others will react inappropriately to them. The young patients develop a skewed concept of the social world. Second, the young patients fail to acquire a repertoire of emotional reactions tuned to specific prior actions. This is because the learning of a connection between a particular action and its emotional consequences depends on the integrity of the prefrontal region. The experience of pain, which is part of punishment, becomes disconnected from the action that caused the punishment, and thus there will not be a memory of their conjunction for future use; likewise for the pleasurable aspects of reward. Third, there is a deficient individual buildup of personal knowledge about the social world. The categorizing of situations, the categorizing of adequate and inadequate responses, and the lay down and connection of conventions and rules, are distorted.  Read more at location 2060

If social emotions and feelings are not properly deployed, and if the relation between social situations and joy and sorrow breaks down, the individual cannot categorize the experience of events in his autobiographical memory record according to the emotion/feeling mark that confers "goodness" or "badness" upon those experiences. That would preclude any subsequent level of construction of the notions of goodness and badness, namely the reasoned cultural construction of what ought to be considered good or bad, given its good or bad effects.  Read more at location 2110

Neurobiology and Ethical Behaviors 

Ethical behaviors are a subset of social behaviors. They can be investigated with a full range of scientific approaches, from anthropology to neurobiology. The latter encompasses techniques as diverse as experimental neuropsychology (at the level of large-scale systems) and genetics (at the molecular level). The most fruitful results are likely to come from combined approaches.  Read more at location 2131

Evidence from birds (such as ravens) and mammals (such as vampire bats, wolves, baboons, and chimpanzees) indicates that other species can behave in what appears, to our sophisticated eyes, as an ethical manner. They exhibit sympathy, attachments, embarrassment, dominant pride, and humble submission. They can censure and recompense certain actions of others. Vampire bats, for example, can detect cheaters among the food gatherers in their group and punish them accordingly. Ravens can do likewise. Such examples are especially convincing among primates, and are by no means confined to our nearest cousins, the big apes. Rhesus monkeys can behave in a seemingly altruistic manner toward other monkeys. In an intriguing experiment conducted by Robert Miller and discussed by Marc Hauser, monkeys abstained from pulling a chain that would deliver food to them if pulling the chain also caused another monkey to receive an electric shock. Some monkeys would not eat for hours, even days. Suggestively, the animals most likely to behave in an altruistic manner were those that knew the potential target of the shock.  Read more at location 2135

As Frans de Waal has shown in his work, there are bad-natured apes, aggressive and territorial chimpanzees, and good-natured apes, the bonobos, whose wonderful personality resembles a marriage of Bill Clinton and Mother Teresa.  Read more at location 2152

The history of our civilization is, to some extent, the history of a persuasive effort to extend the best of "moral sentiments" to wider and wider circles of humanity, beyond the restrictions of the inner groups, eventually encompassing the whole of humanity.  Read more at location 2177

I believe that ethical behaviors depend on the workings of certain brain systems. But the systems are not centers—we do not have one or a few "moral centers." Not even the ventromedial prefrontal cortex should be conceived as a center. Moreover, the systems that support ethical behaviors are probably not dedicated to ethics exclusively. They are dedicated to biological regulation, memory, decision-making, and creativity. Ethical behaviors are the wonderful and most useful side effects of those other activities. But I see no moral center in the brain, and not even a moral system, as such. On these hypotheses then, the grounding role of feelings is tied to their natural life-monitoring function.  Read more at location 2196

Homeostasis and the Governance of Social Life 

all living creatures are given equal access to automatic solutions for managing life's basic problems, commensurate with their complexity and with the complexity of their niche in the environment. The regulation of our adult life, however, must go beyond those automated solutions because our environment is so physically and socially complex that conflict easily arises due to competition for resources necessary for survival and well-being. Simple processes such as obtaining food and finding a mate become complicated activities.  Read more at location 2214

The constitution that governs a democratic state, the laws that are consonant with that constitution, and application of those laws in a judicial system also are homeostatic devices. They are linked by a long umbilical cord to the other tiers of homeostatic regulation on which they are modeled: appetites/desires, emotions/feelings, and the conscious governance of both. So is the fledgling, twentieth-century development of worldwide bodies of social coordination, such as the World Health Organization, UNESCO, and the much-maligned United Nations. All of these institutions can be seen as part and parcel of the tendency to promote homeostasis on a large scale.  Read more at location 2255

The Foundation of Virtue 

Spinoza

The quote comes from Proposition 18 in part IV of The Ethics and it reads: "...the very first foundation of virtue is the endeavor (conatum) to preserve the individual self, and happiness consists in the human capacity to preserve its self."  Read more at location 2272

how does Spinoza move from oneself to all the selves to whom virtue must apply? Spinoza makes the transition relying again on biological facts. Here is the procedure: The biological reality of self-preservation leads to virtue because in our inalienable need to maintain ourselves we must, of necessity, help preserve other selves. If we fail to do so we perish and are thus violating the foundational principle, and relinquishing the virtue that lies in self-preservation. The secondary foundation of virtue then is the reality of a social structure and the presence of other living organisms in a complex system of interdependence with our own organism. We are in a bind, literally, in the good sense of the word.  Read more at location 2288

Again, good and evil are not revealed, they are discovered, individually or by agreement among social beings. The definition of good and evil is simple and sound. Good objects are those that prompt, in reliable and sustainable fashion, the states of joy that Spinoza sees as enhancing the power and freedom of action. Evil objects are those that elicit the opposite result: Their encounters with an organism are disagreeable to that organism.  Read more at location 2299

(Note: Golden rule, pitched as utilitarian)  Good actions are those that, while producing good for the individual via the natural appetites and emotions, do not harm other individuals. The injunction is unequivocal. An action that might be personally beneficial but would harm others is not good because harming others always haunts and eventually harms the individual who causes the harm.  Read more at location 2304

Conscious humans know of appetites and emotions as feelings, and those feelings deepen their knowledge of the fragility of life and turn it into a concern. And for all the reasons outlined above the concern overflows from the self to the other.  Read more at location 2334

What Are Feelings For? 

The answer to "why" begins as follows. In order for the brain to coordinate the myriad body functions on which life depends, it needs to have maps in which the state of varied body systems are represented moment by moment.  Read more at location 2356

Neural maps that are critical for the governance of life turn out to be a necessary basis for the mental states we call feelings. This takes us one more step into the answer to the "why" question: feelings probably arose as a by-product of the brain's involvement in the management of life. Had there been no neural maps of body state there might never have been such a thing as feelings.  Read more at location 2362

What does the feeling level add to problem-solving and decision-making that the neural-map level of those events, as currently described by neuroscience, cannot offer? In my view there are two tiers to the answer, one that has to do with the status of feelings as mental events in the conscious mind, another that has to do with what feelings stand for.  Read more at location 2372

Conscious feelings are prominent mental events that call attention to the emotions that begat them, and to the objects that triggered those emotions. In individuals who also have an autobiographical self—the sense of personal past and anticipated future also known as extended consciousness—the state of feeling prompts the brain to process emotion-related objects and situations saliently. The appraisal process that led to the isolation of the object and the onset of the emotion can be revisited and analyzed as needed.  Read more at location 2380

Chapter 5

Body, Brain, and Mind 

Body and Mind 

Until recently the mind-body problem remained a philosophical topic, outside the realm of empirical science.  Read more at location 2413

It is important to note, however, that consciousness and mind are not synonymous. In the strict sense, consciousness is the process whereby a mind is imbued with a reference we call self, and is said to know of its own existence and of the existence of objects around it. Elsewhere I have explained that in certain neurological conditions there is evidence that the mind process continues, but consciousness is impaired. Consciousness and conscious mind, however, are synonymous.  Read more at location 2416

The Invisible Body 

the substance dualism view is the account that Descartes helped dignify and which is difficult to reconcile with his remarkable scientific achievements. Descartes was ahead of his peers in the way he conceived of complicated mechanisms for the operations of the body. He broke with the scholastic tradition by weaving together two worlds that remained separate until then: the physical-inorganic and the living-organic. He was equally adroit at conceiving sophisticated operations for the mind and insisted that mind and body influenced each other mutually. Yet he never proposed a plausible means for those mutual influences to exert themselves. In a bizarre twist, Descartes proposed that mind and body interacted, but never explained how the interaction might take place beyond saying that the pineal gland was the conduit for such interactions.  Read more at location 2466

As the observations made possible by introspection became increasingly informed by the modern scientific facts of neurobiology, the substance dualistic view of the mind-body problem lost its appeal. Mental phenomena were revealed as closely dependent on the operation of many specific systems of brain circuits. For example: Seeing depends on several specific neural regions located along pathways from the retina to the cerebral hemispheres. When one of those regions is removed, vision is disturbed. When all of the vision-related neural regions are removed, vision is compromised in its entirety. Likewise for hearing, smelling, moving, speaking, or whatever high mental function you fancy. Even minor perturbations of the specific neural systems entail a major modification of mental phenomena.  Read more at location 2490

****  (Note:   the need to understand cognition as embodied)  While the modern scientific coupling of brain and mind is most welcome, it does not do away with the dualistic split between mind and body. It simply shifts the position of the split. In the most popular and current of the modern views, the mind and brain go together, on one side, and the body (that is, the entire organism minus the brain) goes on the other side.  Read more at location 2503

****  (Note:   embodied cognition)  Working toward a solution, even a partial solution, requires a change in perspective. It requires an understanding that the mind arises from or in a brain situated within a body-proper with which it interacts; that due to the mediation of the brain, the mind is grounded in the body-proper; that the mind has prevailed in evolution because it helps maintain the body-proper; and that the mind arises from or in biological tissue—nerve cells—that share the same characteristics that define other living tissues in the body-proper.  Read more at location 2515

Losing the Body and Losing the Mind 

a certain patient I saw as a young neurologist. Pointing to his own body with precision, the patient described a strange sensation that would begin in the pit of his stomach and then rise into his chest, whereupon he would lose the feeling of the body below that level as if he were under local anesthesia. The anesthesia-like feeling would continue to rise and by the time it would reach up to his throat, he would pass out. The patient was describing the upward march of a distortion in the sensation of his body, immediately followed by a complete loss of consciousness when the feeling of his body had gone from strange to entirely absent. A few moments after these momentous events, unbeknownst to him, he would be shaken by convulsions, as part of his epileptic fit. Minutes later, the seizure over, the patient would be returned to his normal life. It is common for patients with epilepsy to describe strange sensations prior to the onset of the seizures. These phenomena are called auras, and auras such as this patient's, which begin near the stomach or the lower chest, are called "epigastric." They are one of the most common varieties of the phenomenon.  Read more at location 2523

*******  the case raised this possibility: When the ongoing brain mapping of the body was suspended so was the mind. In a way, removing the mental presence of the body was like pulling the rug from under the mind.  Read more at location 2534

Many years later, seeing a patient with a condition known as asomatognosia, the suggestion outlined above became more plausible.  Read more at location 2537

The patient stayed awake and alert during the unfolding of these disquieting episodes, although she could not will herself to move and could think of nothing else but her unusual condition. It was hardly a normal state of mind, obviously, but still mind enough to observe and report on that commotion. In the patient's vivid description, "I didn't lose any sense of being, just lost my body," although, to be precise, she should have said that she lost part of her body. The condition raised the possibility that as long as there is some body representation—as long as the rug was not pulled completely from under the mind—the mind process could be grounded. It also raised the possibility that some body representations may be of greater value than others to ground the mind, namely, those that pertain to the organism's interior, specifically to the viscera and internal milieu.  Read more at location 2541

******  (Note:  his view of embodied cognition summarized)

• That the body (the body-proper) and the brain form an integrated organism and interact fully and mutually via chemical and neural pathways.

• That brain activity is aimed primarily at assisting with the regulation of the organism's life processes both by coordinating internal body-proper operations, and by coordinating the interactions between the organism as a whole and the physical and social aspects of the environment.

• That brain activity is aimed primarily at survival with well-being; a brain equipped for such a primary aim can engage in anything else secondarily from writing poetry to designing spaceships.

• That in complex organisms such as ours, the brain's regulatory operations depend on the creation and manipulation of mental images (ideas or thoughts) in the process we call mind.

• That the ability to perceive objects and events, external to the organism or internal to it, requires images. Examples of images related to the exterior include visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory images. Pain and nausea are examples of images of the interior. The execution of both automatic and deliberated responses requires images. The anticipation and planning of future responses also require images.

• That the critical interface between body-proper activities and the mental patterns we call images consists of specific brain regions employing circuits of neurons to construct continual, dynamic neural patterns corresponding to different activities in the body—in effect, mapping those activities as they occur.

• That the mapping is not necessarily a passive process. The structures in which the maps are formed have their own say on the mapping and are influenced by other brain structures.  Read more at location 2560

**********  the mind is part of that well-woven apparatus. In other words, body, brain, and mind are manifestations of a single organism. Although we can dissect them under the microscope, for scientific purposes they are in effect inseparable under normal operating circumstances.  Read more at location 2576

The Assembly of Body Images 

the brain produces two kinds of images of the body. The first I call images from the flesh. It comprises images of the body's interior, drawn, for example, from the sketchy neural patterns that map the structure and state of viscera such as the heart, the gut, and the muscles, along with the state of numerous chemical parameters in the organism's interior. The second kind of body image concerns particular parts of the body, such as the retina in the back of the eye and the cochlea in the inner ear. I call these images from special sensory probes. They are images based on the state of activity in those particular body parts when they are modified by objects that physically impinge upon those devices from outside the body.  Read more at location 2579

(Note: Embodied cognition)  I believe that the foundational images in the stream of mind are images of some kind of body event, whether the event happens in the depth of the body or in some specialized sensory device near its periphery. The basis for those foundational images is a collection of brain maps, that is, a collection of patterns of neuron activity and inactivity (neural patterns, for short) in a variety of sensory regions. Those brain maps represent, comprehensively, the structure and state of the body at any given time. Some maps relate to the world within, the organism's interior. Other maps relate to the world outside, the physical world of objects that interact with the organism at specific regions of its shell. In either case, what ends up being mapped in the sensory regions of the brain and what emerges in the mind, in the form of an idea, corresponds to some structure of the body, in a particular state and set of circumstances.  Read more at location 2605

A Qualification  

****  (Note:   leaves very open a path to idealism over physicalism)  There is a major gap in our current understanding of how neural patterns become mental images. The presence in the brain of dynamic neural patterns (or maps) related to an object or event is a necessary but not sufficient basis to explain the mental images of the said object or event. We can describe neural patterns—with the tools of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and neurochemistry—and we can describe images with the tools of introspection. How we get from the former to the latter is known only in part, although the current ignorance neither contradicts the assumption that images are biological processes nor denies their physicality.  Read more at location 2613

At the level of systems, I can explain the process up to the organization of neural patterns on the basis of which mental images will arise. But I fall short of suggesting, let alone explaining, how the last steps of the image-making process are carried out.  Read more at location 2622

The Construction of Reality

**********   The neural patterns and the corresponding mental images of the objects and events outside the brain are creations of the brain related to the reality that prompts their creation rather than passive mirror images reflecting that reality.  Read more at location 2626

For example, when you and I look at an external object, we form comparable images in our respective brains, and we can describe the object in very similar ways. That does not mean, however, that the image we see is a replica of the object. The image we see is based on changes that occurred in our organisms, in the body and in the brain, as the physical structure of that particular object interacts with the body. The ensemble of sensory detectors are located throughout our bodies and help construct neural patterns that map the comprehensive interaction of the organism with the object along its many dimensions.  Read more at location 2627

(Note: Like most, he does assume physical realism)  It should be noted that this does not deny the reality of the objects. The objects are real. Nor does it deny the reality of the interactions between object and organism. And, of course, the images are real too. And yet, the images we experience are brain constructions prompted by an object, rather than mirror reflections of the object.  Read more at location 2641

****  The neural pattern attributed to a certain object is constructed according to the menu of correspondences by selecting and assembling the appropriate tokens. We are so biologically similar among ourselves, however, that we construct similar neural patterns of the same thing. It should not be surprising that similar images arise out of those similar neural patterns. That is why we can accept, without protest, the conventional idea that each of us has formed in our minds the reflected picture of some particular thing.  Read more at location 2650

Seeing Things 

David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel. They showed that an experimental animal (a monkey) looking at a straight line, curved line, or lines positioned at varied angles will form distinct patterns of neural activity in its visual cortex.  Read more at location 2656

Further evidence came from an experiment by Roger Tootell in which an experimental animal (also a monkey) confronted a visual stimulus, for example, a cross, and a directly correspondent pattern could be identified in a specific layer of the animal's visual cortex—layer 4B of the primary visual cortex, also known as Brodmann's area 17 or area V1.  Read more at location 2659

consider the visual devices available to a very simple creature, a variety of marine invertebrate known as Ophiocoma wendtii. O. wendtii is a brittle star, capable of fleeing rapidly and effectively from an approaching predator, and taking refuge in rocky caves and crevices in the vicinity. Given that the animal's external skeleton is made of hard calcium, that it lacks eyes, and that its nervous system is quite primitive, these evasive behaviors have long been a mystery. It turns out, however, that a good part of the animal's body is made of tiny calcium lenses that behave very much like an eye. The lenses focus incoming light into a small area beneath each lens where a bundle of nerves can then become active as a result. A predator's pattern can be mapped this way, and so can the pattern formed by a nearby crevice that can serve as hideaway.  Read more at location 2667

By no means am I suggesting that this creature thinks, although we can be certain it acts, and that it does so on the basis of freshly formed neural patterns. I am not even inclined to believe that, in such a simple nervous system, those neural patterns become mental images necessarily. I am simply using these facts to illustrate the genealogies of body-to-nervous system signaling on the basis of which body-to-mind influences can be understood. The human eye and its retina do something quite similar to the lenses of O. wendtii. But the eye's mechanism is far more complex  Read more at location 2674

a special class of retinal cells that respond to light and influence the operation of a nucleus in the hypothalamus—the suprachiasmatic nucleus—known to regulate the day-night cycles and respective sleep patterns. That the rods and cones that form the front layer of the retina respond to light has long been known, and their responses are essential for vision. The intriguing new finding is that the influence of light on the hypothalamus is not mediated by the rods and cones; after destruction of the rods and cones, the light continues to pace the day-night cycle. A set of cells in the next layer—the retinal ganglion cell layer—seems to do this job. Moreover, the set of retinal ganglion cells that carries out this job is quite distinct—the retinal ganglion cells that receive signals from the rods and cones are not involved in the operation.  Read more at location 2681

Of great interest is the fact that the cells in question—unlike those that help with vision—are not interested in precisely where the light falls. Slowly and calmly, they respond like the light meters we use in photography to the overall luminance and the radiant light diffused inside the eye. It is tempting to see these cells as part of older and less sophisticated body sensors and preoccupied with overall conditions—namely the amount of ambient light surrounding an entire organism—rather than with the detailed shaping of light caused by external objects. In this sense they resemble the lenses of O. wendtii,  Read more at location 2691

About the Origins of the Mind 

****  The influence of the body in the organization of the mind also can be detected in the metaphors our cognitive systems have developed to describe events and qualities in the world. Many of those metaphors are based on the work of our own imagination regarding the typical activities and experiences of the human body, such as postures, attitudes, direction of movement, feelings, and so on. For example, the ideas of happiness, health, life, and goodness are associated with "up" by word and gesture. Sadness, illness, death, and evil are associated with "down." The future is associated with "ahead." Mark Johnson and George Lakoff have explained quite persuasively how the categorization of certain body actions and postures has led to certain schemas that eventually are denoted by a gesture or word.  Read more at location 2707

The brain does not begin its day as a tabula rasa. The brain is imbued at the start of life with knowledge regarding how the organism should be managed, namely how the life process should be run and how a variety of events in the external environment should be handled. Many mapping sites and connections are present at birth;  Read more at location 2716

In brief, the brain brings along innate knowledge and automated know-how, predetermining many ideas of the body. The consequence of this knowledge and know-how is that many of the body signals destined to become ideas, in the manner we have discussed so far, happen to be engendered by the brain. The brain commands the body to assume a certain state and behave in a certain way, and the ideas are based on those body states and body behaviors. The prime example of this arrangement concerns drives and emotions.  Read more at location 2720

********  The mind exists for the body, is engaged in telling the story of the body's multifarious events, and uses that story to optimize the life of the organism.  Read more at location 2738

Much as I dislike sentences that require laborious parsing, I am tempted to offer one as a summary of my view: The brain's body-furnished, body-minded mind is a servant of the whole body.  Read more at location 2739

Why do we need the neurobiological level of operations that also includes what we call mind and consciousness?  Read more at location 2744

In effect, even the mere suspension of the self-component of consciousness entails a disruption of life management and returns a human being to a state of dependence comparable to that of a toddler.  Read more at location 2748

perhaps the sheer complexity of sensory phenomena at the mental level permits easier integration across modalities, e.g., visual with auditory, visual and auditory with tactile, etc. In addition, the mental level also would permit the integration of actual images of every sensory stripe with pertinent images recalled from memory. Moreover, these abundant integrations would prove fertile ground for the image manipulation required for problem-solving and creativity in general. The answer, then, is that mental images would allow an ease of manipulation of information that the neural-map level (as described so far) would not permit.  Read more at location 2751

****  (Note:   suggests how religion calls to a deeper understanding of reality: evolution urges individual survival, mystical religion suggests broader context of all as one)  The sense of self introduces, within the mental level of processing, the notion that all the current activities represented in brain and mind pertain to a single organism whose auto-preservation needs are the basic cause of most events currently represented. The sense of self orients the mental planning process toward the satisfaction of those needs.  Read more at location 2760

Body, Mind, and Spinoza

Spinoza was changing the perspective he inherited from Descartes when he said, in The Ethics, Part I, that thought and extension, while distinguishable, are nonetheless attributes of the same substance, God or Nature. The reference to a single substance serves the purpose of claiming mind as inseparable from body, both created, somehow, from the same cloth.  Read more at location 2776

In a strict sense, the mind did not cause the body and the body did not cause the mind.  Read more at location 2783

The real breakthrough, as I see it, regards Spinoza's notion of the human mind, which he defines transparently as consisting of the idea of the human body. Spinoza uses "idea" as a synonym for image or mental representation or component of thought. He calls it "a mental conception which is formed by the mind of a thinking entity."  Read more at location 2807

Consider Spinoza's exact words: "The object of the idea constituting the human Mind is the Body," which appears in Proposition 13 of Part II of The Ethics.  Read more at location 2811

in Proposition 15: "The human mind is capable of perceiving a great number of things, and is so in proportion as its body is capable of receiving a great number of impressions." Perhaps most importantly, consider Proposition 26: "The human Mind does not perceive any external body as actually existing except through the ideas of the modification (affections) of its own body." Spinoza is not merely saying that mind springs fully formed from substance on equal footing with body. He is assuming a mechanism whereby the equal footing can be realized.  Read more at location 2824

in Proposition 22 (The Ethics, Part II), Spinoza does privilege the mind: "The human mind perceives not only the modifications of the body, but also the ideas of such modifcations." Which really means that once you form an idea of a certain object, you can form an idea of the idea, and an idea of the idea of the idea, and so forth.  Read more at location 2857

The notion of "ideas of ideas" is important on many counts. For example, it opens the way for representing relationships and creating symbols. Just as importantly, it opens a way for creating an idea of self.  Read more at location 2861

This second-order idea I call self is inserted in the flow of ideas in the mind, and it offers the mind a fragment of newly created knowledge: the knowledge that our body is engaged in interacting with an object. I believe such a mechanism is critical for the generation of consciousness, in the comprehensive sense of the term,  Read more at location 2866

What is Spinoza's insight then? That mind and body are parallel and mutually correlated processes, mimicking each other at every crossroad, as two faces of the same thing. That deep inside these parallel phenomena there is a mechanism for representing body events in the mind.  Read more at location 2891

Closing with Dr. Tulp 

Rembrandt's painting celebrates Dr. Tulp's fame as a physician and scientist on the occasion of a particular anatomy lesson in January 1632. The Guild of Surgeons wished to honor Dr. Tulp with a painting and no better theme could be found than a theatrical anatomical dissection, a public and paid event that attracted the curiosity of the educated and the wealthy. But the painting also celebrates a new era in the study of the body and its functions,  Read more at location 2902

Tulp does not face the viewer, nor does he look at what he is doing, nor does he glance at his colleagues. He stares leftward into a distance beyond the confines of the frame and, if historian Simon Schama is correct, beyond the confines of the room. Schama suggests that Dr. Tulp is looking at the Creator himself. The interpretation accords well with the fact that Tulp was a devout Calvinist and with these verses written by Caspar Barleus a few years later after the painting gained renown: "Listener, learn yourself and while you proceed through the parts, believe that, even in the smallest, God lies hid." 27 I see Barleus's words as a response to the unease of the discovery, the unease that would have been produced by the inevitable, subsequent thought: If we can explain this about our nature, what can we not explain?  Read more at location 2916

Chapter 6

A Visit to Spinoza

How does one become Spinoza, I ask myself? Or, to phrase it differently, how can we explain his strangeness? Here is a man who firmly disagreed with the leading philosopher of his time, publicly battled organized religion and was expelled from his own, rejected the way of life of his contemporaries, and set goals for his own way of life that some considered saintly and many considered foolish.  Read more at location 2941

The Age 

to use Albert Einstein's words, "before mankind could be ripe for a science which takes in the whole of reality, a second fundamental truth was needed ... all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it."1 Einstein singled out Galileo as the epitome of this attitude—he saw him as the "father of modern science altogether"—but Bacon was another leading proponent of the new approach. Both Galileo and Bacon advocated experimentation and proceeded by the gradual elimination of false explanations. And Galileo added something else: He believed the universe could be described in the language of mathematics, a notion that would provide a cornerstone for the emergence of modern science. Spinoza's birth coincided with the first flowering of science in the modern world.  Read more at location 2961

This epoch was so intellectually crowded that roughly about the time Spinoza was born Thomas Hobbes and Descartes were rising as philosophical figures and William Harvey was describing the circulation of the blood. Within Spinoza's own brief life, the world also would learn about the work of Blaise Pascal, Johannes Kepler, Huygens, Gottfried Leibniz, and Isaac Newton (who was born a mere ten years after Spinoza). As Alfred North Whitehead says aptly, "There simply was not time for the century to space out nicely its notable events concerning men of genius."  Read more at location 2970

Spinoza may have been no more radical than Galileo in his observations, but he was more contusive and even more uncompromising. He was the most intolerable kind of iconoclast. He threatened the edifice of organized religion at its foundations, at once fearlessly and modestly. By extension he threatened the political structures closely associated with religion.  Read more at location 2978

Spinoza was thirty-eight when he arrived in The Hague, alone, as was his custom. He brought a bookcase with his library, a desk, a bed, and his lens-making equipment. He would complete The Ethics in the two rooms he rented  Read more at location 2985

Spinoza was born into a wealthy family. His uncle Abraham was one of Amsterdam's wealthiest merchants, and Spinoza's mother had brought a large dowry into her marriage. Yet by his late twenties Spinoza had become indifferent to personal wealth and social status, although he continued to see nothing wrong with business profits. He simply did not find money and possessions rewarding,  Read more at location 3000

the subject of money and possessions this last episode was a watershed. Spinoza renounced the inheritance altogether except for one item: his parents' bed. The ledikant would accompany him from place to place, and he would eventually die in it.  Read more at location 3010

Spinoza subsisted on his lens manufacturing work and, after 1667, on the small pension from de Vries. The money was enough to pay room and board; to buy paper, ink, glass, and tobacco; and to satisfy the doctor's bills. He required nothing else.  Read more at location 3027

By 1672, Amsterdam's Jewish community had grown to about 7,500 members. It accounted for 13 percent of the bankers but less than four percent of the population.  Read more at location 3076

Spinoza may have been destined, at first, for a career in business, but instead he became a brilliant student of Judaism, mentored by Rabbi Mortera and Rabbi ben Israel.  Read more at location 3091

Spinoza proved to be a diligent and hardworking student. But the same diligence and inquisitiveness that made him an authority on the Talmud also made him question the foundations of the knowledge he so thoroughly absorbed.  Read more at location 3096

No later than age twenty and perhaps as early as eighteen, Spinoza enrolled in the school of Frans Van den Enden with the stated purpose of learning Latin. Van den Enden was a lapsed Catholic, a free thinker, a polyglot, and a polymath. He held both medical and law degrees and was knowledgeable in philosophy, politics, religion, music, the arts, you name it. Van den Enden's gargantuan appetite for life had not landed him in trouble, yet, but he created trouble for young Spinoza. At first quietly, then openly, first as an adolescent, then as a young man, Spinoza tasted life outside the community's paradise. He also spoke his mind and acted his mind. The community reacted with disappointment, then outrage. By 1656, two years after his father died, the twenty-four-year-old Spinoza, now responsible for the family firm—"Bento y Gabriel de Espinosa"—had continued to support the synagogue financially. Yet, liberated from any fear of embarrassing his father in front of the community, he made no secret of his ideas regarding the nature of human beings, God, and the practice of religion, none of which accorded easily with Jewish teachings. His philosophy was taking shape and he talked freely about his ideas. No amount of pleading from former mentors silenced his voice.  Read more at location 3102

In 1656 Spinoza was formally banished. Thus came to an end the privileged life of he who was born Bento Spinoza, the name he signed as a businessman, but was known by the community as Baruch Spinoza. Thus began the twenty-one-year life of Benedictus Spinoza, the philosopher whose mature years were spent in The Hague.  Read more at location 3115

Ideas and Events 

Books by Descartes and physicists were the most frequent items in Spinoza's bookcase. Hobbes also was represented, as was Bacon. But Spinoza must have read prolifically in his younger years, borrowing from his circle of well-read friends books that we will never be able to trace.  Read more at location 3119

Spinoza studied the Talmud and the Torah, and read the Kabbalah texts that came out of the Sephardic tradition and were especially popular among the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam. The clash could hardly have been more dramatic. There were miracles in the old texts, but scientific explanations for those miracles could be formulated from the new facts.  Read more at location 3148

The Jews were used to persecution, and the gentlemen's agreement under which they were living in Amsterdam required a fine toeing of the line. There had to be a public display of faith in God, but no public defense of Judaism and no attempt to bring a local citizen into the Jewish faith. There could be no marriages to the local citizens. Most of all, there had to be discretion.  Read more at location 3240

The marranos changed their names frequently, not just for symbolic reasons—such as when Gabriel renamed himself Uriel—but for protection. Aliases confused the Inquisition's spies and delayed the casting of suspicions over family members still in Portugal. The fact that not just activities but also ideas had to be concealed was fresh in the minds of the adults around whom Spinoza was growing up. A stoic attitude is another legacy of marrano life. Life  Read more at location 3296

The elders of the synagogue used every means at their disposal to persuade him to think and behave differently. They promised an annuity of one thousand florins, and one can only imagine the barely polite contempt with which Spinoza declined the offer. Later they issued a "lower" excommunication, which separated Spinoza from the community for thirty days. Even later they may have ordered the murder attempt, which Spinoza survived. The maneuvering simply strengthened Spinoza's resolve. On July 27, 1656, the synagogue finally issued the "high" cherem. A few words about the phenomenon are in order. It is important to note that while cherem is always translated as excommunication, a more accurate translation of the word is banishment or exclusion.  Read more at location 3327

By the standards of Amsterdam's Jewish community, Spinoza's cherem was considered cruel and unusual, violent and destructive. There also is little doubt that the community was embarrassed by this punishment. When Johannes Colerus, Spinoza's main contemporary biographer, first tried to obtain the text of the cherem, the elders stonewalled.  Read more at location 3338

****  (Note: Spinoza excommunication text)  With the judgment of the angels and of the saints we excommunicate, cut off, curse, and anathematize Baruch de Espinoza, with the consent of the elders and of all this holy congregation, in the presence of the holy books: by the 613 precepts which are written therein, with the anathema wherewith Joshua cursed Jericho, with the curse which Elisha laid upon the children, and with all the curses which are written in the law. Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night. Cursed be he in sleeping and cursed be he in waking, cursed in going out and cursed in coming in. The Lord shall not pardon him, the wrath and fury of the Lord shall henceforth be kindled against this man, and shall lay upon him all the curses which are written in the book of the law. The Lord shall destroy his name under the sun, and cut him off for his undoing from all the tribes of Israel, with all the curses of the firmament which are written in the book of the law. But you that cleave unto the Lord your God, live all of you this day. And we warn you, that none may speak with him by work of mouth nor by writing, nor show any favour to him, nor be under one roof with him, nor come within four cubits of him, nor read any paper composed or written by him.  Read more at location 3353

Thus Spinoza was severed from the community. Jewish acquaintances and family were forbidden to see him and had to stay away. He was free as a bird and almost as dispossessed. He called himself Benedictus now.  Read more at location 3362

The Legacy 

Few philosophers or scientists dared side with Spinoza because that would be courting disaster. Supporting any claim by openly citing Spinoza's arguments or tracing an idea to his texts would undermine the chances of having the claim heard. Spinoza was anathema. This applied throughout Europe for the best part of the hundred years that followed Spinoza's death.  Read more at location 3389

Recently, it has become clear that Spinoza's work is a decisive engine behind the development of the Enlightenment, and that his ideas helped shape the central intellectual debate of eighteenth-century Europe, although the history of the period would hardly lead anyone to believe that. Jonathan Israel makes this case convincingly and reveals important facts behind the silence that has led so many to believe that Spinoza's influence died with him.18 Israel offers evidence against the widespread impression that John Locke's work dominated the debate from the very early phases of the Enlightenment. For example, one of the centerpiece publications of the Enlightenment, Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie dedicated five times more space to Spinoza than Locke, although it lavishes more praise on Locke, perhaps, as Israel suggests, with "a diversionary purpose." Israel also points out that in Johann Heinrich Zedler's 1750 Grosses Universal Lexicon—the largest eighteenth-century encyclopedia—the entries for "Spinoza" and "Spinozism" are each larger than the modest entry for Locke. Locke's star does rise, but later.19 Sadly, few philosophers of sound mind, young or old, ever paid public homage to Spinoza, let alone assumed the role of disciple or continuator. Not even Leibniz did so, although he read all of Spinoza's writings before they were published and probably was the best-qualified mind to appreciate Spinoza at the time. He ran for cover, like most everyone else, and adopted a measured critical position instead. The official lights of the Enlightenment did likewise. Privately they were illuminated by Spinoza; publicly they decried him.  Read more at location 3408

Beyond the Enlightenment 

Goethe adopted Spinoza and became his champion, leaving no doubt as to Spinoza's influence on his person and his work.  Read more at location 3430

After having looked round the world in vain for means of developing my nature, I met with the Ethics of that philosopher. Of what I read in the work, and what I read into it, I can give no account; but I found in it a sedative for my passions, and it seemed to unveil a clear broad view over the material and moral world. But what essentially riveted me to him was the boundless disinterestedness which shone forth in every sentence. That wonderful sentiment, 'He who loves God must not expect God to love him in return.'"  Read more at location 3432

Albert Einstein, the emblematic scientist of the twentieth century, did not hesitate to say that Spinoza had a profound influence on him. Einstein felt quite comfortable with Spinoza's views on the universe in general and God in particular.  Read more at location 3466

Chapter 7

Who's There? 

The Contented Life 

Spinoza was content. His frugality was not a ploy. He was not acting an example of sacrifice for posterity. His life and his philosophy probably fused around the ripe old age of thirty-three.  Read more at location 3528

Spinoza's best-known recommendation for achieving a life well lived came in the form of a system for ethical behavior and a prescription for a democratic state. But Spinoza did not think that following ethical rules and the laws of a democratic state would be sufficient for the individual to achieve the highest form of contentment, the sustained joy that he equates with human salvation.  Read more at location 3540

The same natural endeavor of self-preservation that Spinoza articulates so transparently as an essence of our beings, the conatus, is called into action when we are confronted with the reality of suffering and especially the reality of death, actual or anticipated, our own or that of those we love. The very prospect of suffering and death breaks down the homeostatic process of the beholder.  Read more at location 3559

****  (Note:   points toward mystic here and now)  With the help of autobiographical memory, consciousness provides us with a self enriched by the records of our own individual experience. When we face each new moment of life as conscious beings, we bring to bear on that moment the circumstances surrounding our past joys and sorrows, along with the imaginary circumstances of our anticipated future, those circumstances that are presumed to bring on more joys or more sorrows. Were it not for this high level of human consciousness there would be no remarkable anguish to speak of, now or at the dawn of humanity. What we do not know cannot hurt us. If we had the gift of consciousness but were largely deprived of memory, there would be no remarkable anguish either.  Read more at location 3572

It is the two gifts combined, consciousness and memory, along with their abundance, that result in the human drama and confer upon that drama a tragic status, then and now. Fortunately, the same two gifts also are at the source of unbounded enjoyment, sheer human glory. Leading a life examined also brings a privilege and not just a curse. From this perspective, any project for human salvation—any project capable of turning a life examined into a life contented—must include ways to resist the anguish conjured up by suffering and death, cancel it, and substitute joy instead.  Read more at location 3578

Thus attempts at human salvation concern an accommodation to a death foretold or accommodations to physical pain and mental anguish.  Read more at location 3595

Spinoza's Solution 

Spinoza's system does have a God but not a provident God conceived in the image of humans. God is the origin of all there is before our senses, and it is all there is, an uncaused and eternal substance with infinite attributes. For practical purposes God is nature and is most clearly manifest in living creatures. This is captured in an often quoted Spinozism, the expression Deus sive Natura—God or Nature.  Read more at location 3606

****  You need not be in fear of this God because he will never punish you. Nor should you work hard in the hope of getting rewards from him because none will come. The only thing you may fear is your own behavior. When you are less than kind to others, you punish yourself, there and then, and deny yourself the opportunity to achieve inner peace and happiness, there and then. When you are loving to others there is a good chance of achieving inner peace and happiness, there and then. Thus a person's actions should not be aimed at pleasing God, but rather at acting in conformity with the nature of God. When you do so, some kind of happiness results and some kind of salvation is achieved. Now. Spinoza's salvation—salus—is about repeated occasions of a kind of happiness that cumulatively make for a healthy mental condition.  Read more at location 3610

(Note: First is salvation by the law, second is salvation by enlightenment)  Spinoza makes room for two different roads to salvation: one accessible to all, the other more arduous and accessible only to those with disciplined and educated intellects. The accessible road requires a virtuous life in a virtuous civitas, obedient to the rules of a democratic state and mindful of God's nature, somewhat indirectly, with the help of some of the Bible's wisdom. The second road requires all that is needed by the first and, in addition, intuitive access to understanding that Spinoza prized above all other intellectual instruments, and which is itself based on abundant knowledge and sustained reflection.  Read more at location 3621

The Spinoza solution also asks the individual to attempt a break between the emotionally competent stimuli that can trigger negative emotions—passions such as fear, anger, jealousy, sadness—and the very mechanisms that enact emotion. Instead, the individual should substitute emotionally competent stimuli capable of triggering positive, nourishing emotions. To facilitate this goal Spinoza recommends the mental rehearsing of negative emotional stimuli as a way to build a tolerance for negative emotions and gradually acquire a knack for generating positive ones. This is, in effect, Spinoza as mental immunologist developing a vaccine capable of creating antipassion antibodies. There is a Stoic color to the entire exercise, although it must be noted that Spinoza criticized the Stoics for assuming that the control of the emotions could ever be complete.  Read more at location 3635

Spinoza's solution asks the individual to reflect on life, guided by knowledge and reason, in the perspective of eternity—of God or Nature—rather than in the perspective of the individual's immortality.  Read more at location 3646

Freedom is one of the results, not of the kind usually contemplated in discussions of free will, but something far more radical: a reduction of dependencies on the object-emotional needs that enslave us. Another result is that we intuit the essences of the human condition. That intuition is comingled with a serene feeling whose ingredients include pleasure, joy, delight, but for which the words "blessedness" and "beatitude" seem the most appropriate given the transparent texture of the feeling (The Ethics, Part V, Propositions 32 and 36, and their notes). This "intellectual" feeling is synonymous with an intellectual form of love for God—  Read more at location 3648

(Note: Akin to Tao and Zen)  Goethe noted that this process offers love without asking for love back, and wondered about what could be more generous and less disinterested than this attitude. But Goethe was not quite accurate. The individual does get something back in the form of the most desirable kind of human freedom—Spinoza believed that an entity is free only when it exists solely by the lights of its nature and when it acts solely by its own determination.  Read more at location 3654

The Effectiveness of a Solution 

Spinoza affirms life and turns emotion and feeling into the means for its nourishing, a nice mixture of wisdom and scientific foresight.  Read more at location 3674

In other ways, Spinoza's solution is problematic. I am uneasy with the implication that Spinoza's solution works best in isolated self-centeredness, away from human intimacy. I find his asceticism rather impractical today. Spinoza does not go as far as the Greek and Roman Stoics in his divestiture of life's trappings, but he gets awfully close.  Read more at location 3678

Why should Aristotle's wisdom not prevail here? Aristotle insisted that the contented life is a virtuous and happy life, but that health, wealth, love, and friendship are part of the contentment. I also am less than enthusiastic about the outward passivity of Spinoza's solution—never mind how inwardly active his beatitude may be.  Read more at location 3682

(Note: Not convinced by Buddhism, eh Mr. Damasio?)  The reasons why I regard him as brilliant are obvious. But one reason why I find him exasperating is the tranquil certainty with which he faces a conflict that most of humanity has not yet resolved: the conflict between the view that suffering and death are natural biological phenomena that we should accept with equanimity—few educated human beings can fail to see the wisdom of doing so—and the no less natural inclination of the human mind to clash with that wisdom and feel dissatisfied by it.  Read more at location 3695

Spinozism 

Spinoza's brand of secular religiosity has been rediscovered or reinvented in the twentieth century. Einstein, for example, thought about God and religion in similar ways.  Read more at location 3700

In describing his own religious feeling—the religious feeling of the "profounder sort of scientific minds"—Einstein wrote that such a feeling "...takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection." 9 In words of great beauty, Einstein described this feeling as "...a sort of intoxicated joy and amazement at the beauty and grandeur of this world, of which man can form just a faint notion. This joy is the feeling from which true scientific research draws its spiritual sustenance, but which also seems to find expression in the song of birds." I believe this feeling, which Einstein called cosmic, is a relative of Spinoza's amor intellectualis Dei, although the two can be distinguished. Einstein's cosmic feeling is exuberant, a mixture of heart-stopping awe and heart-beating-fast preparation for bodily communion with the world. Spinoza's amor is more restrained. The communion is interior. Einstein seemed to blend the two. He believed that the cosmic feeling is a hallmark of religious geniuses of all ages, but that it never formed the basis for any church. "Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with the highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another."  Read more at location 3704

Both William James and Spinoza described the experience of the divine as pure feeling, a pleasurable feeling that is a source of completion, meaning, and enthusiasm for life. In the end, the important difference between the two is the baseline from which the healthy, salvatory feelings depart and can be measured. In Spinoza, the feeling of the divine rode on top of a baseline of reasoned equanimity regarding the world; in James the feeling of the divine started from a depressed baseline and it often pulled him up from the doldrums of his negative appraisal of nature. Otherwise, both James and Spinoza found God within, and James, using the budding knowledge of late nineteenth-century psychology which he himself helped construct, located the source of the divine not just within us but in the unconscious within us.  Read more at location 3742

Both rationalized the process by acknowledging that human beings are mere occasions of subjective individuality in a largely mysterious universe.  Read more at location 3752

Happy Endings? 

I can offer a word about my own view. One path toward the happy ending I wish for comes from combining some features of Spinoza's contemplation with a more active stance aimed at the world around us. This path includes a life of the spirit that seeks understanding with enthusiasm and some sort of discipline as a source of joy—where understanding is derived from scientific knowledge, aesthetic experience or both. The practice of this life also assumes a combative attitude based on the belief that part of humanity's tragic condition can be alleviated, and that doing something about the human predicament is our responsibility. One  Read more at location 3758

First, I assimilate the notion of spiritual to an intense experience of harmony, to the sense that the organism is functioning with the greatest possible perfection. The experience unfolds in association with the desire to act toward others with kindness and generosity. Thus to have a spiritual experience is to hold sustained feelings of a particular kind dominated by some variant of joy, however serene. The center of mass of the feelings I call spiritual is located at an intersection of experiences: Sheer beauty is one. The other is anticipation of actions conducted in "a temper of peace" and with "a preponderance of loving affections"  Read more at location 3772

****  Conceived in this manner, the spiritual is an index of the organizing scheme behind a life that is well-balanced, well-tempered, and well-intended. One might venture that perhaps the spiritual is a partial revelation of the ongoing impulse behind life in some state of perfection.  Read more at location 3777

Second, spiritual experiences are humanly nourishing. I believe that Spinoza was entirely on the mark in his view that joy and its variants lead to greater functional perfection. The current scientific knowledge regarding joy supports the notion that it should be actively sought because it does contribute to flourishing; likewise, that sorrow and related affects should be avoided because they are unhealthy.  Read more at location 3781

Third, we have the power to evoke spiritual experiences. Prayer and rituals, in the context of a religious narrative, are meant to produce spiritual experiences but there are other sources.  Read more at location 3787

The contemplation of nature, the reflection on scientific discovery, and the experience of great art can be, in the appropriate context, effective emotionally competent stimuli behind the spiritual.  Read more at location 3791

I do not believe that there is a brain center for spirituality in the good old phrenological tradition. But we can provide an account of how the process of arriving at a spiritual state may be carried out neurobiologically. Since the spiritual is a particular kind of feeling state, I see it as depending, neurally speaking, on the structures and operations outlined in Chapter Three, and especially on the network of somatosensing brain regions. The spiritual is a particular state of the organism, a delicate combination of certain body configurations and certain mental configurations. Sustaining such states depends on a wealth of thoughts about the condition of the self and the condition of other selves, about past and future, about both concrete and abstract conceptions of our nature.  Read more at location 3797

Accounting for the physiological process behind the spiritual does not explain the mystery of the life process to which that particular feeling is connected. It reveals the connection to the mystery but not the mystery itself.  Read more at location 3807