It's very interesting to think about the distinction with mind, which I just made in very general terms, but it can be made more profound when we think that there are many species, many creatures on earth that are very… — Antonio Damasio Copy Share Image
Narratives are not fixed. We change our narratives for ourselves and we change them not necessarily deliberately. In other words, some people do, some people will constantly reconstruct their biography for external purposes, it's a very interesting political ploy. — 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