| "And indeed, if the interested layman picks up any of a half a dozen standard text books on the brain, as I did, and approaches them in an effort to get the answers to sorts of question that would immediately occur to any curious person, he is likely to be disappointed." -John Searle, "Minds, Brains, and Science" (1984) This quote, more than any one I could think of, sums up my view on Dr. Antonio R. Damasio's "Descartes' Error." In preparation for a graduate seminar on the philosophy of mind (which kicked off by reading Descartes, by the way) I picked up this book so that I may glean a neurophysiologist's take on the mind-body problem. To say that this book was an amazingly unhelpful tool for this purpose would be the understatement of the century. While I don't agree (with another reviewer) that "a degree" is required to do philosophy (but one can help but admit that the vast majority of good philosophy is produced by those who hold at least two of them), at least some grasp of the philosophical topic is prudent prior to writing a book even remotely advertising itself as having something to do with it. This is where Damasio falls short, and not by a little. Because so many reviewers have summarized this book's substantive content, for the sake of avoiding duplicity, I decided to scour other reviews for the more egregious claims about this book. First of all, one common theme is that this book is stimulating philosophically, and that it is a "must read" for philosophers interested in the mind (see the NY Times Book Review above). In case it isn't obvious at this point, I don't think anything could be further from the truth. If you are a philosopher, don't waste your time or money with this book unless you've literally read everything else and want nothing but the science. Nowhere does Damasio mention any of the interesting paradoxes intertwined in this fantastically fascinating area of philosophy, other than occasional name dropping, not including the 5+ pages he devotes to actually discussing Descartes' "Error" (247-52). The only problem here, though, is that Damasio, while not getting Descartes entirely wrong, entirely misses the substantive point of Descartes' "dualism" and the point of the dream argument. Damasio repeats the cogito a couple times, and then moves on to dismiss the scientific inaccurracies of Descartes' philosophy (i.e., "errors" entirely beside the point of the current debate about dualism and the existence of phenomenal properties). Damasio severely, severely underestimates the weight of Descartes' dualism, as well as naively assumes that all forms of it died with the dawn of science. The point isn't that Descartes was so wrong to assume that the mind/soul/spirit could survive the body - or that brains can't really exist in a vat (Damasio explains how this is impossible given current science - I'm serious) - the point is the epistemic value of inconceivability and the role of direct acquaintance of conscious, thinking experience. All of this is completely and utterly missed by Damasio, which is likely due, I'm afraid, to a severe underestimation and underappreciation for the relevant philosophical texts and the people who wrote them. We all know "that mind comes from the brain," the problem is explaining the connection in an unproblematic, coherent way. Another common misconception about this book is its "readability." Here is one paragraph (that's right, paragraph) as a sample: "The minimal neural device capable of producing subjectivity thus requires early sensory cortices (including the somatosensory), sensory and motor cortical association regions, and subcortical nuclei (especially thalamus and basal ganglia) with convergence properties capable of acting as third-party ensembles." Now, if this is your idea of "readable," then by all means, go for it. The book is absolutely chalk-full of neurophysiological terminology to the point of reading like a text book (see Searle's quote above). I consider myself a very active reader (in the sense that I virtually always have a dictionary nearby and virtually never skip over words I don't understand the meaning of), but this book was just crazy-loaded with technical jargon. The writing itself is above average to average. Damasio's effort should be commended, which is why I give this book two stars, based entirely on the book's scientific value alone. The mischaracterization of Descartes, as well as Damasio's own philosophical shortcomings, are, in my own opinion, errors far more egregious than any Descartes ever made. |