Feeling & Knowing

Damasio argues that consciousness, our awareness of being alive and having an experience, emerges from the brain’s ongoing interpretation of the body’s internal feelings. Rather than treating emotion as the opposite of reason, he argues that feeling is foundational to human awareness, and that cultures built around detached rationality risk leaving us anxious, emotionally disconnected, and estranged from ourselves.

Antonio Damasio is a Portuguese-American neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, author of Descartes’ Error and The Strange Order of Things.