Feeling and Knowing

Resumen del libro

From one of the world's leading neuroscientists: a succinct, illuminating, wholly engaging investigation of the phenomenon of consciousness and its relation to life

In recent decades, many philosophers and cognitive scientists have declared the question of consciousness unsolvable, but Antonio Damasio is convinced that recent findings in biology, neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence have given us the necessary tools to solve its mystery.

In Feeling and Knowing, Damasio elucidates myriad aspects of consciousness and presents his analysis and new insights in a way that is faithful to our own intuitive sense of the experience. In forty-eight brief chapters, Damasio helps us understand the relationship between consciousness and the mind, why being conscious is not the same as either being awake or sensing, the central role of feeling, and why the brain is essential for the development of consciousness. He synthesizes the recent findings of various sciences with the philosophy of consciousness and, most significantly, presents his original research, which has transformed our understanding of the brain and human behavior.

Here is an indispensable guide to understanding the fundamental human capacity for informing and transforming our experience of the world around us and our perception of our place within it.

Biografía del autor

Antonio Damasio (Lisboa, 1944) es profesor de neurociencia, psicología y filosofía. Considerado uno de los psicólogos más eminentes de nuestra época, ha hecho aportaciones fundamentales sobre los procesos cerebrales y su relación con las emociones y la conciencia. Dirige el Instituto del Cerebro y la Creatividad en la Universidad del Sur de California en Los Ángeles, es doctor honoris causa por varias universidades de primer nivel y miembro de algunas de las academias científicas más prestigiosas del mundo. Ha recibido numerosos premios y ha tratado sus investigaciones en libros como El error de Descartes, La sensación de lo que ocurre, En busca de Spinoza, Y el cerebro creó al hombre y El extraño orden de las cosas, traducidos en el mundo entero y publicados en Destino.