The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) / quote 141 of 254
Descartes' error: emotion supports reason
The legacy of Descartes has also come under attack in neuroscience, explicitly so in the case of Antonio Damasio, who called one of his books Descartes’ Error. Damasio’s target is not just the general separation of mind and body, but the distinction between reason and emotion which it is deeply connected to. Damasio’s general hypothesis is that emotions are in fact essential to rational decision-making. Reason and emotion therefore can’t be separated, because the proper operation of the former requires and involves the latter: ‘Well-targeted and well-deployed emotion seems to be a support system without which the edifice of reason cannot operate properly.’19 What’s more, emotions are not produced simply in the brain. Rather, ‘the body is the main stage for emotions, either directly or via its representation in somatosensory structures of the brain.’ This is because ‘feelings are largely a reflection of body-state changes’.