Where do emotions comes from? How do cells make you conscious? If you鈥檇 asked that question a decade ago, you鈥檇 have found few takers. Now, theories abound as researchers home in on what is arguably one of science鈥檚 last frontiers. Antonio Damasio is one of them. At the University of Iowa, this neurologist leads a team that treats and studies people with brain damage-people who, because of stroke, accident or disease, have lost the capacity to feel fear or recognise faces or remember who they are. So what鈥檚 his big idea? In The Feeling of What Happens, Damasio draws on such cases to develop a provocative theory about consciousness which puts the body, rather than just the brain, at the centre of the action. David Concar talked to him.
You must have seen many patients with damaged brains. Do you get frustrated that you can鈥檛 cure many of them?
Oh sure. Frustration is not even the right word. It鈥檚 much more a sense of sadness than frustration. I remember many times where it was literally impossible for me to continue, knowing that the person was forever maimed, forever unable to pursue their own gifts. On the other hand, you can learn from patients even when you can鈥檛 cure them, and in most cases you can help the person cope much better. Simply explaining what is going on in their brain to the person and their family can have an immense effect. Finding that there is a very objective cause makes them accept the problem much more easily.
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Philosophers and mystics have long puzzled over consciousness. How did it become scientifically respectable?
I think the recent development reflects the fact that it now looks possible to solve the problem-or at least to study it scientifically. All the technical advances in general biology in the past decade, combined with the new imaging methods, have spawned a new wave of theorising. There鈥檚 this dizzy feeling around. People think, now that we鈥檙e going to have the human genome sequenced, a lot of scientific questions are going to be answered, so let鈥檚 try to answer the problem of consciousness.
Do we have the tools to explain consciousness? Or do you think we need some new physical process, perhaps to do with quantum physics, to solve it?
In the book, I divide the problem of consciousness into two parts. First, there鈥檚 the problem of how to explain the so-called 鈥渕ovie in the brain鈥�, the stream of integrated images which runs through our heads continuously. Then there鈥檚 the problem of how to explain our sense of ownership of this movie, the sense that we exist as a first-person observer of images and thoughts, as a 鈥渟elf鈥�. I think the problem of self can be solved with the science we already have. I don鈥檛 think you need any fancy quantum mechanics or new ways of understanding matter. But are we actually going to solve the movie-in-the-brain problem with what we have right now? That鈥檚 a different story. There鈥檚 such a remarkable gap between what science can know about the patterns of neural activity in a brain and what you and I know about our own mental images. To fill that gap we may need to know more than we currently know about matter.
One of the bugbears of studying consciousness is that our inner worlds are inherently private. Do you think we鈥檒l ever be able to plug into each other鈥檚 minds to share what you call the movie-in-the-brain?
Highly disturbing! You mean a device that you鈥檇 snap into someone鈥檚 head to download their experiences? No, I don鈥檛 think the privacy of the mind is under threat. Even if we make incredible inroads in understanding how the movie-in-the-brain is produced, I doubt we鈥檒l ever be able to view someone else鈥檚 movie and make sense of it because we won鈥檛 have their first person perspective. What defines your consciousness is the fact that the movie-in-your-brain is being shot in your perspective. I can do lots of things to find out what鈥檚 going on in your brain. In the future, I may be able to know a lot simply from the way your neurons are working. But I鈥檒l never be able to look at what they produce in the same way you look at them.
Are we ever going to have a robot that is conscious?
The answer is formally 鈥測es鈥�. But will the robot鈥檚 feeling of knowing be like yours or mine? No way! Because the hardware in which the robot operates is not our living flesh. I believe that your sense of consciousness, of owning your own thoughts, comes not just from your brain, but from the fact that you own a body. In a previous book, Descartes鈥� Error, I argued that emotions depend heavily on physiological processes that take place in the body proper. When a frightened person has a racing heart and sweaty palms, for example, these might seem to be the mere by-products of feeling fear, actually they are part of the mechanism that produces the feeling of fear. In the new book, I鈥檓 taking this further and suggesting that the reason your consciousness is filled with your own sense of self, of existing as an agent in the world, is that your brain has to monitor your body very closely-what鈥檚 happening to the chemistry of your bloodstream, to your viscera, to your musculoskeletal frame, and so on.
In the book, you expand on this idea by breaking the human self into three elements, the 鈥減roto self鈥�, 鈥渃ore self鈥� and 鈥渁utobiographical self鈥�. What can this division tell me about what I鈥檓 experiencing now as we sit here drinking tea in this hotel?
Your proto-self is a collection of maps in the brain that represent the internal state of your body, the chemistry of your bloodstream, what鈥檚 going on in your heart, in your posture, where your hands are positioned, and so on. A lot of this monitoring work is done by evolutionarily ancient structures in the brainstem and at the base of the brain. The proto-self is something you鈥檙e not really aware of unless something drives your attention to your body-someone spilling hot tea on your hand, for instance.
So what about my core-self, what鈥檚 that doing?
Once you focus on an object, such as me talking to you, that object is also going to be represented in your brain. And, in turn, it鈥檚 going to modify the way you are physically. For instance, you look at me and you arrange your head and neck in such a way that you can construct a proper perception of me. So what you have in your head right now are two representations-one of your body鈥檚 internal systems in a state of change as you listen to me and one of the external object-me-causing that change. But in addition, I suggest there鈥檚 another level in the brain where these two representations come together and where the relationship between them is mapped. This is the beginning of your core-self-a very simple, here-and-now feeling that you exist as an organism.
What would be running through my head now if I only had this core consciousness?
You would have a sort of pure awareness uncomplicated by any autobiographical knowledge or language. You鈥檇 be looking out at the world and relating it to you, but without thinking further about who you are. Six-month-old infants probably have little more than this core consciousness. It鈥檚 difficult to imagine the situation because your brain is constantly evoking memories and words and attaching an extended consciousness [the autobiographical self] to your core-self-a sort of running commentary on your identity and personhood.
Have you ever studied any brain-damaged patient who only has core consciousness?
I can give you an example from a patient of mine called David. About 25 years ago, David suffered a severe bout of encephalitis which damaged his temporal lobes and left him unable to learn any new facts and unable to recall many old facts. He knows little about himself except his name. He talks to you very charmingly, even intelligently, but he doesn鈥檛 know the date, why he is talking to you or who you are. He doesn鈥檛 know who he is in the proper sense of the term. He is a consciousness without an identity. He鈥檚 a very happy person, jovial, delighted to talk to people. He has absolutely no conception that he鈥檚 been in this situation now for years, that he has a wife, two children and grandchildren. None of this can affect him.
What would happen to someone if they suddenly lost their sense of core-consciousness?
They鈥檇 behave like someone suffering from what鈥檚 known as an 鈥渁bsence seizure鈥�. This is a type of epileptic fit in which consciousness is momentarily suspended, along with emotion and attention. If you had one, you wouldn鈥檛 be able to continue responding to me, you鈥檇 look around, silent and vacant. And yet you wouldn鈥檛 fall to the ground. You鈥檇 still be awake and your senses would carry on working. You might even pick up this glass and drink from it, although the action would not be part of a context and have no sense of purpose. And you鈥檇 have absolutely no memory of anything that happened during the seizure.
Your big claim is that our sense of who we are is rooted rather than in our higher cerebral powers, in the lower brain鈥檚 preoccupation with our bodies. Does that mean that paralysed people who cannot feel their bodies will be less self-aware?
No, that idea is based on a misunderstanding of how brain anatomy operates. People with spinal cord damage shouldn鈥檛 have emotions or consciousness because body signals are not conveyed to the brain by the spinal cord alone. The vagus nerve, for example, totally bypasses the spinal cord and yet brings information to the brain about the heart, lungs and gut. Another route is purely chemical. Hormones released into the bloodstream can influence the brain without going through the spinal cord. So even when the spinal cord is completely severed, which rarely happens, you鈥檇 lose at the most only a third of the inputs that can influence emotions and consciousness. And the final point is people with spinal cord lesions often report experiencing abnormal emotions. Patients with spinal cord damage sometimes say things like: 鈥淭he sadness I feel is different from the sadness I used to feel. There鈥檚 no way I can bring myself to cry鈥�. But that does not mean all emotion is gone.
You say in your book that human consciousness is not the pinnacle of evolution. If it isn鈥檛, then what is?
All the creations that come from consciousness-our conscience, moral sense, religion and law, the sciences, the arts-that鈥檚 the pinnacle. I think consciousness enables you to get these creations. Without a sense of self and a sense of other, I doubt one could construct ethics in the way we have constructed them.