The Feeling of What Happens (Paperback, 2000)

The Feeling of What Happens – António Damásio

How does the brain create the sense of being a self, an experiencing subject who knows that the thoughts and sensations happening right now belong to it? Neuroscientist António Damásio, building on his earlier work on emotion and reason, tackles this question in The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness.

Damásio argues that consciousness is deeply rooted in the body and in emotion. He proposes a layered account of the self. At its foundation is the proto-self, a nonconscious map of the body’s internal state maintained moment by moment by the brain. Core consciousness arises when the brain registers how that body state is changed by an encounter with an object, producing a fleeting core self in the here and now. Extended consciousness builds on this, adding memory, language and the sense of a personal past and future, which together form the autobiographical self.

To support his ideas, Damásio draws on fascinating cases from his clinical work with neurological patients. He describes people who have lost large parts of their memory yet retain a sense of self in the present, and patients whose consciousness is disrupted by certain kinds of brain damage or seizures. These cases reveal which aspects of consciousness can be separated and which depend on one another.

Ambitious and thought-provoking, the book offers a biological account of one of science’s deepest mysteries. The Feeling of What Happens is a rewarding read for those interested in neuroscience, psychology and philosophy of mind, though its arguments are demanding and the science has continued to evolve.