Antonio Damasio insists there's 'no such thing as a disembodied mind'

https://dailygalaxy.com/2020/07/consciou...ssion=true

“We are not thinking machines that feel; rather, we are feeling machines that think.” answers neuroscientist Antonio Damasio,  who pioneered the field of embodied consciousness –the bodily origins of our sense of self. “We may smile and the dog may wag the tail, but in essence,” he says. “we have a set program and those programs are similar across individuals in the species. There is no such thing as a disembodied mind.”
5
...About half a billion years ago, the central nervous system, featuring a brain, evolved an afterthought of nature,” says Damasio who a proposes three layered theory of consciousness based on a hierarchy of stages, with each stage building upon the last. The most basic representation of the organism is referred to as the Protoself, next is Core Consciousness, and finally, Extended Consciousness.

Damasio, who is an internationally recognized leader in neuroscience, was educated at the University of Lisbon and currently directs the University of Southern California Brain and Creativity Institute. The human brain, he argues, became the “anchor” of what had once been a more distributed mind. Changes in bodily state were projected onto the brain and experienced as emotions or drives – the emotion of fear, say, or the drive to eat. Subjectivity evolved later again, he argues. “It was imposed by the musculoskeletal system, which evolved as a physical framework for the central nervous system and, in so doing, also provided a stable frame of reference: the unified ‘I’ of conscious experience.”...

...Enter Sarah Garfinkel, at the University of Sussex, UK, who joins Damasio in arguing that our thoughts, feelings and behaviors are shaped in part by the internal signals that arise from our body. But, she reports in New Scientist: “it goes beyond that. It is leading her and others to a surprising conclusion: that the body helps to generate our sense of self and is a key part of consciousness. This idea has practical implications in assessing people who show little sign of consciousness. It may also force us to reconsider where we draw the line between life and death, and provide a new insight into how consciousness evolved.”...

The comments are quite interesting on this one, with one accusing him of circular reasoning and making assertions. Some talk about their experiences that lead them to form conclusions about consciousness that differ to these scientists. There is also no mention of the Hard Problem either, unfortunately. 


There's also some, including from a Dr Brain Singh (his name rings a bell but I can't really remember precisely) that comment on how anaesthesia basically 'proves consciousness is completely dependent on the brain', while others argue that consciousness is immaterial and cite Penfield's work, as well as Ian Stevenson's. It does seem this article is just advertising this guy's book somewhat.

Here we go again. Yet another materialist neuroscientist comes up with yet another clever theory or hypothesis on how consciousness evolved in a completely material way (and is itself completely material), totally divorced from the very large body of empirical evidence and philosophical reasoning that is completely to the contrary. The new theory totally depends on the arrogant ignoring and dismissing of all this evidence, plus ignoring and dismissing the many strong philosophical arguments against physicalism, including the Hard Problem. 

All, of course, without any justification, just the complacent assumption that it is all just nonsense. Probably the attitude is the usual one, that since per naturalism or physicalism this data and these ideas can't be true, they simply are a priori impossible - end of discussion, no need to look at the data.  

Because of this, I think the new theory should itself be ignored as a priori impossible with no need to examine and critique in detail, since it has a very basic deadly flaw - it is diametrically opposed to and contradictory to a large body of verified evidence and logical thought. Which thought and evidence is simply dismissed for ideological reasons without justification.

Here we go again. This topic belongs in the scepticism section, doesn't it?

Here we go again. This topic belongs in the scepticism section, doesn't it?

I wasn't sure whether this would qualify as going in the debates section honestly. I've personally never heard of this guy, and I find it quite suspicious that he and Sarah Garfinkel make all these bold claims and assertions, but the article doesn't really provide any evidence to support these statements, it just seems to be advertising their theory while they dodge the Hard Problem completely. I'd like to see these kinds of 'promotions' for the works of the UVA in return, and their theories. 

This reminded me of how a Psychology Today interviewer treated Peter Fenwick in 2019 when he discussed alternative theories of consciousness: claiming there's a lack of evidence even when other posts on the same website show otherwise. 

Here is what NewScientist posted about Garfinkel, which as you can see, was copied and pasted by whoever wrote this article for dailygalaxy. NewScientist seem to love making claims that contradict each other or aren't well supported. They once claimed that 'most people today believe consciousness is a product of the brain' which is quite the gross exaggeration. 

Out of curiosity, has anyone else actually heard of these two before, or anything they've published?

There should be only one thread for all of these posts that relate to brain/mind correlations as they all turn on exactly the same argument and have exactly the same response. The OP is just building the same argument but scattering these posts across sections.

Beyond that I think that as each of these posts is less a general interest in consciousness - for example the diet and depression thread which doesn't get into parapsychology - but specifically an argument against survival this does belong in the Skeptic section.

[Ninshub]

I've moved the thread here, where it more properly belongs.

I doubt that Damasio is a pioneer of the embodied consciousness field, given we have varied traditional diets tied to spirituality and mental faculty from across the globe. The Vedic schools of India, varied South American shamanic lines, and the Neo Platonists come to mind.

If anything embodied consciousness was likely the norm before neuroscience.

And as many of these cultures believed in an afterlife, as well as worked to produce Psi effects including OBEs and journeys to spirit realms, I don't see how acceptance of consciousness being tied to the body as whole would count as proof against said consciousness continuing on.

Now, one might make the argument that this afterlife requires a subtle/astral body, that mental objects (feelings, thoughts, etc) cannot simply exist without some kind of embodiment, but that is another discussion altogether.

Regarding this part:

Some scientists have asked how can we be sure that the source of consciousness lies within our bodies at all? One popular, if mystical, idea, writes astrophysicist Paul Davies in The Demon in the Machine, “is that flashes of mathematical inspiration can occur by the mathematician’s mind somehow ‘breaking through’ into a Platonic realm of mathematical forms and relationships that not only lies beyond the brain but beyond space and time altogether.”

I don't think this idea of the mind's relationship to Platonism is really given a proper hearing in this article. It isn't simply the mind breaking through, as if it were leaving the body or stretching beyond it in the sense of reaching through some 4th or higher spatial dimension to grasp the maths.

What Plato and his successors were arguing was that body is perishable, and offered the [mind] a vehicle to sense the other perishable things that rise and fall from matter. But the mind was more akin to the mathematical and logical Universals, truths that are Eternal.

Of course there's a lot more to this argument, some of which can be found in the SEP entry on Ancient Theories of the Soul, but the question of mind and its relation to Universals is one of the classical arguments for the immortality of the soul.

What [Socrates] does, in fact, conclude is that the soul is most like, and most akin to, intelligible being, and that the body is most like perceptible and perishable being. To say this is plainly neither to assert nor to imply (as Robinson 1995, 30, appears to think) that soul in some way or other falls short of intelligible, imperishable being, any more than it is to assert or imply that body in some way or other falls short of, or rather rises above, perceptible, perishable being. The argument leaves it open whether soul is a perfectly respectable member of intelligible reality, the way human bodies are perfectly respectable members of sensible reality, or whether, alternatively, soul has some intermediate status in between intelligible and perceptible being, rising above the latter, but merely approximating to the former. Socrates does seem to take his conclusion to imply, or at least strongly suggest, that it is natural for the soul either “to be altogether indissoluble, or nearly so”, but, in any case, that the soul is less subject to dissolution and destruction than the body, rather than, as the popular view has it, more so. If this position can be established, Socrates is in a position to refute the popular view that the soul, being composed of ethereal stuff, is more liable to dispersion and destruction than the body.

The affinity argument is supposed to show not only that the soul is most like intelligible, imperishable being, but also that it is most akin to it. Socrates argues that the soul is like intelligible being on the grounds that it is not visible and, in general, not perceptible (anyhow to humans, as Cebes adds at 79b), and that it shares its natural function with the divine, namely to rule and lead (the body in the one case, mortals in the other). There is a separate argument for the kinship of the soul with intelligible being. When the soul makes use of the senses and attends to perceptibles, “it strays and is confused and dizzy, as if it were drunk” (79c). By contrast, when it remains “itself by itself” and investigates intelligibles, its straying comes to an end, and it achieves stability and wisdom. It is not just that the soul is in one state or another depending on which kind of object it is attending to, in such a way that its state somehow corresponds to the character of the object attended to. That would not by itself show that the soul is more akin to the one domain rather than the other (this is the point of Bostock's criticism, Bostock 1986, 119). To understand the argument properly, it is crucial to note that when the soul attends to perceptibles, it is negatively affected in such a way that its functioning is at least temporarily reduced or impaired (“dizzy, as if drunk”), whereas there is no such interference when it attends to intelligibles (cf. Socrates' fear, at 99e, that by studying things by way of the senses he might blind his soul). The claim that the soul is akin to intelligible reality thus rests, at least in part, on the view that intelligible reality is especially suited to the soul, as providing it with a domain of objects in relation to which, and only in relation to which, it can function without inhibition and interference and fully in accordance with its own nature, so as to achieve its most completely developed and optimal state, wisdom.

Regarding this part:


I don't think this idea of the mind's relationship to Platonism is really given a proper hearing in this article. It isn't simply the mind breaking through, as if it were leaving the body or stretching beyond it in the sense of reaching through some 4th or higher spatial dimension to grasp the maths.

What Plato and his successors were arguing was that body is perishable, and offered the body a vehicle to sense the other perishable things that rise and fall from matter. But the mind was more akin to the mathematical and logical Universals, truths that are Eternal.

Of course there's a lot more to this argument, some of which can be found in the SEP entry on Ancient Theories of the Soul, but the question of mind and its relation to Universals is one of the classical arguments for the immortality of the soul.

"...The affinity argument is supposed to show not only that the soul is most like intelligible, imperishable being, but also that it is most akin to it...."

I think the soul is both imperishable but also unintelligible being. If unintelligible means that something's essence is ultimately incapable of being humanly understood. The existence of the Hard Problem is an indicator of this, where the ultimate nature of mind, perception and thought has always seemed to be fundamentally beyond human comprehension. This could be due to the inherent limitations of mind when encased and limited by the physical body, it could be because ultimate understanding of the nature of the self is impossible in principle, or it could be because the soul is ultimately part of the Deity which is fundamentally incomprehensible to created entities .

I think the soul is both imperishable but also unintelligible being. If unintelligible means that something's essence is ultimately incapable of being humanly understood. The existence of the Hard Problem is an indicator of this, where the ultimate nature of mind, perception and thought has always seemed to be fundamentally beyond human comprehension. This could be due to the inherent limitations of mind when encased and limited by the physical body, it could be because ultimate understanding of the nature of the self is impossible in principle, or it could be because the soul is ultimately part of the Deity which is fundamentally incomprehensible to created entities .

Ah his use of the word "intelligible" is a bit different than meaning to be understood.

Rather it compares what is material and what is of the intellect/thought. For example matter is never intrinsically about anything, with mind projecting meaning onto shapes of ink that are letters, a red octagon meaning stop, etc. However when you have a thought about a tree it is determinate, meaning the thought is intrinsically about that tree.

Similarly, Universals - such as truths shown by mathematical theorems - are truths about particularly things intrinsically. 

Plato's argument lays the groundwork for modern arguments of a similar vein like Ross's Immaterial Aspects of Thought.

There is a larger and bolder project of epistemology naturalized, namely, to explain human thought in terms available to physical science, particularly the aspects of thought that carry truth values,and have formal features,like validity or mathematical form.That project seems to have hit a stonewall,a difficulty so grave that philosophers dismiss the underlying argument,or adopt a  cavalier certainty that our judgments only simulate certain pure forms and never are real cases of, e.g., conjunction,modus ponens,adding,or genuine validity. The difficulty is that,in principle,such truth-carrying  thoughts cannot be wholly physical (though they might have a physical   medium), because they have features that no physical thing or process can have at all.