5 Phrases By Antonio Damasio To Better Understand Our Emotions

In the phrases of Antonio Damasio, the importance of affections and emotions for the development of people always emerges. Few neurologists have contributed as much to the understanding of this fascinating world of human feelings and motivations as this professor, who is considered the “brain wizard.”

Vilayanur Ramachandran, another well-known prestigious neurologist at the University of California, once said that homo sapiens is that fascinating creature that at one point was able to look into his own mind and see the cosmos reflected in it. This poetic simile, while revealing, contains an almost obvious reality. The moment we started to reflect on ourselves, we took a big step as a species.

On the other hand, we cannot deny that the human brain contains almost the same mysteries as the universe itself. Looking at that unfathomable immensity inhabited by heavenly bodies that surrounds us every night produces almost the same vertigo as looking inside ourselves. However, and according to Antonio Damasio, today we know much more about the brain than about the universe.

An excellent scientist, a passionate inquisitive and an exceptional popularizer, Damasio is that neurophilosopher capable of giving us the simplest answers to those questions that we have always asked ourselves. After all, everything that we are, everything that we feel and have created as a society and civilization resides in that wonderful organ: the human brain.

Phrases by Antonio Damasio to get to know us better

The human being is characterized basically by one thing: by his sophisticated intelligence. We have a great memory and, in turn, something that defines us and distinguishes us from the rest of the species on this planet, namely our language. Damasio points out that beyond all this, there is an aspect that we cannot neglect.

Everything we are and have achieved comes from our feelings. They are the ones who have given us enough motivation to find solutions to problems, alternatives to our doubts and new paths when we found walls to our difficulties. Now, another crucial aspect in the theories of this professor from the University of California is the clear distinction that he establishes between emotions and feelings.

Because beyond what we may think, they are not the same thing. And this is something that we can often see in those phrases of Antonio Damasio that feed many of his interesting books, such as Descartes’s error, The strange order of things or The brain created man. 

1. Feelings are mental experiences

When we see a danger, when we meet a person who makes us uneasy or unpleasant, our body reacts with an emotion. Our heart races, we feel a chill, our stomach turns …

Now, the mental representation that we have of that fear and the associated thoughts, constitute the feeling. This is undoubtedly one of the best known Antonio Damasio phrases. Emotions precede feelings, they are chemical and organic alterations. However, it is the latter (feelings) that will ultimately allow us to make a decision, such as fleeing from that person who scares us.

2. Consciousness in the human being

Antonio Damasio makes it clear to us: consciousness is present in a large part of living beings. The moment a brain, be it a primate, a dolphin, a dog or even a reptile, creates a sense of its “I”, consciousness appears. Because this entity is not located in any corner of our brain, it is simply a process.

Now, what differentiates us from other species is the fact that evolution has expanded our consciousness much more. Creativity, memory, logical reasoning inhabit it …

3. Emotions drive life

This is another of Antonio Damasio’s most important phrases to understand his work. His hypothesis is based on the following principle: an emotion is a set of chemical and neural responses that form a distinctive pattern. When we encounter a certain stimulus, a type of reaction is generated. This is so because our brain is the result of an evolution of learned behavioral repertoires.

Now, after that emotional response, the mental process arrives, the feeling arrives. With it, we regulate the emotion and we can guide it towards a certain behavior, towards a motivation and a more or less effective type of response. Therefore, we can say that emotions are basically like the spark of life, that which induces us towards action.

4. The importance of compassion

Damasio is always very sensitive to the social crisis that humanity is experiencing. It is common to hear in his lectures how he delves into the idea of ​​violence, inequality, conflicts between countries. For this famous neurophilosopher, we have lost the capacity for compassion, and often, we allow ourselves to be carried away only by negative emotions such as anger, rage or resentment.

We must be able to create closer environments where more positive emotions can be generated. Only then can we prosper, understand each other better.

5. Artificial intelligence can never be similar to human

This is another of Antonio Damasio’s best-known phrases. It is common to hear their skepticism about artificial intelligence and its future among us. For him, as he explains in his latest book “The Order of Things”, this type of entity can never be compared to human consciousness. We must first of all remember that our brain is the result of sophisticated evolution.

Those computational processes based on coding and silicon, they lack all our past experience, they lack emotions, fears, vulnerability and of course consciousness. Thus, and by that rule of three, they will never have feelings. They can help us in many ways, but they will never be emotionally intelligent.

In conclusion. As we have seen in these phrases by Antonio Damasio, the human being is undoubtedly the result of a brain development guided by the consciousness of the self, the language and, above all, by the emotions. Thus, and although this organ may seem at first glance to be a mystery within another and formed in turn by 100, 000 million neurons, with scientists of the stature of Damasio every day we obtain more light and knowledge of what we are.