In the heart of consciousness is subjectivity, this sense of having a self that observes one's own organism and the world around that organism. That is really the heart of consciousness. — Antonio Damasio Copy Share Image
You know, mind allows us to portray in different sensory modalities, visual, auditory, olfactory, you name it, what we are like and what the world is like. But this very, very important quality of subjectivity, this quality that allows us… — Antonio Damasio Copy Share Image
We are not thinking machines that feel; rather, we are feeling machines that think. — Antonio Damasio Copy Share Image
Consciousness begins when brains acquire the power, the simple power I must add, of telling a story. — Antonio Damasio Copy Share Image
I got interested in the emotions after studying patients who had lost the ability to emote and feel under certain circumstances. Many of those… — Antonio Damasio Copy Share Image
In 'Self Comes to Mind' I pay a lot of attention to simple creatures without brains or minds, because those 'cartooned abstractions of who… — Antonio Damasio Copy Share Image
Rather than being a luxury, emotions are a very intelligent way of driving an organism toward certain outcomes. — Antonio Damasio Copy Share Image
Of necessity, the autobiographical self is not just about one individual but about all the others that an individual interacts with. Of necessity, it… — Antonio Damasio Copy Share Image
A self that is very robust, that has many, many levels of organization, from simple to complex, and that functions as a sort of… — Antonio Damasio Copy Share Image
A mind is so closely shaped by the body and destined to serve it that only one mind could possibly arise in it. No… — Antonio Damasio Copy Share Image
When you deal with something like compassion for physical pain, which we know is very, very old in evolution - we can find evidence… — Antonio Damasio Copy Share Image
You can be highly concentrated on a person, on a problem, and be so good at excluding all other material that that becomes not… — Antonio Damasio Copy Share Image
We may express them [emotions] physically slightly differently, and it's of course graded depending on the circumstance, but the essence of the process is… — Antonio Damasio Copy Share Image
The autobiographical self is built on the basis of past memories and memories of the plans that we have made; it's the lived past… — Antonio Damasio Copy Share Image