Rating: 
Summary: VERY Disappointing for the Philosopher
Review: "And indeed, if the interested layman picks up any of a half a dozen standard text books on the brain, as I did, and approaches them in an effort to get the answers to sorts of question that would immediately occur to any curious person, he is likely to be disappointed." -John Searle, "Minds, Brains, and Science" (1984)This quote, more than any one I could think of, sums up my view on Dr. Antonio R. Damasio's "Descartes' Error." In preparation for a graduate seminar on the philosophy of mind (which kicked off by reading Descartes, by the way) I picked up this book so that I may glean a neurophysiologist's take on the mind-body problem. To say that this book was an amazingly unhelpful tool for this purpose would be the understatement of the century. While I don't agree (with another reviewer) that "a degree" is required to do philosophy (but one can help but admit that the vast majority of good philosophy is produced by those who hold at least two of them), at least some grasp of the philosophical topic is prudent prior to writing a book even remotely advertising itself as having something to do with it. This is where Damasio falls short, and not by a little. Because so many reviewers have summarized this book's substantive content, for the sake of avoiding duplicity, I decided to scour other reviews for the more egregious claims about this book. First of all, one common theme is that this book is stimulating philosophically, and that it is a "must read" for philosophers interested in the mind (see the NY Times Book Review above). In case it isn't obvious at this point, I don't think anything could be further from the truth. If you are a philosopher, don't waste your time or money with this book unless you've literally read everything else and want nothing but the science. Nowhere does Damasio mention any of the interesting paradoxes intertwined in this fantastically fascinating area of philosophy, other than occasional name dropping, not including the 5+ pages he devotes to actually discussing Descartes' "Error" (247-52). The only problem here, though, is that Damasio, while not getting Descartes entirely wrong, entirely misses the substantive point of Descartes' "dualism" and the point of the dream argument. Damasio repeats the cogito a couple times, and then moves on to dismiss the scientific inaccurracies of Descartes' philosophy (i.e., "errors" entirely beside the point of the current debate about dualism and the existence of phenomenal properties). Damasio severely, severely underestimates the weight of Descartes' dualism, as well as naively assumes that all forms of it died with the dawn of science. The point isn't that Descartes was so wrong to assume that the mind/soul/spirit could survive the body - or that brains can't really exist in a vat (Damasio explains how this is impossible given current science - I'm serious) - the point is the epistemic value of inconceivability and the role of direct acquaintance of conscious, thinking experience. All of this is completely and utterly missed by Damasio, which is likely due, I'm afraid, to a severe underestimation and underappreciation for the relevant philosophical texts and the people who wrote them. We all know "that mind comes from the brain," the problem is explaining the connection in an unproblematic, coherent way. Another common misconception about this book is its "readability." Here is one paragraph (that's right, paragraph) as a sample: "The minimal neural device capable of producing subjectivity thus requires early sensory cortices (including the somatosensory), sensory and motor cortical association regions, and subcortical nuclei (especially thalamus and basal ganglia) with convergence properties capable of acting as third-party ensembles." Now, if this is your idea of "readable," then by all means, go for it. The book is absolutely chalk-full of neurophysiological terminology to the point of reading like a text book (see Searle's quote above). I consider myself a very active reader (in the sense that I virtually always have a dictionary nearby and virtually never skip over words I don't understand the meaning of), but this book was just crazy-loaded with technical jargon. The writing itself is above average to average. Damasio's effort should be commended, which is why I give this book two stars, based entirely on the book's scientific value alone. The mischaracterization of Descartes, as well as Damasio's own philosophical shortcomings, are, in my own opinion, errors far more egregious than any Descartes ever made.
Rating:
Summary: VERY Disappointing for the Philosopher
Review: "And indeed, if the interested layman picks up any of a half a dozen standard text books on the brain, as I did, and approaches them in an effort to get the answers to sorts of question that would immediately occur to any curious person, he is likely to be disappointed." -John Searle, "Minds, Brains, and Science" (1984) This quote, more than any one I could think of, sums up my view on Dr. Antonio R. Damasio's "Descartes' Error." In preparation for a graduate seminar on the philosophy of mind (which kicked off by reading Descartes, by the way) I picked up this book so that I may glean a neurophysiologist's take on the mind-body problem. To say that this book was an amazingly unhelpful tool for this purpose would be the understatement of the century. While I don't agree (with another reviewer) that "a degree" is required to do philosophy (but one can help but admit that the vast majority of good philosophy is produced by those who hold at least two of them), at least some grasp of the philosophical topic is prudent prior to writing a book even remotely advertising itself as having something to do with it. This is where Damasio falls short, and not by a little. Because so many reviewers have summarized this book's substantive content, for the sake of avoiding duplicity, I decided to scour other reviews for the more egregious claims about this book. First of all, one common theme is that this book is stimulating philosophically, and that it is a "must read" for philosophers interested in the mind (see the NY Times Book Review above). In case it isn't obvious at this point, I don't think anything could be further from the truth. If you are a philosopher, don't waste your time or money with this book unless you've literally read everything else and want nothing but the science. Nowhere does Damasio mention any of the interesting paradoxes intertwined in this fantastically fascinating area of philosophy, other than occasional name dropping, not including the 5+ pages he devotes to actually discussing Descartes' "Error" (247-52). The only problem here, though, is that Damasio, while not getting Descartes entirely wrong, entirely misses the substantive point of Descartes' "dualism" and the point of the dream argument. Damasio repeats the cogito a couple times, and then moves on to dismiss the scientific inaccurracies of Descartes' philosophy (i.e., "errors" entirely beside the point of the current debate about dualism and the existence of phenomenal properties). Damasio severely, severely underestimates the weight of Descartes' dualism, as well as naively assumes that all forms of it died with the dawn of science. The point isn't that Descartes was so wrong to assume that the mind/soul/spirit could survive the body - or that brains can't really exist in a vat (Damasio explains how this is impossible given current science - I'm serious) - the point is the epistemic value of inconceivability and the role of direct acquaintance of conscious, thinking experience. All of this is completely and utterly missed by Damasio, which is likely due, I'm afraid, to a severe underestimation and underappreciation for the relevant philosophical texts and the people who wrote them. We all know "that mind comes from the brain," the problem is explaining the connection in an unproblematic, coherent way. Another common misconception about this book is its "readability." Here is one paragraph (that's right, paragraph) as a sample: "The minimal neural device capable of producing subjectivity thus requires early sensory cortices (including the somatosensory), sensory and motor cortical association regions, and subcortical nuclei (especially thalamus and basal ganglia) with convergence properties capable of acting as third-party ensembles." Now, if this is your idea of "readable," then by all means, go for it. The book is absolutely chalk-full of neurophysiological terminology to the point of reading like a text book (see Searle's quote above). I consider myself a very active reader (in the sense that I virtually always have a dictionary nearby and virtually never skip over words I don't understand the meaning of), but this book was just crazy-loaded with technical jargon. The writing itself is above average to average. Damasio's effort should be commended, which is why I give this book two stars, based entirely on the book's scientific value alone. The mischaracterization of Descartes, as well as Damasio's own philosophical shortcomings, are, in my own opinion, errors far more egregious than any Descartes ever made.
Rating: 
Summary: Challenging an old idea
Review: A "negative" title such as this carries unfortunate implications. The "error" must be identified, then explained and refuted. For newcomers to cognitive studies, Descartes "error" might seem an obscurity . Yet it has been the basic tenet of education and social thinking in the Western world for three centuries. "Cogito ergo sum" was translated into the belief that the mind and the remainder of the body were separate entities. Behaviour was controlled by the mind, while the body went about its own business. Damasio demolishes that long-standing mistake for good in this superbly written groundbreaking study. The first indication of the relationship of the mind and body was the bizarre penetration of a railway worker's skull in 1848. The worker lived, but the damage to his brain left him with severe personality changes. The case opened the door to research leading to mapping areas of the brain that reflected various personality traits. Damasio recounts the incident, matching it with numerous clinical studies of his own. Additional work, some of it strongly innovative led Damasio and his colleagues to a reformulation of how the mind and body interact. He reminds us that the brain is much more than a collection of electrically interacting cells. The body is sending information to the brain almost continuously, with the brain replying or initiating communication. These signals are both electrical and chemical. More importantly, Damasio reflects on the evolutionary origins of these conditions. For him, it is inevitable that the mind and body interact intimately. His proposed appellation for Emotions aren't separated from our reasoning processes, but are an integral part of them. The attempts by parents and educators to "train out" emotions in children are thus doomed to fail. Damasio's thesis hinges on what he calls "somatic markers." The markers are areas of the brain which continuously interact with the body, particularly those areas we associate with emotions. If confronted with emotionally charged choices, the stomach "knots," the face may "flush" warmly, and perspiration may increase markedly. These body/brain functions begin developing early in the embryo. Indeed, they have a long evolutionary history, which firmly establishes their roots. In humans, the brain not only controls/reacts with the body in addressing stressful circumstances, but retains some level of memory of the events causing the reactions. Hence, even thinking about such circumstances can lead to bodily reactions associated with them. You need not be confronting an emotional situation to be able to express the feelings associated with it. This, of course, is most notably seen in actors or other performers. Damasio offers the excellent example of orchestra conductor Herbert von Karajan, whose pulse rate was higher while conducting than when confronted with an emergency situation in an airplane. To Damasio, "Descartes' error" was that he placed all these controls in a central location of the "mind" where, in fact, they are scattered over much of the brain. The implications from this book will be far reaching. Besides impacting academic courses on behaviour, there will be changes in how we parent, how we deal with education, and even in the realm of law. Binding reason and emotion will revise uncountable long-standing ideas about how the mind deals with our surroundings. It is a work addressing fundamental questions about what make us human. Read it with care, aware that many preconceptions are likely to be challenged. The rewards for this effort will be great in years to come. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Rating:
Summary: Challenging an old idea
Review: A "negative" title such as this carries unfortunate implications. The "error" must be identified, then explained and refuted. For newcomers to cognitive studies, Descartes "error" might seem an obscurity . Yet it has been the basic tenet of education and social thinking in the Western world for three centuries. "Cogito ergo sum" was translated into the belief that the mind and the remainder of the body were separate entities. Behaviour was controlled by the mind, while the body went about its own business. Damasio demolishes that long-standing mistake for good in this superbly written groundbreaking study. The first indication of the relationship of the mind and body was the bizarre penetration of a railway worker's skull in 1848. The worker lived, but the damage to his brain left him with severe personality changes. The case opened the door to research leading to mapping areas of the brain that reflected various personality traits. Damasio recounts the incident, matching it with numerous clinical studies of his own. Additional work, some of it strongly innovative led Damasio and his colleagues to a reformulation of how the mind and body interact. He reminds us that the brain is much more than a collection of electrically interacting cells. The body is sending information to the brain almost continuously, with the brain replying or initiating communication. These signals are both electrical and chemical. More importantly, Damasio reflects on the evolutionary origins of these conditions. For him, it is inevitable that the mind and body interact intimately. His proposed appellation for Emotions aren't separated from our reasoning processes, but are an integral part of them. The attempts by parents and educators to "train out" emotions in children are thus doomed to fail. Damasio's thesis hinges on what he calls "somatic markers." The markers are areas of the brain which continuously interact with the body, particularly those areas we associate with emotions. If confronted with emotionally charged choices, the stomach "knots," the face may "flush" warmly, and perspiration may increase markedly. These body/brain functions begin developing early in the embryo. Indeed, they have a long evolutionary history, which firmly establishes their roots. In humans, the brain not only controls/reacts with the body in addressing stressful circumstances, but retains some level of memory of the events causing the reactions. Hence, even thinking about such circumstances can lead to bodily reactions associated with them. You need not be confronting an emotional situation to be able to express the feelings associated with it. This, of course, is most notably seen in actors or other performers. Damasio offers the excellent example of orchestra conductor Herbert von Karajan, whose pulse rate was higher while conducting than when confronted with an emergency situation in an airplane. To Damasio, "Descartes' error" was that he placed all these controls in a central location of the "mind" where, in fact, they are scattered over much of the brain. The implications from this book will be far reaching. Besides impacting academic courses on behaviour, there will be changes in how we parent, how we deal with education, and even in the realm of law. Binding reason and emotion will revise uncountable long-standing ideas about how the mind deals with our surroundings. It is a work addressing fundamental questions about what make us human. Read it with care, aware that many preconceptions are likely to be challenged. The rewards for this effort will be great in years to come. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Rating: 
Summary: Descartes' error?.
Review: A good update for neuropsychology clinicians. Dr. Damasio has put together in an elegant way what many of us have talked or even written about for some time now. Can not disagree with him that nature built the apparatus of rationality FROM the apparatus of biological regulation and WITH it but, contrary to his position, we include language as a necessary mediator in this concerted process. Emotion, feeling and reason, when articulated by language, gets transduced into a structured object of thought, not the ill defined fear or apprehension. The more effective the mediation the least likelihood of emotions controlling behaviour. Emotions are triggered BEFORE an evaluative, voluntary, non-automatic language process takes over. Damasio flip-flops between the Langley-Cannon extremes. Who has not screamed upon stepping on a rattler only to find out it was only a harmless black racer snake?. Pairing of exteroceptive and interoceptive (includes propioceptive) scenarios with best fitting language codification makes adaptive response quick, swift, economical and without effort or much deliberation. It allows Damasio's "Categorization of life experiences according to contingent dimensions." Damasio's "somatic markers" or "dispositional images" become the ventromedial prefrontal database housing the language coded myriad options for action and myriad possible outcomes. We agree that "The images that constitute our thoughts must be structured in 'phrases' which in turn must be 'sentencially' ordered in time.." All thought processes, whether catalogued as a judgement, a perception, introspection or awareness, all knowledge is clothed in language and inseparable from it. It is language that imposes, by best fitting, a structure in the way it categorizes. Visceral sensations are essentially preconceptual, as are vegetative desires of anger, pain, pleasure, etc. Thus, information generated from Damasio's body or object intuitions have to be linked to codeable information simultaneously generated for them to be expressed in words or their more primitive sound or body language equivalents.* The weak spot in Damasio's mosaic has been his unwarranted exclusion of language. Finally, Damasio's invocation of the "Brain in a vat" analogy which, in his opinion, if provided with appropriate neural inputs should not be able to have thoughts because it lacks the body inputs to complete his interactive model, only reveals his continued confusion between consciousness and awareness. Suppose we are able to add a body surrogate, a Yogi robot to the 'brain in the vat', one capable to behave like an OR heart-lung machine, a dialysis machine, etc., to produce a blood-like perfusion fluid for the brain; will the Yogi robot have consciousness? Can it have awareness(servo-controlled adjustments to maintain optimal conditions for brain cells to stay alive)? We see this servo controlled functioning in more complicated designs at launch time at Kennedy Space Center! Can the robot maintain optimal conditions and thus have consciousness? Hardly. Reason can only teach us something about finite objects identified or causally linked to an experience. If the "self " Damasio tries to embody were a substance or a subject, we could only capture its reality by its accidents or predicates. If we undress reality of its accidents, what remains in the brain to describe, the mind?* Descartes said "A finite substance can not think an infinite one." *Taken in part from article published in Telicom, journal of the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry.
Rating:
Summary: A fine examination of Descartes - with one problem.
Review: An excellent synopsis of the fundamental errors made in distinguishing "emotion" from "reason." Damasio's work is an excellent investigation of the paradigms we have around words and language, and how that can affect our understanding of the truth. Of course, Damasio's message would be more easily swallowed if it weren't for the fact that the title of the book has a spelling error in it; it should be "Descartes's Mistake." "Descartes" isn't a plural. You'd think a man with seven books to his credit would have someone proofread his titles!
Rating: 
Summary: Neuroscience's Error
Review: Antonio Damasio does a splendid job of pointing out the interdependence of mental experiences such as body sensations, emotions, and reason. But those searching for new ideas about how all of this comes together in the mind will need to look elsewhere. If nothing else, this book shows the limits of neuroscience. While neuroscience can explain how our brains receive sensory input from the environment (how the brain works), it is unable to explain how we have thoughts and opinions about the environment or where we get the motivation to study and change the environment (how the mind works). Neuroscientists like Damasio, who believe that scientific techniques will eventually explain the mind, show that the real error in the mind-brain debate may belong to the neuroscientists and not to Descartes.
Rating:
Summary: "Descartes' Error" is clear, thought provoking and enjoyable
Review: Antonio Damasio has a clear concise style that makes the great deal of information he presents quite enjoyable to read. His point of view is beautifully expressed and explained along side competing view points and the evidence. I'm sure no one has it right yet, but this is an important step toward a real understanding of how the human mind and reasoning operates.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent slam on Descartes' theory.
Review: As one that has always felt that the Western philosophy that the mind is separate from the body was extremely out of place with the way in which the world worked, this book became the final beam in the bridge to my conclusion. The author goes into very thorough arguments and events that support his hypothesis that "The mind is the captive audience of the body." Having first come across the idea that logic stemmed from emotions and could not be separated courtesy of Marti Kheel, this was a wonderful way to follow up on the theory and provided an even better case for it.The idea that we as humans can be separate from our emotional selves and our environment, distance ourselves from the physical world is an outdated idea brought about at the advent of the scientific era, and it has finally come time to correct this way of thinking in order to bring the Western world back into a healthy, whole way of regarding themselves and their bodies. This book could quite possibly be the major turning point in such a philosophical revolution.
Rating:
Summary: Fine work, but Ryle got there first.
Review: Damasio brings some some fascinating cases to bear on one of the oldest problems in philosophy and psychology. It's a good read and an important subject. It would be a mistake, however, to think that "Descartes' error" was just now being pointed out. In fact, practically no contemporary philosopher worth his or her salt subscribes to the Cartesian two-substance theory of body and mind. In his 1949 masterpiece, The Concept of Mind, Gilbert Ryle argued that Descartes' view was fatally flawed (and he wasn't really the first to point this out, either), and called it the "ghost in the machine" view of the body/mind relationship. If you get right down to it, Descartes himself would agree with Damasio that the emotions are not radically different kinds of things from the reasoning faculties, since he believed that experiencing an emotion was simply another mode of thought, just as drawing an inference is a mode of thought. But Descartes must be used to being a whipping boy by now, 350 years after his death; and the historical perspective aside, Damasio's book is an excellent contribution to scholarship on the effects of emotion on rationality.
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