ALSO BY ANTONIO DAMASIO The Feeling of What Happens Descartes' Error ANTONIO DAMASIO Looking for Spinoza Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain WILLIAM HEINEMANN : LONDON First published in the United Kingdom in 2003 by William Heinemann 13579 10 8642 Copyright © 2003 by Antonio R. Damasio Antonio Damasio has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work All figures, diagrams and drawings are by Hanna Damasio except for the portrait on page 263. Her drawings in Chapters 1, 5 and 6 depict Spinoza's house on 72-74 Paviljoensgracht (page 9), a statue of Spinoza (page 16), the back of the New Church and Spinoza's tomb in The Hague (page 19), the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam (page 185), the house where Spinoza lived in Rijnsburg (page 233), a bust of Spinoza (page 225), and the old synagogue in Amsterdam (inspired by a 17th century engraving by Jan Veenhuysen). The portrait on page 263 is by |ean Charles Francois and was published by A. Saverien, Histoire des Philosophes Modernes, Paris, 1761 This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Published by arrangement with Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777, USA. 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The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin ISBN o 434 00787 o Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd, Guildford & King's Lynn To Hanna Contents CHAPTER i Enter Feelings Enter Feelings 3 The Hague 8 Looking for Spinoza 15 Beware 17 In the Paviljoensgracht 23 CHAPTER 2 Of Appetites and Emotions Trust Shakespeare 27 Emotions Precede Feelings 29 A Nesting Principle 37 More on the Emotion-Related Reactions: From Simple Homeostatic Regulation to Emotions-Proper 38 The Emotions of Simple Organisms 40 The Emotions-Proper 43 A Hypothesis in the Form of a Definition 53 The Brain Machinery of Emotion 54 Triggering and Executing Emotions 57 Out of the Blue 65 The Brain Stem Switch 73 Out-ofthe-Blue Laughter 74 VIII CONTEXTS Laughter and Some More Crying 77 From the Active Body to the Mind 79 CHAPTER 3 Feelings What Feelings Are 83 Is There More to Feelings than the Perception of Body State? 89 Feelings Are Interactive Perceptions 91 Mixing Memory with Desire: An Aside 93 Feelings in the Brain: New Evidence 96 A Comment on Related Evidence 101 Some More Corroborating Evidence 104 The Substrate of Feelings 105 Who Can Have Feelings? 109 Body States versus Body Maps 111 Actual Body States and Simulated Body States 112 Natural Analgesia 113 Empathy 115 Hallucinating the Body 118 The Chemicals of Feeling 119 Varieties of Drug-Induced Felicity 121 Enter the Naysayers 124 More Naysayers 126 CHAPTER 4 Ever Since Feelings OF Joy and Sorrow 137 Feelings and Social Behavior 140 Inside a Decision-Making Mechanism 144 What the Mechanism Accomplishes 147 The Breakdown of a Normal Mechanism 150 Damage to Prefrontal Cortex in the Very Young 152 CONTENTS IX What If the World? i55 Neurobiology and Ethical Behaviors 159 Homeostasis and the Governance of Social Life 166 The Foundation of Virtue 170 What Are Feelings For? 175 CHAPTER 5 Body, Brain, and Mind Body and Mind 183 The Hague, December 2,1999 184 The Invisible Body 187 Losing the Body and Losing the Mind 191 The Assembly of Body Images 195 A Qualification 198 The Construction of Reality 198 Seeing Things 200 About the Origins of the Mind 204 Body, Mind, and Spinoza 209 Closing with Dr. Tulp 217 CHAPTER 6 A Visit to Spinoza Rijnsburg, July 6, 2000 223 The Age 224 The Hague, 1670 227 Amsterdam, 1632 230 Ideas and Events 236 The Uriel da Costa Affair 240 Jewish Persecution and the Marrano Tradition 245 Excommunication 250 The Legacy 2 54 Beyond the Enlightenment 258 The Hague, 1677 261 X CONTENTS The Library 262 Spinoza in My Mind 263 CHAPTER 7 Who's There? The Contented Life 267 Spinoza's Solution 273 The Effectiveness of a Solution 277 Spinozism 279 Happy Endings? 283 Appendices 291 Notes 299 Glossary 333 Acknowledgments 337 Index 339 Looking for Spinoza CHAPTER I Enter Feelings Enter Feelings Feelings of pain or pleasure or some quality in between are the bedrock of our minds. We often fail to notice this simple reality be­ cause the mental images of the objects and events that surround us, along with the images of the words and sentences that describe them, use up so much of our overburdened attention. But there they are, feelings of myriad emotions and related states, the con­ tinuous musical line of our minds, the unstoppable humming of the most universal of melodies that only dies down when we go to sleep, a humming that turns into all-out singing when we are oc­ cupied by joy, or a mournful requiem when sorrow takes over.* Given the ubiquity of feelings, one would have thought that their science would have been elucidated long ago—what feelings are, how they work, what they mean—but that is hardly the case. Of all the mental phenomena we can describe, feelings and their essential ingredients—pain and pleasure—are the least under­ stood in biological and specifically neurobiological terms. This is all the more puzzling considering that advanced societies cultivate *The principal meaning of the word feeling refers to some variant of the experience of pain or pleasure as it occurs in emotions and related phenomena; another frequent meaning refers to experiences such as touch as when we appreciate the shape or texture of an object. Throughout this book, unless otherwise specified, the term feeling is always used in its principal meaning. LOOKING FOR SPINOZA 4 feelings shamelessly and dedicate so many resources and efforts to manipulating those feelings with alcohol, drugs of abuse, medical drugs, food, real sex, virtual sex, all manner of feel-good consump­ tion, and all manner of feel-good social and religious practices. We doctor our feelings with pills, drinks, health spas, workouts, and spiritual exercises, but neither the public nor science have yet come to grips with what feelings are, biologically speaking. I am not really surprised at this state of affairs, considering what I grew up believing about feelings. Most of it simply was not true. For example, I thought that feelings were impossible to de­ fine with specificity, unlike objects you could see, hear, or touch. Unlike those concrete entities, feelings were intangible. When I started musing about how the brain managed to create the mind, I accepted the established advice that feelings were out of the sci­ entific picture. One could study how the brain makes us move. One could study sensory processes, visual and otherwise, and un­ derstand how thoughts are put together. One could study how the brain learns and memorizes thoughts. One could even study the emotional reactions with which we respond to varied objects and events. But feelings—which can be distinguished from emotions, as we shall see in the next chapter—remained elusive. Feelings were to stay forever mysterious. They were private and inacces­ sible. It was not possible to explain how feelings happened or where they happened. One simply could not get "behind" feelings. As was the case with consciousness, feelings were beyond the bounds of science, thrown outside the door not just by the naysay­ ers who worry that anything mental might actually be explained by neuroscience, but by card-carrying neuroscientists themselves, proclaiming allegedly insurmountable limitations. My own will­ ingness to accept this belief as fact is evidenced by the many years I spent studying anything but feelings. It took me awhile to see the degree to which the injunction was unjustified and to realize ENTER FEELINGS 5 that the neurobiology of feelings was no less viable than the neu­ robiology of vision or memory. But eventually 1 did, mostly, as it turns out, because I was confronted by the reality of neurological patients whose symptoms literally forced me to investigate their conditions. Imagine, for example, meeting someone who, as a result of damage to a certain location of his brain, became unable to feel compassion or embarrassment—when compassion or embar­ rassment were due—yet could feel happy, or sad, or fearful just as normally as before brain disease had set in. Would that not give you pause? Or picture a person who, as a result of damage located elsewhere in the brain, became unable to experience fear when fear was the appropriate reaction to the situation and yet still could feel compassion. The cruelty of neurological disease may be a bottomless pit for its victims—the patients and those of us who are called to watch. But the scalpel of disease also is responsible for its single redeeming feature: By teasing apart the normal op­ erations of the human brain, often with uncanny precision, neu­ rological disease provides a unique entry into the fortified citadel of the human brain and mind.