António Damásio quotes - page 2

When you deal with something like compassion for physical pain, which we know is very, very old in evolution - we can find evidence for it in nonhuman species - the brain processes it at a faster speed. Compassion for mental pain took many seconds longer. (António Damásio)
Leaving out appraisal also would render the biological description of the phenomena of emotion vulnerable to the caricature that emotions without an appraisal phase are meaningless events. It would be more difficult to see how beautiful and amazingly intelligent emotions can be, and how powerfully they can solve problems for us. View quote
António Damásio
There's something that intervenes and is very important which has to do with value. Value in the true biological sense, which is that contrary to what many people seem to think, taking it at face value - sorry for the pun - we do not give the same amount of emotional significance to every event. View quote
António Damásio
If I use the word consciousness, in our lab, in our institute, what we mean is the special quality of mind, the special features that exist in the mind, that permit us to know, for example, that we, ourselves, exist, and that things exist around us. View quote
António Damásio
We can be more or less conscious when you create grades of focus on a subject that is flowing in our stream of consciousness. View quote
António Damásio
What happens [in a coma] is that you lose the grounding of the self, you no longer have access to any feeling of your own existence. View quote
António Damásio
For pure joy, I look at a small painting by Arbit Blatas. An ocean liner is at the center of the composition, perhaps ready to depart. It holds the promise of discovery. View quote
António Damásio
In 'Self Comes to Mind' I pay a lot of attention to simple creatures without brains or minds, because those 'cartooned abstractions of who we are' operate on precisely the same principles that we do. View quote
António Damásio
If you have just an emotion, you would not necessarily feel it. To feel an emotion, you need to represent in the brain in structures that are actually different from the structures that lead to the emotion, what is going on in the organs when you're having the emotion. View quote
António Damásio
We're seeing it the same way, we're hearing the same way, we have the same conception of the situation. And so, for all purposes, we are operating with a very similar perception. View quote
António Damásio
Writing long hand is the last refuge. One needs the time it takes to put pencil to paper and let it run along the ruled line. (António Damásio)
How can you have this reference point, this stability, that is required to maintain the continuity of selves day after day? View quote
António Damásio
We may smile and the dog may wag the tail, but in essence, we have a set program and those programs are similar across individuals in the species. View quote
António Damásio
When you have an emotion you are recruiting a variety of mechanisms that came in the long history of evolution, long before emotions arose, and those mechanisms all had to do with how an organism manages its life. View quote
António Damásio
Emotions are triggered by what we like to call emotionally competent stimuli, that is, objects or situations that can be real, like in front of you, or be in your mind when you think and you recall, and they act on brain devices that were designed by evolution. View quote
António Damásio
There are three levels of self to consider: the proto, the core, and the autobiographical. The first two are shared with many, many other species, and they are really coming out largely of the brain stem and whatever there is of cortex in those species. View quote
António Damásio
Interestingly enough, not all feelings result from the body's reaction to external stimuli. Sometimes changes are purely simulated in the brain maps. View quote
António Damásio