From one of the world’s foremost neuroscientists and acclaimed author of Throughout his illustrious decades-long career, Antonio Damasio has been at the leading edge of science’s enduring quest to unravel the mysteries of the human mind. Now, drawing on a lifetime of groundbreaking research as well as the newest findings of neurobiology, Damasio seeks to move the conversation about the origins of consciousness from the world of high-level cognition and abstract reasoning into the wondrous realm of interoception--the human body’s own internal monitoring system. At the heart of his argument is the revolutionary idea that homeostatic feelings--those primal sensations intrinsically tied to our survival such as hunger, thirst, and pain--are the foundation of conscious experience, not only central to the body’s effort to maintain its physical well-being but carrying with them the initial glimmers of subjectivity, the very first sense of a “self.” Here Damasio redefines consciousness as a natural solution to the problem of regulation in complex, vulnerable organisms and along the way wrestles with the notion of sentience in plants and bacteria; considers the social phenomena of politics, religion, and commerce through the perspective of homeostasis; and addresses the rise and risks of artificial intelligence and its mimicry of the conscious mind. A probing synthesis of neurobiology, evolutionary science, and philosophy from one of the most notable leaders in his field, <Natural Intelligence & the Logic of Consciousness< offers readers a scientifically rigorous and deeply profound re-examination of what it means to be alive and aware.

Autorentext

ANTONIO DAMASIO is the David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Philosophy, and director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Inhalt

BEGINNINGS

1. Natural Intelligence and the Logic of Consciousness 3
2. The Enigmas of Consciousness 9
3. A Method and a Plan 17

PART I: THE PROBLEM OF GENERATING CONSCIOUSNESS AND A SKETCH OF POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
4. I Am of Many Minds . . . 23
5. The Modern Integrated Mind 32
6. Feeling Existence 38
7. The World Around and the World Within 48
8. The Wonders of Interoception 56
9. The Logic of Consciousness Concerns the Regulation of Life 61
10. How Is Consciousness Actually Possible? 67

PART II: DEEPER INTO THE SOLUTIONS
11. Let Consciousness Begin 73
12. More on the Emergence of Consciousness 91
13. More on the Neurobiology of Interoception 99
14. Of Consciousness and of Minds 109
15. Consciousness and Its Loss 117
16. About Body Temperature and Respiration 124
17. About Hunger and Thirst 129
18. About Pain and Nausea 135

PART III: NOW THAT WE KNOW
19. The Sensing Existence of Plants and Trees 141
20. Is There Consciousness in Bacteria? 149
21. Social Phenomena in the Perspective of Homeostasis 153
22. Artificial Intelligence 157
23. In Praise of Ancestors, Peers, and Descendants 166

PART IV: AFTERTHOUGHTS
24. A Note on the History of Life 173
25. On Coming Alive 178
26. On Life, Intelligence, and Minds 181
27. Comments on a Problem Word 189
28. The Dawn of Consciousness 191
29. The Vital Chain 194
30. Who Would Have Guessed? 196

Acknowledgments 199
Notes and References 201
Bibliography 209
Index 231