Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

“The somatic-marker hypothesis postulated from its inception that emotions marked certain aspects of a situation, or certain outcomes of possible actions.”

This quote highlights Damasio’s fundamental hypothesis in Descartes’ Error. It argues that emotions act as markers in human cognition, associating a specific feeling with a body state caused by a stimulus. If the body remembers this feeling, it can later help predict the outcomes of our actions (or that of external actors). Without emotions, our capacity to anticipate the outcomes of our decisions, especially regarding interpersonal relations, becomes impaired.

“But now I had before my eyes the coolest, least emotional, intelligent human being one might imagine, and yet his practical reason was so impaired that it produced, in the wanderings of daily life, a succession of mistakes, a perpetual violation of what would be considered socially appropriate and personally advantageous.”

This sentence demonstrates the limits of rationality as the ultimate instrument for good reasoning. Popular culture views emotions as hindering the decision-making process by obscuring rational thoughts. Here, Damasio challenges the status quo by offering a clinical counterexample to this popular philosophical belief.

“Even if a philosophical bent allowed one to think of the brain as the basis for the mind, it was difficult to accept the view that something as close to the human soul as ethical judgment, or as culture-bound as social conduct, might depend significantly on a specific region of the brain.”

This passage highlights how cultural norms and popular beliefs can hinder scientific reasoning and progress. Cartesian philosophy has so thoroughly separated the concept of the immortal spirit from the material body that it was difficult to imagine the brain playing a central role in regulating human behavior.