X-Message-Number: 5654 Date: Tue, 23 Jan 1996 13:42:33 +1100 (EST) From: (Kitty te Riele) Subject: brain and body The book "Descartes' error - emotion, reason and the human brain", by Antonio Damasio (1994) seems to be relevant to both the uploading and the neuro vs whole body debates. >From the blurb, Picador edition: Damasio "offers a novel perspective on what emotions and feelings actually are: a direct sensing of our body states, a link between the body and its survival-oriented regulations, on the one hand, and consciousness, on the other." >From the introduction (xvi): "the body, as represented in the brain, may constitute the indispensable frame of reference for the neural proceses that we experience as mind. [.....] our most refined thoughts and best actions, our greatest joys and deepest sorrows, use the body as a yard stick. Surprising as it may sound, the mind exists in and for an integrated organism; our minds would not be the way they are if it were not for the interplay of body and brain during evolution, during individual development, and at the current moment. The mind had t obe first about the body, or it could not have been. On the basis of the ground reference that the body continuously provides, the mind can then be about many other things, real and imaginary." Having only just started reading this book, I am unable to give an opinion. Has any one else read it and made a judgement? Kitty Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5654