Supporting literature

[MaryLupin]

I won't comment now on what you posted from D'Amasio, but just to agree with you that he deserves to be discussed at length some other time. I found Descartes' Error to be a difficult but fascinating book.

Agreed. Maybe sometime soon we can start up a Damasio discussion. His work (and work like this) is critically important to coming to grips with thinks like "what does it mean to decide." There is another author I would suggest too. Benjamin Libet.

I also hope to get a hold of De Waal's book at some point so I can join in.

Hope so too.

Darwin's perspective above is interesting...

In the section you quoted my favourite bit is: "On the other hand a belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies seems to be universal; and apparently follows from a considerable advance in man's reason, and from a still greater advance in his faculties of imagination, curiosity and wonder." A "still greater advance in his faculties of imagination..." how droll. He is my kind of atheist.

The thing that I think is so wonderful about Darwin was his seeming prescience. The idea that a belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies follow from an advance in the capacity to reason, seems to me to be just what Damasio's work implies. The primate capacity for empathy (related to mirror neurons) becomes in humans (and chimps?) a ToM. Once that happens our capacities to empathetically read the face of another like us gets wings and can suddenly "read" all "others" including trees, cloud shapes etc. That combined with our certainty that our species is the center of the universe (just like the certainty of every other social species), you get the imaginative invention of deities.

About the Darwin's ethnocentrism...his reaction to the people living at Tierra del Fuego was an education for me. "It was without exception the most curious and interesting spectacle I ever beheld: I could not believe how wide was the difference between a savage and civilized man: it is greater than between a domesticated and wild animal, inasmuch as in man there is a greater power of improvement." For all his capacities he was still an upper class white guy. He was still a man raised with a belief in the "savage" races. So I read his stuff to do with "civilization" with a bag (not a pinch) of salt.

And about the battle between reason and emotion or reason and superstition...part of the problem with all this is that the words "reason," "emotion" and "superstition" are really big words. They contain so much that it is difficult to have a conversation with them in it without tripping over trailing meanings. Damasio addresses this in Descartes' Error. Still, neurological work most definitely shows that the existence and use of reason depends upon emotion so they cannot be simply opponents. It is a more complicated relationship than that. Following Wittgenstein, I think the real battle is between those whose basic conceptual structures favor empirical evidence as the systems control and those who favor narrative (otherwise known as faith) as the systems control. Arguing those two against each other is a waste of time.

Then I don't think that what Dawkins' book (or Hitchens etc) is doing really. What they are accomplishing is pointing out to those who have only ever used the narrative form that there is another option for human beings. This, I think, is a good thing.

[DWill]

There is another author I would suggest too. Benjamin Libet.

Haven't heard of him. Thanks for the recommendation.

The thing that I think is so wonderful about Darwin was his seeming prescience. The idea that a belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies follow from an advance in the capacity to reason, seems to me to be just what Damasio's work implies. The primate capacity for empathy (related to mirror neurons) becomes in humans (and chimps?) a ToM. Once that happens our capacities to empathetically read the face of another like us gets wings and can suddenly "read" all "others" including trees, cloud shapes etc. That combined with our certainty that our species is the center of the universe (just like the certainty of every other social species), you get the imaginative invention of deities.

You're making a lot of sense. These are neat connections.

About the Darwin's ethnocentrism...his reaction to the people living at Tierra del Fuego was an education for me. "It was without exception the most curious and interesting spectacle I ever beheld: I could not believe how wide was the difference between a savage and civilized man: it is greater than between a domesticated and wild animal, inasmuch as in man there is a greater power of improvement." For all his capacities he was still an upper class white guy. He was still a man raised with a belief in the "savage" races. So I read his stuff to do with "civilization" with a bag (not a pinch) of salt.

And though not a believer himself, he thought that the Church of England God was a better sort than what the Tierra del Fuegans had.

And about the battle between reason and emotion or reason and superstition...part of the problem with all this is that the words "reason," "emotion" and "superstition" are really big words. They contain so much that it is difficult to have a conversation with them in it without tripping over trailing meanings. Damasio addresses this in Descartes' Error. Still, neurological work most definitely shows that the existence and use of reason depends upon emotion so they cannot be simply opponents. It is a more complicated relationship than that. Following Wittgenstein, I think the real battle is between those whose basic conceptual structures favor empirical evidence as the systems control and those who favor narrative (otherwise known as faith) as the systems control. Arguing those two against each other is a waste of time.

I think you are right to insist on being wary of loaded words, especially the ones we usually don't recognize as loaded. I don't know anything about Wittgenstein, but the dichotomy of his you present is something for thought. D'Amasio does address the essential unity of emotion and reason as you say. I think it is in Descartes' Error that he talks about the famous case of Phineas Gage, how after he had some of his frontal lobe destroyed, though without a measurable loss of cognition, he was nevertheless unable to live a"reasoned" life due to the disruption of the connection between emotion and thought.

[MaryLupin]

I don't know anything about Wittgenstein, but the dichotomy of his you present is something for thought.

If you're interested, Wittgenstein talks about this in what has been published as his "Lectures on Religious Belief". You can look here and here - chapters 5 and 6.

D'Amasio does address the essential unity of emotion and reason as you say. I think it is in Descartes' Error that he talks about the famous case of Phineas Gage, how after he had some of his frontal lobe destroyed, though without a measurable loss of cognition, he was nevertheless unable to live a"reasoned" life due to the disruption of the connection between emotion and thought.

Exactly.