The Feeling of What Happens
by Antonio R. Damasio · first published 1999
82% recommend18% neutral
Why HN recommends it
A neuroscientist's accessible framework for how consciousness arises from body and emotion, grounded in neurobiology and the role of feeling. For readers wanting a science-based, non-philosophical take.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"In this book, neuroscientist and humanist Antonio R. Damasio brings a lifetime of research and a literary gift to the last frontier of brain research - the mystery of consciousness. How is it that we know that we know? How is it that our conscious and private minds have a sense of self? These are the questions he considers in The Feeling of What Happens."--BOOK JACKET.
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…is Thomas Metzinger’s The ego tunnel. Metzinger is an applied philosopher, directly examining what is consciousness as can be determined and backed up with neuroscience. I loved Antonio Damasio’s the feeling of what happens, and the ego tunnel is like that on steroids, with years extra work from scientists making progress on teasing out distinctions you didn’t realize were there. There is zero ‘woo woo’, and instead a fascinating…
on “Vipassana for Hackers [pdf]” ↗…it on /r/NPBC (Neuropsychology Book Club) and I thought the book was an oversimplified interpretation to sell his predeterminer narrative of the book. Currently we are reading Antonio Damasio's "The Feeling of What Happens" (really enjoying it so far, very dense.) You can read Lehrer's unofficial reddit interview here (The OP, subtextual, is a professional Neuropsychologist): http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/d1pib/jonah_lehrer_aut...…
on “What happens when you give homeless people a prepaid credit card. ” ↗…fairly good list of books on my queue that I have collected over the last few weeks from other professionals neuropsychologists on the field. - Anything by Antonio Damasio (just started reading "The Feeling of What Happens", loving it.) - Books by Daniel Dennett - Books by Joseph Ledoux - Books by Oliver Sacks - Subcortical Structure and Cognition (needs some neurology background, I have none. I am slowly building myself…
on “What happens when you give homeless people a prepaid credit card. ” ↗…eventually led to panic attacks. I tried to understand the phenomenon and tackle subjects such as anxiety, consciousness and perceptual experience. Three books are especially interesting in that regard: - The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness - Antonio Damasio - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/125777.The_Feeling_of_Wh... - Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?” ↗This is one of the founding ideas behind Positive psychology. Some good books that go into depth on this insight: Antonio Damasio's "The Feeling of What Happens, Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness", and Jonathan Haidt's "The Happiness Hypothesis". In a nutshell Damsio gives a framework for what consciousness is, and Haidt gives some insight on how…
on “A Moment of Clarity in the Pursuit of Happiness” ↗If you're interested in consciousness, I recommend reading some of Antonio Damasio's books. I really enjoyed "The Feeling of What Happens". He has some fascinating theories on the machinery of (brain-originated) consciousness, embodiment and the primacy of emotion, and he tends to explain them in the context of his various clinical cases…
on “Consciousness is worth thinking about” ↗Antonio Damasio is a neuroscientist. He has a theory of consciousness explained in a book called the feeling of what happens. The somatic marker hypothesis is a bit more than 'it emerges from neural activity' At the very minimum the book debunks a good number of otherwise plausible sounding theories. Damasio in that book…
on “No, really—consciousness is worth thinking about” ↗…starting point (Dermot Moran's Intro. to Phenomenology is kinda dense unless you've studied much philosophy, but I like it.) If you're interested maybe in a somewhat less philosophically oriented text, The Feeling of What Happens (Antonio Damasio) is a phenomenal take grounded in neurobiology.
on “Out of the Cell” ↗…are; — The Master Algorithm by Pedro Domingos — The Book of Why by Judea Pearl — What Computers Still Can't Do by Hubert L. Dreyfus — Society of Mind & The Emotion Machine by Marvin Minsky — The Feeling Of What Happens by Antonio Damasio — Language & Mind by Noam Chomsky — A great mooc is also, the "Learning From Data" Telecourse from Caltech https://work.caltech.edu/telecourse
on “Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on in 2024 -ideally not crowded already?” ↗This and The Feeling of What Happens by Anthony Damasio were very influential for me. The ideas behind interoception and their connection to emotion and thought helped me put start taking this space more seriously. Many people will also…
on “Francisco Varela” ↗“The Feeling of What Happens” by Antonio D’Amasio, a book by a neuroscientist some years ago [0], does an excellent job of building a framework for conscious sensation from the parts, as I recall, constructing a theory of “mind maps”…
on “What is it like to be a bat?” ↗Antonio Damasio is a neuroscientist who's done work in the area, and has decent popsci books about this idea. I read the older ones, "Descartes' Error" and "The Feeling of What Happens", and they're fun, good reads. Apparently he's written more on the subject as well.
on “Our brains 'time-stamp' sounds to process the words we hear” ↗…Christof Koch’s The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach (2004); Giulio Tononi and Gerald Edelman’s A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination (2000); Antonio Damasio’s The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (1999); and the philosopher Daniel Dennett’s bluntly titled Consciousness Explained (1991)." Used it for the book list.
on “I feel therefore I am” ↗I figure this is a bit of an usual selection for HN, but here's the top of my in-progress list: Moral Boundaries -- Joan Tronso Known and Strange Things -- Teju Cole The Feeling of What Happens -- Antonio Damasio The Promise of Hope: New and Selected Poems -- Kofi Awoonor And I just started Neil Gaiman's "Sandman".
on “Ask HN: What books are you currently reading?” ↗