Looking for Spinoza

With scientific expertise and literary facility, bestselling author and world famous neuroscientist Damasio concludes his groundbreaking trilogy in "Looking for Spinoza," exploring the cerebral processes that keep people alive and make life worth living.

Antonio Damasio is the Van Allen Professor and head of the department of neurology at the University of Iowa Medical Center and is an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute in San Diego. Descartes' Error was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and has been translated into twenty-three languages. He lives in Iowa City and Chicago.

Contents
CHAPTER 1 Enter Feelings
Enter Feelings
The Hague
Looking for Spinoza
Beware
In the Paviljoensgracht

CHAPTER 2 Of Appetites and Emotions
Trust Shakespeare
Emotions Precede Feelings
A Nesting Principle
More on the Emotion-Related Reactions: From Simple Homeostatic Regulation to Emotions-Proper
The Emotions of Simple Organisms
The Emotions-Proper
A Hypothesis in the Form of a Definition
The Brain Machinery of Emotion
Triggering and Executing Emotions
Out of the Blue
The Brain Stem Switch
Out-of-the-Blue Laughter
Laughter and Some More Crying
From the Active Body to the Mind

CHAPTER 3 Feelings
What Feelings Are
Is There More to Feelings than the Perception of Body State?
Feelings Are Interactive Perceptions
Mixing Memory with Desire: An Aside
Feelings in the Brain: New Evidence
A Comment on Related Evidence
Some More Corroborating Evidence
The Substrate of Feelings
Who Can Have Feelings?
Body States versus Body Maps
Actual Body States and Simulated Body States
Natural Analgesia
Empathy
Hallucinating the Body
The Chemicals of Feeling
Varieties of Drug-Induced Felicity
Enter the Naysayers
More Naysayers

CHAPTER 4 Ever Since Feelings
Of Joy and Sorrow
Feelings and Social Behavior
Inside a Decision-Making Mechanism
What the Mechanism Accomplishes
The Breakdown of a Normal Mechanism
Damage to Prefrontal Cortex in the Very Young
What If the World?
Neurobiology and Ethical Behaviors
Homeostasis and the Governance of Social Life
The Foundation of Virtue
What Are Feelings For?

CHAPTER 5 Body, Brain, and Mind
Body and Mind
The Hague, December 2, 1999
The Invisible Body
Losing the Body and Losing the Mind
The Assembly of Body Images
A Qualification
The Construction of Reality
Seeing Things
About the Origins of the Mind
Body, Mind, and Spinoza
Closing with Dr. Tulp

CHAPTER 6 A Visit to Spinoza
Rijnsburg, July 6, 2000
The Age
The Hague, 1670
Amsterdam, 1632
Ideas and Events
The Uriel da Costa Affair
Jewish Persecution and the Marrano Tradition
Excommunication
The Legacy
Beyond the Enlightenment
The Hague, 1677
The Library
Spinoza in My Mind

CHAPTER 7 Who's There?
The Contented Life
Spinoza's Solution
The Effectiveness of a Solution
Spinozism
Happy Endings?

Appendices
Notes
Glossary
Acknowledgments
Index

Copyright © 2003 by Antonio Damasio

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