Interesting videos:
Dr. Antonio Damasio on Self Comes to Mind - Series of 7 videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0L_mfpYwIk&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL
At conference "Brain and mind: from medicine to society"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbacW1HVZVk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agxMmhHn5G4
Antonio Damasio - This Time With Feeling
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX8L8G28aRs
Member Nah:
I bought two books of Damasio: Self comes to mind and The feeling of what happens.
Although it's the newer book, I started reading the Self comes to mind, first.
I bought this book because I found some of what he was saying in the video (in the previous post) interesting and also overlapping with how I feel and theorize about awareness and sensation/feeling/thought.
[quote]This book is dedicated to addressing two questions. First: how does the brain construct a mind? Second: how does the brain make that mind conscious?[/quote]
So, his focus is "mind" and "conscious" from the brain, which is a bit different from my perspectives.
He uses neuroscience and the ideas of William James, as data/reference.
Another important focus is "self" which is evident from the title of the book, as well.
I'm not really interested in "self". But it seems the "self" of Damasio includes basic situation awareness like time, location, orientation awareness, and so on.
This is something we can observe when we are very slowly waking up, and it's an interesting area, to me.
And the "self" he is talking about is is something subtle and moreover a process (rather than an object).
He thinks "self" is always present whenever we are presumed to be conscious.
This is somewhat different from how I feel. I mean, depending on the state of awareness, there isn't the sense of self or "I" or Identity.
He ponder the self process from two vantage points: that of observer (of dynamic objects) and knower.
He divides them from evolutionary perspective, observer self (self-as-objects) being simpler and knower self (self-as-knower) more complex.
His perspectives of "self" seems to have relatively strong tie with that of William James as he quotes and mention him and his words/ideas, often.
I'm hoping I can understand what he wants to say without reading William James...
It seems that self-as-object is related to the idea of possession.
It might be related to what I feel as the relative distance to self.
The word "this" indicates something within reach of one's action (or probably moreover the awareness), while "that" indicates something outside the zone of one's reach.
"It" would indicate something regardless of distance/zone.
It seems that in his model, perception (of objects) provokes emotion and feeling, and feeling distinguishes if it belongs to self or outside.
The feeling separates self and non-self, and when self is detected, the mental stream is joined to the (mental or rather brain) image of object that caused feeling (of self).
p. 10-12
John Searle : The mystery of consciousness <<< Damasio seems to be agreeing (and possibly influenced?) about the importance of subjectivity.
William James (self with "core of sameness") vs Davide Hume (humans are perception machine)
p. 15
Methodology
- First person introspective study
- behavioral study
- brain events
- In addition, evolutionary biology, neurobiology
p. 18
Brain cells make up small groups and larger and larger groups, and then networks.
In these circuits, momentary pattern corresponding to outside our body, inside our body, AND activity in our brain happens. These patterns, called maps, can be different in sharpness, concreteness, etc.
In short, brain maps world around it AND its own doing.
These maps are experienced (by self) as image (either visual, auditory, etc) in our mind.
p.20 - 21
Body => protoself.
Body => protoself <= brain.
Protoself ==> primordial feelings.Perpetual resonant loop. Bond between body and brain.
Spontaneous and continuous WHEN we are awake. Basic pleasure/pain evaluation. Occurring at the brain stem. Normal brain state is imbued with some form of feelings.
p.22
The coreself is about action. It's about a relationship between the organism and object.
Autobiographical self with the memory of past and projection into the future.
Protoself+coreself = "material me"
Autobiographicself = "social me", "spiritual me"