Psychology of Consciousness
DESCARTES' ERROR
Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
Antonio R. Damasio
Penguin, 2005
EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES The reader will be able to:
• Describe physiological and psychological evidence connecting emotion, reason, and the brain
• Describe why the author says reason may not be as pure as most of us think it is or wish it were
• Describe that the essence of a feeling may not be an elusive mental quality attached to an object, but rather the direct perception of a specific landscape and what that 'landscape' is
Antonio R. Damasio, M.D., Ph.D., is M. W. Van Allen Professor of Neurology and Head of the Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine in Iowa City and Adjunct Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. He is internationally recognized for his research on the neurology of vision, memory, and language, and also for his contributions to the elucidation of Alzheimer's disease. He is a member both of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He is, with his wife, recipient of the Pessoa Prize and the Ipsen Prize. He is also the author of THE FEELING OF WHAT HAPPENS.